Rocket Bunnies

There's something inherently funny about watching animals in space. How do they pilot? What kind of suit are they wearing?

And, most importantly, why are they floating around in space in the first place?

Rocket Bunnies doesn't attempt to answer these questions, and instead offers a funny arcade puzzler that's more addictive than it looks.

The aforementioned animal here is a space-trained bunny. After hearing a distress call, he hops in his convertible spaceship and flies out to save his bunny brethren, who are stranded on planets across the universe.

The pilot saves his friends by orbiting around a planet and picking them up by the ears. In Rocket Bunnies, the large bunny heads stick out of the planet like they were planted for harvest.

Aside from steering the pilot, you also have to keep the ship moving. A gas-free (eco-friendly?) ride, the launcher must use centrifugal force from the planets to move forward.

Spin around a planet and its gravitational pull can shoot you on to the next one. Time it right and the pilot will get an extra speed boost. Tap the pilot and it will fly in the opposite direction – something that comes in handy when the enemies start appearing.

The main challenge in Rocket Bunnies isn’t time (though you do get points for clearing stages early) but the plethora of obstacles looking to take the pilot out. They begin static, like space mines and burning stars, but shortly become aggressive enemies, like planet-hopping spiders and electric beams.

You have to collect every bunny in each level, so Rocket Bunnies is less about tearing through a level and more about strategising when to hop to the next planet. The learning curve is pretty smooth, to the point where the difficulty sneaks up on you.

One frustration we found was that sometimes the planet we needed to hop to was just out of view – and that often meant getting attacked by an enemy we would have otherwise avoided. It would be nice to have some camera control, the better to strategise.

Rocket Bunnies's controls are tight and the animation is smooth, no matter how nutty things get. And they do get nutty: a few levels in and you're literally grazing Sun-sized stars while being chased by an evil arachnid.

There are dozens of levels that will give you at least a few hours of play, and Chillingo already has new universes planned for future updates. It’s unclear if the updates will be free.

Rocket Bunnies has the potential to be a big hit. Nice graphics, smooth difficulty curve, and tons of levels make it one of the better action puzzlers on the iPhone and iPad.

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