Radical Rabbit Stew review for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC

Rabbits are often portrayed as cuddly and harmless animals which couldn?t hurt a fly, but like Tim the Enchanter who warned Arthur and his knights, the folks at Pugstorm AB are aware of the wiliness and deviousness of these furballs. In their top down title Radical Rabbit Stew, the world at large is shown the horrors that rabbitdom can perpetrate.

Tired of the bland food that she has been imbibing, the Rabbit Queen commands her minions to bring her more tasteful morsels. This ultimately means that the masters chefs of the Legendary Space Diner are conscripted to serve the lupine empress. You are a lowly cleaning boy, left to rescue the chefs. Armed with your wooden spoon you have the beat back the rabbit scourge.

Each level requires you to rid the area of ?rabbit ships? which oddly look like pots of stew. These ships will only lift off when there is a rabbit occupying it. You only fail when you lose all your health, and I actually found it odd that for a puzzle game that it had very little levels that could be failed if you accidentally kill too many rabbits (I recall only triggering that fail state once early in the game and otherwise most levels have generators that will repopulate the level with rabbits if they are killed). The rabbits will not go quietly in the night, in fact they will charge you on sight and will literally devour your player if they completely deplete your health! In fact enemy types which would not cause you to bat an eye in other titles, are quite fear inducing. I can?t count how many times I?ve sweated bullets after seeing bats patrolling in certain areas.

Your arsenal consists of a spoon which can concuss plenty of furballs, swinging it gives you the same sense of power like one would have if they were swinging Link?s Master Sword. Eventually you?ll get access to oddball upgrades which include a charged swing, the ability to drop bombs and even an extending arm. These upgrades add spice to the gameplay and there are collectible coins sprinkled throughout the game?s 60+ levels to encourage repeated play. The boss encounters in the game also switches things up, forcing you to fight for your life in order to free one of the master chefs and is a nice end cap to a block of levels.

Outside of the single player campaign there is a versus mode as well as a level builder. The level builder is pretty intuitive, however it?s greatest failing is the inability to share levels outside of handing your device over to your friend. Imagine creating a masterpiece of a level, but not being able to easily let other players try your handiwork almost makes you want to ignore the feature completely.

The game touts itself as a bite-size ‘pick-up & play’ action title and by all counts it absolutely delivers on that promise, however once you?ve done everything there?s no real reason to go back…yes the title does unlock a hardcore difficulty level which you must get through the game with only 1 heart, but the effort required will probably not reap a bountiful reward. Nonetheless, the title is worth a taste, and could absolutely be a comfort meal.

Sold-Out Software provided us with a Radical Rabbit Stew Switch code for review purposes.