Bugs Bunny: Rabbit Rescue

Film directing may not be the dream job of every youngster, but here at Pocket Gamer we were always aspiring critics - forever berating the imagined creations of our cuddly toys for their lack of narrative direction and cohesive structure.

Bugs Bunny lets you play the role of director in a number of characteristically violent cartoon sequences featuring several of Warner Bros's most loved characters, including Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam and Marvin the Martian.

Not exactly adopting a standard game blueprint, Bugs Bunny: Rabbit Rescue is a turn-based game where you decide which object Bugs should use. The scene unravels regardless though, so if a character is due to enter stage left at a certain point, bashing a door to pieces, that’ll happen whether you choose to use a frying pan or a pair of scissors that turn.

To get the scene playing as it should, you need to work out which is the right object to use at each point in time. As the title suggests, Bugs finds himself in a certain amount of peril in each scene, whether looking down the barrel of Fudd’s shotgun or Marvin the Martian’s laser pistol.

Keeping Bugs safe will normally involve either keeping whoever’s after our protagonist dazed and confused or whacking him with something or other.

Underneath the gloss, all there is to Bugs Bunny: Rabbit Rescue is finding the order you need to click on a few different objects. As such, the title offers virtually no re-playability and very limited longevity. There are five scenes to play through that get more complicated as you progress, but there’s probably less than an hour's gameplay here in the hands of a casual gamer.

However, the charm of the gloss shouldn’t be underestimated. The characters all look spot on, with some lovingly rendered animations that re-create the feel of the old-school cartoon they’re based on skilfully.

Trying to pre-empt the right objects to use is fun, too. Since each scene plays out much like a face-off from one of the cartoons, a bit of thought pays dividends. In one scene, for example, you have to set off a planet-destroying weapon to get Marvin the Martian in a panic so that he runs into a freezing ray, turning him into a block of ice.

The objects you have at your disposal will relate to different things needed to get these things happening, so you can work the sequences out to an extent, although the game is designed to get you playing through the each scene a few times before finding the perfect order.

The ‘set’ for each scene is larger than the phone’s screen, so the game also gives you a view mode so that you can scroll about and see what sort of objects are scattered around.

Bugs Bunny: Rabbit Rescue is a game that you can’t help but admire, even though it deserves to be criticised. It doesn’t last long and once you’ve found out the perfect solution for each of the five included scenes, there’s no real reason to re-visit.

However, it’s a far more interesting stab at the franchise than the generic platformer or action game that we’ve come to expect, offering a more involving experience for fans of these great characters.