This week’s free online game asks the question, what if you had to play the standard run-and-jump video game without realtime visual feedback? Bored already? It’s actually more fun than you think. It’s more fun than I thought anyway. Does it help that this games title is Rabbit Wants Cake. Cute, right?
Cute title and soundtrack aside, the game is kinda meta. So, it’s no surprise that the developer of this game, John Cooney, was included in my previous meta-game roundup. Rabbit Wants Cake doesn’t get bogged down in theory at the sake of gameplay though.
The rules are simple. You’re a rabbit. You want cake. There are obstacles between you and said cake. Running and jumping are necessary. The problem is you must record your moves and then play them back after the fact to see if you’re successful. In other words, you’ll have to guess when to run left or right or jump. If you fail, you can obviously try again. Hopefully you’ve learned something from your failures. At the top of the screen is a cheat sheet that shows you when you ran and jumped that will help you re-time your next attempt.
It’s like playing level 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. by memory … with your eyes closed. Luckily, if you’ve set the difficulty to “easy” you can edit the length and timing of your jumps without having to re-record the whole level again. By clicking and dragging the visual representations of your movements on the cheat sheet, you can help the rabbit meet the cake with fewer attempts. The “difficult” setting doesn’t grant you this tool. I never even tried it.
If you’re not up for a bit of trial and error, stop reading now and get back to work. Otherwise, click here to play Rabbit Wants Cake.
Enjoy.
This article appears in October 23 • 2009.
