My Brother Rabbit

An impressive attempt by Artifex Mundi at a different kind of game for them. The graphics and music are gorgeous, the story is touching, the UI cleverly friendly (very playable with a gamepad), but the game, unfortunately, falls flat.

The problem is that the gameplay is at the same time unexpectedly shallow and unexpectedly difficult.

It looks like it might be an adventure game, but it absolutely isn't. It's a series of hidden-object areas with puzzle mini-games, and that's it. You do not move your character around. You do not have an inventory of items. So much could have been done with the base concept, but instead this game has less depth than casual mobile games. Other Artifex Mundi games are so much richer in gameplay than this.

And it's hard, for the most part. Don't let the child-friendly graphics fool you: you'll spend a long time scouring the scene looking for tiny little objects, sometimes hidden behind the scenery. But there's usually little satisfaction in finding them, as they're merely obscured rather than cleverly hidden. This core mechanic quickly becomes annoying busywork. What's odd is that the puzzle mini-games are ridiculously easy by comparison. So ... they also feel like busywork rather than a challenge. A mediocre experience on both accounts.

It pains me to give this game a thumbs down, because I love Aritfex Mundi and I love what they hoped to achieve here. But hope in itself doesn't create a good game.