Barry The Bunny Review (PS4/5): Build-A-Bunny
If he builds it, they will hop. Barry The Bunny, an indie platformer with loads of cute lil' bunnies, is out now on consoles. Here's a review, especially for you.
If you go into Barry the Bunny solely for a quick platinum, you’re really missing out. Sure, the standards to get all the trophies is as easy as switching your PS4/5 on, but you’d only be getting about two-thirds of the game.
A no-frills platform game, you play the titular Barry as he hops from stage to stage, building bridges for his bunny friends and lobbing a hammer into the path of some horrid, non-blue hue, hedgehogs or other wildlife that dares to get in his way.
The story is spelt out pretty quick as your adversary is the Overalls Gang, trading as Overalls Inc. They’re like family-friendly droogs from A Clockwork Orange, only instead of jumpsuits, they’re wearing overalls (except the big cheese), and they don’t ‘talking funny’ like their counterparts. For the first 25 levels, you’d be thinking they’re irrelevant until you have to outrun a boss in a Super Meat Boy like scenario, removing a bridge à la Bowser, then moving on to the next world.
Barry The Bunny Review
To say Barry the Bunny is easy is a fair assessment. For a good dozen or so levels, I got to the point of killing myself just to feel something. I’m being dramatic. I really like this game, and the trailer is a good reflection of what to expect; just cancel out your finger warmup and stretches beforehand as you won’t need it here.
The challenge comes from the objective of each stage: locate three logs then build a bridge for the baby bunnies to go home. There are 96 bunnies to save, but only 25 if you’re trophy hunting. Seriously, they’re counting on you. Building isn’t a complex task – it’s not even like a Lego master builder situation as all you do is stand next to the tiny gap between the bunny and their home, and the bridge will build automatically, then move on to the next stage. There’s no need to save the bunnies either, as you can just speed run through each stage to get to the end. But there’s no point in that.
About halfway through Barry the Bunny, you’ll have to make sacrifices by allowing yourself to be killed so that you can restart an area. There are collectable items – hammers for your attack, carrots for… I don’t know. Each time you die, they decrease, but I never got to zero. Anyway, items each time you die, but if you collect a log, you’ll keep it until you build the bridge.
Repeating Like Rabbits
In some cases, there will be platforms that drop after you stand on them or TNT that’ll blow up, but serve as a platform to reach a higher ledge. If they disappear and you still need to get to the top, you either have to kill yourself or walk off-screen to the next stage, then exit to the level select and repeat. Once again, the logs remain no matter how far you get as I missed a couple and went back to 100% it.
So Barry the Bunny is very family-friendly, and while it didn’t disappoint my youngest, I did note that my older daughter was cocking up a lot, so it might not be a complete walk in the park if you’re getting this for family. As an old git, I loved this. Something was relaxing about it, and even when lightUp push your buttons by introducing bats that charge at you, it still never gets frustrating enough to spoil your mood. I’m not one for chiptunes, and even though the score in Barry the Bunny is incredibly repetitive – the same loops until you beat a boss and move to the next ‘world’ – I couldn’t help but hum along as I am now to the rhythm of typing.
Within the context of the type of game – an indie platformer ported to console by Ratalaika Games – the gameplay was great, and I like the visuals – very similar to Mina and Michi. I appreciate it won’t be for everyone, and it does lack the challenge, but I’d go on record and say that I enjoyed Barry the Bunny more than I expected. If you want to stack up your trophies to show off to your mates (they can see which games, you know), then it’s a cheap and easy option to improve some imaginary cred. But see it through to the end, and don’t do it an injustice as it’s a lot of fun, even if the bosses are perhaps the easiest thing since making toast.