''Rusty Rabbit'' is a

metroidvania Metroidvania is a sub-genre of action-adventure games and/or platformers focused on Nonlinear gameplay, nonlinear exploration and guided progression with a need to acquire key items to enter certain areas. The term is a blend word, partial blend ...

action Action may refer to: * Action (philosophy), something which is done by a person * Action principles the heart of fundamental physics * Action (narrative), a literary mode * Action fiction, a type of genre fiction * Action game, a genre of video gam ...

platforming video game developed by

Nitroplus Nitroplus Co., Ltd., currently styled as NITRO PLUS, formerly stylized as nitro+, and formerly known as "OKStyle", is a Japanese visual novel video game developer that has developed a number of visual novels, including eroge. They have also coll ...

and published by

NetEase NetEase, Inc. () is a Chinese Internet technology company founded by Ding Lei in June 1997. It provides online services with content, community, communications, and commerce. The company develops and operates online PC and mobile games, adverti ...

. It was released on April 17, 2025, for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

PlayStation 5 The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North ...

and

Nintendo Switch The is a video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. Released in the middle of the Eighth generation of video game consoles, eighth generation of home consoles, the Switch succeeded the ...

Synopsis

The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans have long abandoned Earth, leaving it to rabbits, who have developed a civilization where the books of ''

Peter Rabbit Peter Rabbit is a fictional animal character in various children's stories by English author Beatrix Potter. A mischievous, adventurous young rabbit who wears a blue jacket, he first appeared in ''The Tale of Peter Rabbit'' in 1902, and subseq ...

'' are seen as holy. The game follows rabbit Benjamin "Rusty" Stamp (voiced by

Takaya Kuroda is a Japanese actor and voice actor from Tokyo, Japan. He is affiliated with Axlone, and was formerly with Mausu Promotion and 81 Produce. He is best known for his bass voice, which has usually seen him cast in villainous roles such as the vo ...

in Japanese and Yong Yea in English), who sets on a journey to save his daughter in Smokestack Mountain.

Gameplay

''Rusty Rabbit'' is a 2.5D

Metroidvania Metroidvania is a sub-genre of action-adventure games and/or platformers focused on Nonlinear gameplay, nonlinear exploration and guided progression with a need to acquire key items to enter certain areas. The term is a blend word, partial blend ...

. While Stamp's only weapon is a drill at first, he discovers new ones as the game progresses. His abilities can be upgraded by collecting junk and bringing it to his village. In addition to the story dungeons, the game also has optional

procedurally generated In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated content and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. I ...

dungeons.

Development and release

The game was written by

Gen Urobuchi is a Japanese novelist, visual novel writer and anime screenwriter. He is known for being the co-creator of the highly acclaimed and commercially successful anime series '' Puella Magi Madoka Magica'', which earned him the Tokyo Anime Award for ...

and produced by Yuichiro Saito. Urobuchi was inspired by a picture on

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

of a

Sylvanian Families (known as ''Calico Critters'' in the US) is a line of collectible anthropomorphic animal Action figure, figurines made of flocked plastic. They were created by the Japanese gaming company Epoch (company), Epoch in 1985 and distributed worldwide ...

doll in a mecha. He had developed the game as a passion project during the

COVID-19 lockdown During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of non-pharmaceutical interventions, particularly lockdowns (encompassing stay-at-home orders, curfews, quarantines, and similar societal restrictions), were implemented in numero ...

and later fleshed it out as a full game. The game was developed by

and uses the

Unreal Engine Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter video game '' Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of ...

. A teaser trailer was shown in the 2023

Tokyo Game Show , commonly known as TGS, is a video game trade fair and convention held annually in September in the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba, Japan. It is presented by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) and Nikkei Business Publication ...

. In June 2024, NetEase originally announced for a September 24 launch on Windows and PlayStation 5. However, in late August the same year, the game was delayed to 2025 to "provide the best possible release" and that the addition of a Switch port was also in the works. In January 2025, the companies revealed that the game would be released on April 17. However, the voiceovers will only be in Japanese upon release, whilst the English voiceover option will be released two weeks later on May 1.

Reception

Both the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch versions of ''Rusty Rabbit'' received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to the

review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

website

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. In Japan, four critics from ''

Famitsu , formerly , is a line of Japanese Video game journalism, video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly f ...

'' gave the game a total score of 33 out of 40.

References

External links

* * {{Gen Urobuchi , state=autocollapse 2025 video games Metroidvania games NetEase games Nintendo Switch games Nitroplus PlayStation 5 games Post-apocalyptic video games Side-scrolling video games Single-player video games Unreal Engine games Video games about animals Video games about mecha Video games about missing people Video games about rabbits and hares Video games developed in Japan Video games with 2.5D graphics Video games using procedural generation Windows games