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Genre: Game - Arcade/Puzzle

Developer: Phelios, Inc.

Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.2, 128MB RAM, 16MB OpenGL graphics acceleration

Price: $5.00

Demo: 5MB .zip

It's very rare when I can sum up all of my thoughts on a game simply by using the company's promotional copy. But when Phelios says their game Bunny Bunny is a "cute, teeny-tiny puzzle game in the style of retro Japanese brain teasers," I find there's really nothing more I can add. So, instead, I'll simply expand.

Cute. Yes, I suppose, if Hello Kitty's your thing. The little people you control look like kids dressed in a bear and bunny costume made specifically for them by their grandmother. The bright colors pulse and flicker, and the background flows smoothly behind the board in a manner that's thankfully not too distracting.

Teeny-tiny. Certainly. The game plays in a a 480 x 640 window, but the board itself is a bit smaller, as you can see in the screen captures. Your characters are tiny, and so are their voices. Considering the point of the game, which is tiny in its own right, the graphics don't really need to be any larger. In fact, this is the only game I've ever played where I thought I'd just as much enjoy playing it on my cell phone if I were ever inclined to play a game on my cell phone...or if I owned a cell phone.

Puzzle game in the style of retro Japanese brain teasers. My experience with retro Japanese brain teasers is pretty small, I guess, but I do think of Chu Chu Rocket when playing this. I never played the Dreamcast or GameBoy version, but there was an online version I tinkered around with for a while. That's pretty much what I've done with Bunny Bunny; tinkered around with it. The point, you see, is to change the pink and brown tiles to blue by pushing your frozen friend onto the proper tile (the bunny gets pushed onto a pink tile, the bear gets pushed onto brown). That's it. That's the whole point. Of course, there are various obstacles along the way, the board layouts and designs change to require new strategies (they aren't all square like the two captured here), and there's the obligatory time limit. If you don't change everything in time, you lose a life. Lose three lives, and the game ends.

Once the bunny pushes the frozen bear onto the proper tile, the bunny suddenly becomes frozen and the bear must push him onto his tile. This is all very simple at first, of course, but it gets freakishly tough after a while. It's actually quite maddening, as you look at this game and think it's designed for a 7-year-old girl, and yet it's kicking your butt. Conveyor belts are moving you where you don't want to be, blocks are getting in the way, and pretty soon, something starts shooting at you!

I think Bunny Bunny would be better if it were free. In fact, it is free if you're happy playing the online Flash version. Still, $5.00 is certainly a fair price to ask for the ability to play when you don't have an internet connection. I figure one of two things will happen if you get this game; you'll either play it for a few days and never touch it again (which, when you think about it, is a teeny-tiny eventuality of pretty-much every game you've ever played), or you'll become hyper-addicted to it and start dressing up in little bunny or bear costumes and yelling out "Push me!" to complete strangers on the train. Either way, you will have gotten your five dollars' worth.

Download the free demo.