Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit opens with a problem no other game in 2012 had the nerve to build a whole campaign around. Ash, a skeletal rabbit and the prince of Hell, has inherited the throne from his father. Then a photographer catches him playing with a rubber duck in the bathtub. The photo goes out. Ash responds by vowing to kill the 100 monsters who saw it.
That is the entire premise, and Arkedo Studio plays it straight. Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit shipped in 2012 for PlayStation 3 through PlayStation Network, Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade, and PC on Microsoft Windows. Sega published it. The ESRB rated it Teen.
Our verdict: 7.4 out of 10.
Trailer, via SEGA.
Ash and the Rubber Duck
The joke is not the game. The joke is the engine. Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit uses a premise built on embarrassment to justify a side-scrolling platformer with twin-stick shooter combat, and it works more often than it should.
Ash does not walk much. He rides a large circular-saw blade jetpack that serves as both his main weapon and his main mode of transportation. The blade cuts through the environment. The jetpack keeps him moving. A variety of projectile weapons handle the rest.
The 100 named monsters are the spine of the thing. Each one is individually named. Each one requires a quick mini-game to finish off, and each mini-game unlocks a death animation unique to that monster. Fail the mini-game and Ash takes damage while the monster regains some life.
That is a real risk, and it is the kind of small design decision that separates Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit from the platformers it sits beside. The game asks the player to earn every kill twice.
Seven Levels and a Hundred Doors
Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit runs on seven levels separated by doors. Killing monsters unlocks more doors to new areas. The structure is simple and it keeps the player pointed forward.
The zones shift visual style hard. The game moves through haunted caves, science labs, casinos and spaceships full of talking animals. That is what the game does. Arkedo never settles on one look, which is either the smartest thing about Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit or the most exhausting, depending on how much the player wants a coherent world.
Levels are also filled with traps and weaker, unnamed monsters that reappear each time the player re-enters that level. That detail matters. It means the levels are not one-and-done. Re-entering a zone brings the unnamed enemies back, and the player has to deal with them again on the way to whatever named monster is still alive.
Nestor the Octopus
Ash is not alone. His butler, Nestor, is a top hat-wearing octopus who assists him in the quest. Nestor is the game’s second-best idea. A skeletal rabbit prince with a butler in a top hat is a pairing that knows exactly what it is.
The tone is comedy, and the themes are action and comedy. The game is listed across genres — platform, puzzle, strategy, quiz/trivia, adventure, arcade — which is a sign of how much Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit throws at the wall. The perspective is side view. The mode is single player.
Single player is the right call here. The twin-stick controls would have been a nightmare to share, and the game’s rhythm depends on the player learning the saw blade and the jetpack without a second person in the room.
The Control Scheme Problem
The published critical score is 7.4/10, an IGDB critic aggregate across 6 outlets. That number is fair, and it lands where it lands for one reason above all others: the control scheme.
Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit was praised for its visuals. It was widely criticized for its controls. Both things are true at once, and they are not in tension. The art is the reason to look at the game. The controls are the reason to put it down.
Twin-stick shooter controls mean movement is controlled by one thumbstick or set of keys, and firing weapons is controlled by the other thumbstick or another set of keys. On paper that is standard. In practice, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit asks the player to jump around platforms, cut through the environment with the saw blade, fire projectile weapons, and manage a jetpack, often at the same time.
That is a lot of inputs for a side-scrolling platformer, and the game does not always make them agree with each other. The saw blade is both a weapon and a vehicle. When the same input has to serve two jobs, the player feels it.
The mini-games compound the problem. Every one of the 100 monsters ends with a quick mini-game, and a failed mini-game costs Ash health while the monster heals. When the controls are already fighting the player, a mini-game that punishes a mistake is a hard sell.
A Schedule of What Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit Asks
Here is the running order the game puts in front of the player, from the premise to the finish.
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Opening | Ash inherits the throne of Hell from his father |
| Inciting incident | A photographer captures Ash playing with a rubber duck in the bathtub |
| The vow | Ash sets out to kill the 100 monsters who saw the photo |
| Traversal | Ash rides a circular-saw blade jetpack through seven levels |
| Combat | Projectile weapons and the saw blade handle the fighting |
| Finisher | A quick mini-game unlocks a unique death animation per monster |
| Failure state | Ash takes damage and the monster regains some life |
| Support | Nestor, a top hat-wearing octopus, assists Ash |
| Zones | Haunted caves, science labs, casinos, spaceships full of talking animals |
| Unlock | Killing monsters opens more doors to new areas |
That table is the whole game in ten lines, and it shows why Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit is more interesting than its score suggests. The structure is generous. The variety is real. The failure state is honest.
What the 7.4 Actually Measures
A 7.4/10 from an aggregate of 6 outlets is not a rave and it is not a dismissal. It is the score of a game that did something no one else did and did not fully solve the problem it created.
The visuals earned their praise. The zones move from haunted caves to science labs to casinos to spaceships full of talking animals, and each one commits to its own look. Arkedo built a world where a skeletal rabbit prince can ride a buzz-saw through a casino and it does not feel out of place.
The controls earned their criticism. Twin-stick shooting in a side-scrolling platformer is a marriage that needs more care than Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit gives it. The saw blade is the game’s best idea and its biggest liability, because it has to be a weapon, a vehicle and a tool all at once.
The 100 named monsters are the part worth defending. Individually named enemies with unique death animations and a mini-game gate is a lot of authored content for a 2012 downloadable platformer. Most games in this space would have shipped a couple dozen monsters and a boss rush. Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit shipped 100 and made each one a small event.
After a photographer takes a picture of Ash playing with a rubber duck in the bathtub, Ash sets out to kill the 100 monsters that have seen the photo, to restore his image.
That line is the game’s whole thesis, and it is a good one. Shame as a motivator is funnier and more specific than revenge, and it gives Ash a reason to be petty in a way that reads as character rather than plot mechanics.
Where Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit falls short is in the moment-to-moment feel. A platformer lives and dies on whether the player wants to keep moving, and this one makes moving a negotiation. The jetpack, the saw blade, the projectile weapons and the mini-games all want attention, and the game does not always decide which one should win.
Where It Sits in 2012
Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit arrived in a year crowded with downloadable platformers, and it did not need to be the best one to be worth playing. It needed to be the one with a skeletal rabbit prince, a rubber duck, a butler octopus and 100 named monsters. It was.
The iOS version, Hell Yeah! Pocket Inferno, later brought the game to the App Store. The core release stayed on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. The French title is Hell Yeah! La Fureur du lapin mort, which is a better name than the English one and nobody involved seems to have disagreed.
The game’s reputation has settled where the 7.4 puts it. A good-looking, funny, structurally ambitious platformer with a control scheme that keeps it from being great. That is not a knock. Plenty of games with better controls have less to say.
What Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit gets right is the confidence of its own absurdity. It never winks. It never explains the joke. Ash wants to kill 100 monsters because they saw a photo of him with a rubber duck, and the game treats that as a legitimate cause for an entire campaign.
What it gets wrong is the part the player touches most. The saw blade is a wonderful image and a difficult instrument. The mini-games are a clever way to make each kill matter and a frustrating way to lose health. The controls are the reason this game sits at 7.4 and not higher.
Play Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit for the zones, the monsters and Nestor. Play it for the haunted caves and the spaceships full of talking animals. Play it for a prince of Hell who cannot let go of one bad photograph. Just know that the blade you ride is also the blade you fight, and the game rarely lets you forget it.
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