Ever wanted to reincarnate into the most powerful being ?

Dread The Rabbit is just about that... except that power is not given, it is earned !

You were a very powerful being but got defeated and reincarnate into a rabbit. Your mission: reconquer your kingdom and throne !

Dread The Rabbit is a fast paced roguelike. Each level is a randomized map containing enemies, chests, altars and some mysterious relics. Every turn, you can move or attack by pressing the arrow keys or use a relic or interact with an altar or open a chest. Once you perform your action, all enemies act. This game elegantly combines tactical decisions with a fast game-play. Apart from altar and chest interactions, every action takes only a single key press. I really like the attack feature where pressing the direction key of an adjacent enemy makes you attack. In the past, I've implemented it in one of my games but Dread The Rabbit brings a major improvement: the immediate feedback via enemy retaliation.

The relic system is a wonderful strategy gem ! When you collect one, you don't know it's power. It's randomize at the start of every new game. You need to use the relic to reveal it's power or spend precious boons to identify them. When using an unidentified relic, there is always the risk it might be useless in your current situation. For example if the relic happens to be a bomb, and you don't stand next to some enemies, the blast radius won't hurt them. On the other hand if you stand next to some enemies, thinking the relic is a bomb, and it actually isn't, you will for example summon healing carrots but you'll give the enemies a free hit on you. On top of that, you need to carefully manage the relics you carry. There are 5 types of relics but you can only carry up to 4 of them. And you never know when the next map requires the lighting or bomb to reach its best treasures. This system generates a lot of interesting tactical choices. A small inconvenience for first-timers comes from the fact that if you've identified 4 out of the 5 relics, the last one isn't automatically revealed. For all players, when we've identify some relics but don't carry one of that type, the only way to know the power of a relic on the map is to look into the menu. Looking into the menu kills the intended fast pace. It would be nice to see the list of identified relics in the UI.

On top of relics, you have to carefully manage your health, weapon durability and collect the key on each map to advance to the next one. Killing all enemies in a map gives you a valuable boon you can spend for healing, HP boost, weapon repair, relic purchase or identification. But, as a hint suggests, it's sometimes best to grab the key and run to the next map instead of killing every enemy. Another interesting "short-term victory vs long-term boost" choice.

All enemies have their specific particularities and they very well fits the theme of the area you meet them in. Knowing what the enemy can do, how much HP they have and how much damage they inflict, gives an edge to persevering players. Showing enemy reaming HP would help first-timers and tactic adepts. The game takes about 1 hour to complete when you know which enemies need to be dealt with first.

The graphics have a really nice retro vibe to them and subtle tiles variations hint to HP boost locations. The animations are very well polished and look amazing.

Dread The Rabbit is a RM2k3 game without plugin thus it runs very smoothly in EasyRPG. This great compatibility makes it runs on every modern platform (I played it on Linux). It also has a very small file size which is always a plus.