A mysterious young woman. A descent into a monstrous mess. Brutally difficult roguelike gameplay. Rabbit Hole has all of these things, along with a few extra secrets to discover on the side.
Primarily developed by ShortCake_Cafe, Rabbit Hole is a free-to-play side-scrolling action game with ample roguelike elements. You play as one of several different characters — namely Disc, the latest addition to the titular rabbit hole — as you scramble through endless hallways, blast creatures of all shapes and sizes, and piece together the mysteries surrounding the strange world you now reside in. But is this free-to-play roguelike worth playing? And better yet, is it worth seeing through to the end?
Down the Rabbit Hole
“A space between the dream and the real for those who have lost heart.”
Starting out, you’re introduced to the world of Rabbit Hole through Disc, a person who is inexplicably transported to a bizarre reality after suddenly being attacked on a crowded train. After greeting an eccentric occupant of the Rabbit Hole, who explains that Disc has lost her “heart,” Disc is left to descend further into the strange place. Will she find her heart? Will she ultimately escape? And what’ll happen to the colorful cast of characters she manages to accrue along the way?
The game features a simple but effective control scheme. You’ll run from left to right, crouch, jump, shoot weapons, activate a dedicated melee attack, and use a dodge-roll to avoid specific attacks. It’s about on the same level as what you’ll find in similar games, albeit without a price tag. However, there are some quirks to get used to. Melee attacks move your character slightly forward, meaning you can take contact damage if you’re not careful with your positioning. Your dodge spans nearly the entire length of a room, meaning you may run into another enemy as you recover from its lengthy animation. You won’t automatically reload your gun if you run out of ammo either, making semi-automatic weapons a bit easier to use in the heat of the moment.
Thankfully, the action on-screen looks exceptional, as Rabbit Hole is genuinely gorgeous to look at. A pleasing color palette accompanies adorable character and enemy designs, and while the game’s theming is all over the place in terms of aesthetics, it works well in its favor. It really conveys this otherworldly feeling that every floor you descend into is something wholly different and unexpected. It gives each floor its own memorable atmosphere. The same can be said for the variety of enemies you’ll encounter, which can drop coins for future use.
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They’re cute, as varied as possible given the simplistic level design, and they demand your utmost attention. Every point of damage you take is incredibly dangerous, meaning that you’ll have to treat even the weakest of monsters with the same level of care as each floor’s lengthy boss fight. You’ll learn quickly how to best balance your melee attacks with your guns, especially if you’re able to secure damage upgrades at the game’s dedicated shops.
Speaking of which, the shops . . . and other rooms. Not every room is full of enemies, as you’ll find shops to spend your hard-earned coins on. Damage upgrades, health refills, health bar extensions, and additional guns can all be found in traditional stores, whereas other rooms provide other services. For instance, one allows you to sacrifice a portion of your health in exchange for an item. Another allows you to feed your gun to a strange creature in exchange for a hefty lump sum of coins. Other rooms feature small challenges for optional rewards, including a target shooting minigame and a miniature slot machine. The risk versus reward may be a little out of wack for some of these rooms, but we’ll get into that later.
Something also worth bringing up is just how much content is available in Rabbit Hole, even if you’ll have to overcome mountains to find it. Unlockable characters, treasure troves of lore, and plenty of weapons to discover make up an incredible package without costing you a single dime. There’s even an incentive to collect as many bits of lore as you can, seeing as how there’s a mysteriously locked door tied to them. It’s nothing short of impressive. To really see all of it, however, you’re going to struggle.
Cuteness and Cruelty
Rabbit Hole is primarily two things: short and difficult. It’s an incredibly easy game to get into, yet it features a surprisingly exponential level of difficulty that’ll quickly test your reflexes (and luck).
Like a lot of roguelikes, the success of a run in Rabbit Hole is somewhat determined by your luck. However, unlike other roguelikes that regularly feature some level of gradual power creep or outright broken item combinations, the room for error in Rabbit Hole is outright microscopic. Money is hard to come by, health is a precious commodity (even more so than in similar games), and your choice of weapon isn’t so much one of preference but one of necessity. Your choices for limited upgrades will mainly go to those that focus on dealing damage and increasing your overall health, with little if any, reason to pick anything else.
The game’s difficulty is arguably the biggest deciding factor. You really can’t afford to make too many mistakes. Health drops are scarce enough that you may not even find any during a single run. Damage upgrades are crucial for outlasting the large health pools found with every boss. Even your choice of weapon plays a key role here, as some are outright objectively better than most other options.
Balancing is questionable. Plenty of weapons are available, but their individual gimmicks (as fun and unique as they are) pale in comparison to your more practical options. A television that shoots miniature versions of yourself that hop around is pretty cool. A weapon that sacrifices your health for incredible damage is really interesting. However, if you do go with something less conventional over, say, a revolver or shotgun-type weapon, you’re intentionally handicapping yourself.
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You’ll often see this repeated throughout a few different Steam reviews, but the game’s various rooms don’t really offer much variety, either. They’re all of a single size, varied only by their individual enemy placements and occasional platforms. While this is fine for what the game is and allows you to gradually breeze past its first few challenges, it’s still worth mentioning for those who want something a little more creative.
The game’s performance deserves a mention as well. Not necessarily in a negative way, mind you, as it’s actually pretty impressive that Rabbit Hole runs as smoothly as it does. Per an announcement by ShortCake_Cafe on Steam, the game was wholly made in Scratch — as in, the kid-friendly programming language meant to teach basic concepts and terminology for a variety of programming languages. It’s legitimately shocking to see something this high quality, both aesthetically and mechanically, made with such a tool. The downside is that the game occasionally suffers because of this: occasional “hitching” and frame drops, particularly after the first zone, really put a damper on dangerous combat scenarios. Switching to another platform the game is hosted on may remedy this, thankfully. The inability to pause the game during any form of combat is also a baffling decision likely tied to Scratch, as well.
Is Rabbit Hole Worth Playing?
It’s easy to harp on Rabbit Hole‘s faults, but when you really consider what’s going on underneath the hood, it’s a lot easier to see the positives. It begs the question, then: Is Rabbit Hole still worth playing? Sure. Not having a price tag certainly helps. It’s also incredibly moddable, as its source code can be found on ShortCake_Cafe’s Github page.
Due to Rabbit Hole‘s unique engine, it’s available on a handful of different platforms. On top of being fully playable on Steam, it’s also available to play within your web browser on both itch.io and Newgrounds. The game’s itch.io page also includes a separate offline downloader.
There’s clearly a lot of effort placed into the game’s numerous art assets, overall visual design, and serviceable soundtrack. While Rabbit Hole‘s balancing could potentially use some more tweaking, it’s a fantastic example of what ShortCake_Cafe is capable of as a developer. Frankly, we’re excited to see what they’ll have in store in the future.
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