Impressions for The Night of the Rabbit:
The graphics: It's a Daedalic game. If you know that name, then you know exactly what to expect and I don't need to say more. If you don't, well, get to know it, but for now, know that it's synonymous with "beautiful detailed environments and good-looking stylized characters." If you like adventure games, but you don't like old-school pixel stuff for whatever reason, this would be your go-to publisher, and Night of the Rabbit is true to form.
The music, sounds, and voices: It's mostly folksy and rustic to complement the largely pastoral atmospheres, but I did also like the one almost cyberpunky sting given when one futuristic-type character makes a few appearances. It was a cool contrast. Everything has music that makes it feel right. The sounds are all rather nice, but there's a lot of reuse from game to game and it's all blending together now. The voices are once again excellent. There's only one annoying voice in the lot (that being the leprechaun, who's not only shrill, but seemingly louder than anyone else,) but for only one bad sounding character out of a few dozen, that's a great track record. You can notice the improvement in voice acting quality and direction from game to game. Better than Deponia and way better than the Whispered World. And speaking of those two games...
The story: Oh great, another Daedalic game. Deponia's main character gave us a selfish and thoroughly unlikeable ass. The Whispered World gave us a depressing sad sack with a whiny voice. So what do we get this time? It's...a young British boy? And...he's actually LIKEABLE?! What the hell? They've finally done it! A story about someone who you want to see succeed!
Jeremiah "Jerry" Hazelnut dreams of being a magician, until a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat grants his wish and leads him through a portal in the forest into a land of...um...wonders. Okay, so the beginning seems a bit lifted from popular children's literature. BUT! This special land contains talking frogs on bicycles, and mice and squirrels! Oh...okay, so maybe that's lifted from a different source of children's literature. So not a lot of points for originality, but it's still a charming adventure as you guide Jerry through various worlds, meeting characters chock full of personality, learning spells, and eventually defeating some creepy antagonists. It's mostly happy, but there were two characters that were more depressing than they had any right to be: a mouse father asking questions of his vegetative son, then saying how he believes in the boy strongly and pins his hopes for retirement on him. I'm not sure if it was meant to be funny, but it just hit me out of nowhere and I'm frowning at the screen. Apart from that, I really enjoyed the story. A few nice touches with callbacks to Deponia, the Whispered World, and in one bizarre scene, Mario Brothers.
The puzzles and length: I finished the game with all achievements in 15 hours. So it's a good full-length adventure, but there is some padding in longish cutscenes and a "Go Fish" minigame. To get all the achievements, you need to defeat 16 different characters in the game. And there's an element of luck to it, so you might need to play characters more than once if they get lucky. So if you want that perfect game status, I hope you like Go Fish. In addition, for achievements you have to collect various things hidden in the screens. Some are missable, but it's carried over from game to game, so if you missed something from Act 1, you can reload a save, get it, reload to an act 2 save and have it still count.
The actual puzzles within the game are not bad, but a few are esoteric, and yes, there's the dreaded timed puzzle. Damn it, coffee, why do you gotta go cold so fast? I know what to do, just let me do it! There are also a few puzzles that have to be done in a certain time frame (night vs. day) and while some give you an indication that you're doing the right thing in the wrong cycle, some don't. But overall, not too terribly bad.
The verdict: Best Daedalic game I've played, and one of the best adventure games period. If you recently got this game in a bundle, absolutely play it. If not, there's a Daedalic package sale on Steam right now: 5 games (3 of which I've played and declared good) for 25 bucks. I would call that worth it for those 3 games alone.