I first came across Magic Rabbit because it was one of the many games that was offered as a free Print and Play during the Covid lockdown. (I don’t think they are still available, sorry) I downloaded the files, looked over the rules and wasn’t sure if I was interested.
Well, the Covid lockdown pushed me deeper into solitaire and solitaire-friendly games. In the process, I expanded my ideas about gaming. When I found my old laminated sheets of Magic Rabbit tiles, I now asked myself why hadn’t I already tried it?
Magic Rabbit is a real time, cooperative game. There a nine numbered hat tiles, nine numbered rabbit tiles, and five pigeon cards. Oh, a magician tile but that’s just to orient the line. You’re also going to need a timer.
Shuffle the rabbit tiles and lay them out face down in a line. Then shuffle the hats and lay them down face up on the rabbit tiles. Your mission, and if you’re playing the game, you chose to accept it, is to get the rabbits and hats in numeric order.
But the pigeon tiles are there to make life harder. Depending on the number of players, you place two to five pigeons on stacks. You can’t do nothing with stacks that have pigeons on them.
On your turn, you can a) look at a rabbit without revealing it to anyone else b) swap two hats or c) swap two stacks. After you may your move, you _may_ move a dove.
Again, if a dove is on a stack, you can’t do anything with that stack. You can’t even lift up the dove to check the hat number.
And you only have two minutes and thirty seconds to play the whole game. That’s what the timer is for.
The physical game comes with three envelopes that contain increasingly challenging ways to play the game. I don’t have those since I’m playing the free PnP version but I don’t need them to appreciate the base game.
Magic Rabbit is a very simple game made up of very simple parts. It’s easy to understand what’s going on. However, when you add the complications of the timer and pigeons, it gets challenging. Especially the timer. Oh boy the timer.
Simple doesn’t mean easy, from either a design or a play standpoint. It’s easy to understand what your end goal is but trying to do that in under three minutes isn’t easy. It is manic and fun though. Magic Rabbit isn’t the first game I’ve seen with a timer. But you don’t need to an invent a new wheel to make a car go vrooooom.
After I finishing making a copy and playing it, I learned that Magic Rabbit had been a Spiel des Jahres recommended game in 2022. That doesn’t surprise me.
I have played some good real time games. Escape: The Curse of the Temple and Falling come to mind. And Magic Rabbit joins them. I
may not need two speed tile games but Magic Rabbit does a good job being the one I do want to play.
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