Rabbits

"Daddy, can we play Chocolate Castle?"

That's Simona. She just turned 4. Vicky, her teenage sister, won't play Okami or Guitar Hero for her right now, and Mommy's too busy to go to Nick JR or Hasbro.com or the Sesame Street site, and she's bored with the videos, media-saturated child that she is. So she's down to Daddy's geeky games, and I can't get away with playing World War II games any more ("Look, It's Meekun!", Mao Chan's tank friend. No, doll, it's a Panzer V.)

She likes Eets, too, but today it's time for Chocolate Castle. She likes it for very different reasons from me, of course; the characters are little bunnies, and they get to eat chocolate. Yum. Of four different types: dark, milk, white, and rose. (Rose? Only place I've seen it is at a very gay chocolate store in the Haight, and the developer is in New Zealand, so where did they encounter it? but never mind.)

Here's what's cool about Lugaru:

It features a hand-to-hand combat system controlled by a variety of mouse movements, that feels vastly more like kung-fu combat than any game that requires you to memorize huge lists of "combo" moves.

It's a fully 3D, action-adventure title, developed (originally for the Mac, forsooth) by a two-brother team with basically no funding--and still looks as good as, well, say, a high-end Playstation 1 title, which is a remarkable achievement under the circumstances.

A 2006 Independent Game Festival finalist and winner of the Adultswim award (sponsored by Cartoon Network), Dodge That Anvil! is a game in which you play a bucktoothed bunny trying to harvest carrots and other veggies as anvils drop from the sky. Why? Well, um.... Does it matter? This is cartoon logic here.