Can a puzzle game be a button masher? Fly Away Rabbit could certainly pass for one at times. Much like a round of Street Fighter, it is sometimes possible to pass a level of Fly Away Rabbit purely through luck and the rapid input of commands. The game isn’t always a button masher, however; and when it escapes this simplicity it can be a fun way to spend some time.
Not many games involve bunnies, balloons and flying blocks filled with helium, so the creators of Fly Away Rabbit get some immediate credit for creativity. When presented with these elements, one may not be able to discern exactly what the game is about, but rest assured the game is equally absurd as its elements. Of course, absurdity can be a redeeming quality and in the case of Fly Away Rabbit it is. The bizarre setting is home to what can at times be an interesting puzzle game. The player’s objective is to remove blocks that separate the bunny and his balloon from the cloud against which everything is resting. In a sort of inverse tetris, one removes each block which creates a physical reaction amongst the blocks that are left and the balloon. By removing the right blocks, a player can set up a chain reaction that will bring the balloon to rest against the cloud, and if the balloon rests long enough the level is complete. Some levels can be completed with one or two judicious removals, and the fact that there is no time constraint means that waiting to see how things play out is often key to solving a scenario.
The game isn’t always a challenging puzzler, and it can frequently devolve into a trial and error nightmare. Perhaps my brain just can’t cut it, but some levels seemed as if the only solution was the rapid elimination of as many blocks as possible. This was often the case when the blocks that will pop the balloon on contact were present, one level featured a high amount of these and I found that the only route to success for me was to tap away like a madman. Now, not all levels are this frustrating or devoid of intellect, but enough of the levels boiled down to a block-popping fest to where it can grate on your patience. Sometimes it is possible to both win and lose a level, this happens when the balloon flies away after the resting period has expired. While this didn’t happen all that often, it is an annoyance that the game could certainly stand to lose. Who likes to be told they are a winner, only to have their shiny gold medal torn from their neck the second after their victory is declared?
Fly Away Rabbit isn’t exactly the longest game as I played through the whole thing in one sitting while watching the television. For those who care, it took me a little over an hour. On the one hand, the game sucked me in enough to play through it all at once, but on the other hand I was able to beat an entire puzzle game while also watching a television show. Fly Away Rabbit is not always challenging, and not always in the right way because the levels that feel the most difficult are the aforementioned frustrating ones.
Even with the levels that you can or must simply use brute force to complete, Fly Away Rabbit can be an entertaining little puzzler; just don’t expect it to last all that long as the replay value is pretty low. For the $.99 that the developer is asking, the game is worth it for the levels that are truly well crafted mind-benders.
Final Score:
Fly Away Rabbit is available in the App Store for 99 cents
This game was reviewed on a 2nd gen device.
Level complete/Level failed
