I mean, kind of.

If you have a very loose interpretation of what "shooting" isand sidescrolling, for that matter, this is as good a starting point as any.

I mean those are bullets. Right?

You control a character with free flying movement around the screen, dodging bullets and danger zones and other things with hurtboxes that your tinier hitbox is allergic to. The game plays out arcade-style: several stage encounters ending in a boss, rewards that somewhat depend on your performance, and shops between stages to stock up and upgrade your ship rabbit.

You might take a look and decide it reminds you a bit of TouhouDays since last comparison: 0, and it does share quite a few parallels! An all-girl cast, monster girls, your tiny hitbox, a problematic moon, lots of bullets... but because of how the encounters actually work, I wouldn't call it danmakutouhou-like beyond the aesthetic.

It's at least, some of those words.

If you have even a basic understandingYou have played FFXIV, WoW, GW2, etc. of what that means, this is as good a starting point as any.

That's me!

The game is multiplayer, and every fight is like a raid boss, pitting you and your party's ability to deal damage effectively against your ability to position safely and execute mechanics. Every class changes how you approach DPS, and every boss has sight-readable attacks that, once learned, become knowledge for how later encounters will build upon them.

Your character skills will remind you of many modern MMO's - a loadout with numerical potencies, cooldowns, buffs and debuffs, which can be logically prioritized so you are doing the most you can. It's a test of how well you can interpret and juggle skillful execution under pressure, though there is much more than simply mastering the base case.

Or procedural...? I don't remember.

If you have very lenient feelingsand if you don't, look, I didn't invent it. about the word "rogue", this is as good a starting point as any.

Every run starts fresh, and other than some unlocksClasses, Loot series, there isn't any gameplay "progression" outside of a run, and with skill you could even beat the final boss on your first ever try. However, the randomness in what upgrades and loot you can access in one go can drastically change how difficult this is, making your choices very important to your success!

But, some failure is pretty much expected

A single full run can take about 30 minutes, but the game is designed with replayability in mind. In fact, the story outright requires multiple solo playthroughs to see every cutscene and unravel the plot piece by piece, not to mention unlocking all the playable classes.

It's Cute.

If you like Cute this is as good a starting point as any.

Every playable character is, of course, a Rabbit! Every non-playable character is also some sort of animal (or creature)!

We're talking the kemonomimi variety, to be clear - but also... the animorphs kind.

Is that really the best way to describe this?

The art style is adorable as you can see, with unlockable accessories rewarded through gameplay achievement-style, and even the dialogue leans very into the fact that all these animal girls are just doing their best the only ways they know how. And that way, is often, trial by combatcutely!.

You are in for a warm fuzzy time, which definitely helps mitigate the fact that this game does not hold back when it comes to difficulty. But this too, maybe especiallyIt's gap moe, is cute.

In an astonishing number of ways, from a game design perspective, Rabbit & Steel is immaculate.

Let me preface this (well, post-preface) with the caveat that I am not a Lunar player just yet, and any high-end endgame will have a different set of design points that I can't necessarily speak on. That said, I have cleared Savage tiers in FFXIV with a static, which I think at least gives me some gamer score to speak on difficulty.

Rabbit & Steel is an indie game Goldilocks...I'm just realizing there are no bears, technically..

It's not too hard, but also not too easy.

It challenges, it punishes mistakes, and really tests the player's knowledge and skillful execution in a marathon that can wear them down. But it's also more forgiving than its contemporaries: even on Hard difficulty, you recover health between challenging sections, it never requires reflexes that you can't compensate with preparation, and even the randomized loot aspect is balanced to never brick your runnot the sole reason, anyway..

It's not too long, but not too short.

One average full run is just over 30 minutes, which I would say is the perfect size for a single sit-down session. It's enough to keep you engaged the whole time, but not so much you'd be discouraged to start. But as a roguelite, it's not just the loot variety and character choices, but the bosseseven the stage enemies have variants! that are all mechanically unique, meaning there's still much more to see and master even after a few clears.

Its setting is rich, but not an iceberg.

There is certainly a story, but it's only told in bits and pieces organically as you make further attempts. Bosses you've beaten have a few sentences to say the next time you come by, a small mystery is unraveled and deepened, but you're always left with at least a few lingering questions right up until the end. I feel like this hits a subtlety that so many can appreciate in limited storytelling, evidence of an established world that needs no more elaboration than the tiny slices you can see.

It is in so many ways just right. You can play it solo or with friends, ramped up difficulty or casual play, and come out of it satisfied, not worn down or wanting. It may be my own proclivities at play, but it never feels dull when I'm ready to start a new run. After all, even after a failure, the next run could be the one I get the ideal build, or finally master that boss pattern.

Now, does my willingness to try and fail indicate a well designed player feedback loop, or do I have brain problems? Who's to say. You might have the same kind.

An extremely important facet of game design is player satisfaction, and I can think of no better way that accomplishes this than endless combinations of risk and reward with the real potential of cracking the game wide open, should you figure it out.

Every class has an innate identity to it, revolving around some keyword mechanic or themeing that makes it initially easy to understand what works better or worse with it. This identity is enough to get you started, while encountering new effects and gearsets is enough to get you thinking. The game itself doesn't have persistent progression, but player knowledge itself becomes a tool that unlocks potential in each new run.

You start by understanding basic rotation efficiencies. Heavyblade's Dark Wave is only worth it if you charge your special and primary, or Assassin's Knife Juggle should only really be used to reset Shadowstep. Intuitive stuff baked into the identity of the class.

But then you realize that some item effects pop every time you become invulnerable, or you get an item that scales better with multiple hits, and slowly your strategy starts advancing in a new direction.

You can be on a completely different run and get an item that might be useless right now, but if you were on a different class, or had a different upgrade, it might have been totally game changing. Or you get a powerful item under conditions that you can't even meet yet, but if you can just get the right upgrades at the shop...!

The excitement about getting to try out each new idea and decision you've made on the next challenge keeps you coming back, because youme. are a loot goblin and love reading item effects and hearing the proc sfx!!

But actually just the music for this section, because I already called the art cute about 30 times prior.

I never find a good place to stick in comments about this. But the music is so very good. The composer, steel plus (はがね) has every track uploaded on Youtube, and it's of course also available through Steam. If you need another push, give one of these a listen!

IT'S SO CUTE. it's such a cute song, with cute vocals! You almost forget you are playing Hopscotch and Dodgeball and Tug of War at the same time, just like you might miss how deeply bitter the lyrics are.	Such a classic sounding battle theme that the saxophone solo just takes me out. Plays prominently if you get Churchmouse Streets as your first stage, and fits perfectly with the chaotic united front of Several Armed Mice.	An incredibly beautiful vocal track from the DLC stages that underscores the kind of tone a long-hidden mystery deserves.

The composition style is so recognizable across all the tracks, but the instrumentation and mood is so different between areas, especially Emerald Lakeside! In my opinion, this is a hallmark of truly great OST's - a wide variety that still carries a brand to it that you recognize as soon as you hear it. It's in that recognition that you get truly standout tracks that feel like everything has come together.

(These ones are more spoiler-heavy due to context!)

The amount of mode changes in this song!! The callback to the main theme!! The song breaks into reprisals of the melody so many times that the clean return of the violin in the B-part feels like an emotional climax!! I did not cry,	Despite sounding so spooky, there is just an attitude to this one that makes it feel like such a rush. You are a rabbit on a mission, headlong into danger, and not even problems will stop you - they mustn't - though they may try.	Cinema.