Lapin

A bit wet behind the (bunny) ears

Lapin first landed on Game Pass in early access last winter, at which point I decided I’d wait for its full release and promptly forgot about it. It was only when it was announced as part of the latest crop of games to leave the service this November when I was reminded of its existence and, just like Prodeus, I was determined to finish it before it got the axe from the Game Pass executioner. 

If you still remember your GCSE French, you won’t be surprised that you play as a rabbit in this precision platformer. Lapin’s cutesy art style, gentle music and Ghibli-esque animation belie the challenging nature of the gameplay, which isn’t for the faint hearted. Five minutes into playing Lapin, it’s obvious that Celeste had a massive influence on Korean developer Studio Doodal but those are some big shoes to fill considering Celeste is one of, if not the best platformer of the modern era. I’d argue it’s the latter since Celeste was my favourite game that came out in 2018 and no platformer has yet been able to top it. And after finishing Lapin, that is still the case. Whilst Lapin borrows some ideas and mechanics from Celeste, it doesn’t do it with nearly as much finesse or polish and the gameplay oscillates between flashes of platforming brilliance and periods of immense frustration. 

The gameplay is what you’d expect from a precision platformer that mimics the likes of Celeste and Super Meat Boy. You’re performing precise jumps whilst avoiding pitfalls, spikes and other obstacles and, in the process, racking up countless deaths whilst rinsing and repeating each single-screen level until you master each sequence. The game adds new platforming mechanics in each of its six chapters to keep things fresh and interesting, although a lot of these are borrowed from Celeste. For example, there’s the similar bubble mechanic that gives you an extra mid-air jump/dash; a current mechanic that sweeps your character along like the Space Blocks in Celeste; and there are sequences that have you running from a weasel that chases you in the same way Badeline does in Celeste.

Lapin occasionally brings a few of its own ideas to the table such as raising and lowering water levels and using balloons as trampolines and perhaps Lapin should have relied more on its own ideas since its semblance to Celeste only invites comparison to the game it is aping. And in that sense, Lapin ends up feeling somewhat underwhelming as an overall package. Don’t get me wrong, there is some excellent level design on show in Lapin and there are many occasions where you can’t help but be transported into a flow state, enjoying the challenging but satisfying platforming. However, there are too many occasions where you’re wrenched out of this rhythm, either by inconsistent gameplay, difficulty spikes or over-expositional dialogue.  

At times Lapin asks of the player a level of precision that the game can’t keep up with. Your character’s hit boxes seem ill-defined and the collision detection with certain obstacles is temperamental at best. Even when I felt that my movements and inputs remained consistent run-to-run, the game would still produce inconsistent results. The worst instance of this was during a late game auto-scrolling sequence on the game’s critical path that resembles the chase set pieces in the Ori games such as the Giant Sandworm in Ori and the Will of the Wisps and the Ginso Tree in Ori and the Blind Forest. The difference is that these sequences are paced and timed impeccably, whereas in the case of Lapin, you’re given little time to react on the fly, encounter cheap deaths and are at the behest of the game’s erratic determination of whether your player character is still within the bounds of the game’s auto-scroll limit. To be fair, the majority of the levels in Lapin don’t encounter these issues but when the game does ask for this degree of precision, often in optional discoverable levels where you find the game’s Strawberry Seed collectibles, the lack of consistency and polish is glaring. Lapin’s saving grace is that the respawn upon death is instant (as should be the case with any precision platformer worth its salt) and you can switch to easy mode on the fly with no penalty, save for missing out on some of the game’s achievements*. 

When it’s not the inconsistent platforming grinding things to a halt, it’s sections of tedious story and dialogue that you’re unable to skip through. The last thing I want to do after completing white-knuckle, rewarding platforming sections is to continue mashing the A button for another five minutes to get through Lapin’s cutscenes and story sections. The game started off with some intrigue; you play as a rabbit named Liebe who lives with a small community of four other bunnies who have had to flee their burrow due to the encroachment of human construction. I wondered if there was going to be some interesting Watership Down / Fern Gully-like commentary on deforestation, conservationism and environmentalism but too many instances of overstuffed, superfluous dialogue meant I never bothered to find out.

There also didn’t seem to be many stakes or peril to the narrative; it’s more akin to a Saturday morning cartoon (although cartoons back in the day did tend to have dark story lines - The Animals of Farthing Wood still haunts me to this day) with interpersonal conflict and politics amongst the rabbits that all melt away in service of the game’s strangely placed “Friendship Level” mechanic. Engaging in extra dialogue trees allows you to gain affection with your cohort but I struggle to see why you would do this given there doesn’t seem to be any romance options in the game. I’m not partial to romance options in games, I couldn’t care less most of the time, but it seems like a missed opportunity in this case given all the characters are rabbits (and we all know what rabbits like to do) and there should be some reward for sitting through the game’s excruciatingly slow dialogue. Fortunately this, as well as a lot of other dialogue and writing in the game is avoidable; I just wish that was the case for all of it. Again, this seems like Lapin is taking direct influence from Celeste, which has an exceptional story about mental health and identity, but Celeste is better paced and knows when to pick and choose its moments for story without interfering with the flow of its gameplay.   

Maybe comparing Lapin to one of the greatest platformers of all time is unfair. But when you borrow so much, you’re inevitably inviting that level of comparison and therefore criticism when your game falls short in several areas. Whilst this article may read as quite scathing, I actually enjoyed most of the eight-hour experience. The movement of the character itself feels great and there are some excellently designed levels. It’s just that the devil is in the details and it’s that slight lack of fine tuning and polish that leads moments of brilliance to be overshadowed by gameplay inconsistencies and a slog of a story. I’m conflicted but I can’t wholly recommend Lapin, especially when there are many more precision platformers on the market that provide a more polished and consistent experience…like Celeste - just go and play Celeste. 

*I was quite surprised by the low level of completion of the achievements on Xbox. Every achievement in this game is a rare one i.e. less than 10% of players have earned it. Even the achievement for completing the five-minute prologue only has a completion rate of 7%. In fact, most of the achievements in Lapin have a completion rate of less than 1%. I know early access games don’t have achievements so maybe most people played this before achievements were patched into the game. Or perhaps it’s because this game does the cardinal sun of having EVEN GAMERSCORE POINTS!! Achievement hunters are extremely anal creatures that must have a Gamerscore that is divisible by 5 or 10 - I gave up on that years ago.