Magic Rabbit
Designed by: Cécile Ziégler,Julie Dutois,Ludovic Simonet,Romaric Galonnier
Magic Rabbit is a co-operative game that takes exactly two and a half minutes – and must be played in silence!
There are nine hats and nine rabbits, both numbered. The rabbits are shuffled and dealt face-down in a row, then the hats shuffled and dealt face-up on top of them: the rabbits are ‘in’ the hats, and the players’ goal is to get the rabbits in their correct hat (ie the matching number) and the hats in the correct order (from 1-9).
On your turn, you can look at a rabbit under a hat, switch the positions of a pair of hats, or switch the positions of both the hats and the rabbits inside them. Getting in your way are some doves: these prevent you from looking in a hat, but can be optionally moved to a different hat at the end of a turn.
Players cannot communicate, so must watch what each other do closely to ensure that, hopefully, when the supplied timer runs out of sand, all the rabbits are in their correct hats and all the hats in their correct positions. The doves don’t matter, they can be anywhere at this point.
Magic Rabbit also has some additional envelopes in the box we won’t reveal the contents of here, but they add new components and new challenges to the game to increase the difficulty.
Sam says
Magic Rabbit is like a more accessible Yokai: in that game players are trying to group different spirit types together, and it’s tricky interpreting and keeping track of the other player’s moves and intentions. In this game it’s easier, but not devoid of the chance to misunderstand or miscommunicate. The additional challenges in the box give the game more life than it immediately seems to have, but ultimately it’s not something I found myself yearning to play again having tried all the varied puzzles. All that said, what the game does do is play in two and a half minutes. That might sound like it’s damning with faint praise, but I absolutely don’t mean to. Some games last hours, some games when you sit down you don’t know when you’ll be done. There’s something reassuring about the punctual certainty of Magic Rabbit, and it never stops being a challenge, even if the tricksiness of the first few encounters does fade slightly.
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Take That!
Players work together, although there is the possibility the easily-frustrated may get easily frustrated when their 'obvious' move is misinterpreted!
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Fidget Factor!
Very low
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Brain Burn!
There's only three options per turn. The brain-burning is partly memory and partly interpretation: trying to understand what others have done. That aspect gets harder with more players - the game may be best with two.
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Again Again!
The initial challenge does start to feel a little straightforward, so the additional posers in the box help refresh the game.
