Run Rabbit Run Rabbit Run

Getting Started With Run Rabbit Run Rabbit Run

I first ran into this about two years ago when someone shared it in a Discord channel full of small indie runner games. It's not exactly a mainstream title, which is both its charm and its problem. If you're looking for a straightforward how-to, here's what I learned after spending a solid weekend with it. The game sits on Itch.io under the name Run Rabbit Run Rabbit Run. The download is a Windows executable, roughly 140MB. There's also a Linux version, though the Linux port is a bit janky — the windowed mode was crashing for me until I passed --gl-version 3 2 as a launch argument. macOS users are out of luck; there's no build for it as far as I can tell. Download here from the developer's Itch.io page.

What the Game Actually Is

It's a roguelike platformer where you control a rabbit running through procedurally generated burrows. The core loop is simple: run, jump, collect carrots, avoid hazards, die, upgrade between runs. The twist is the double-name — Run Rabbit Run Rabbit Run — which refers to the game's twin-rabbit co-op mode. You can play solo, but the second rabbit unlocks around the 12-minute mark on a standard run, and honestly the game is significantly more fun with a friend sitting next to you than it is through remote play, which has noticeable input lag. This is where most people get confused. Between runs you spend carrot tokens on permanent upgrades. The trap is that the power creep is real and linear. A +1 speed upgrade early on makes the difference between surviving and dying at the 3-minute checkpoint, but stacking too many defensive upgrades too fast makes the game trivially easy in early zones and then punishingly hard later because the boss scaling assumes you've kept your speed reasonable. I found that capping speed upgrades at +3 per run and dumping everything else into the dash-cooldown perk gives the most consistent results through the first six zones. Default bindings:

The dash mechanic is the single most important skill to learn. Every hazard — spikes, lasers, the falling-log traps in Zone 3 — can be dodged with a well-timed dash. The cooldown is 1.8 seconds by default and the game gently punishes button-mashing because dashing mid-air resets your jump. I spent an embarrassingly long time dying to the same spike group in Zone 2 because I didn't understand that timing. Now I just hold the dash button and let the meter regenerate naturally between encounters. About halfway through my first complete run, I hit a soft lock in Zone 4, level 3. The procedural generation spawned three moving-platform segments in a row with no solid ground between them, and the carrot cache needed to unlock the next zone's shop was sitting on a platform you could only reach by dashing through a laser grid that required two perfectly timed dashes with no cooldown recovery room. I was stuck for probably 45 minutes. Eventually I just restarted the run and the layout changed — the game's random seed was against me. This turned out to be a known edge case. The developer acknowledged it on their GitHub and patched a seed-generation rule in version 0.9.2 that ensures at least one safe platform always appears within any three consecutive moving segments. Make sure you're running at least version 0.9.2, otherwise you might waste an afternoon on a solvable but absurd layout. Local co-op is plug-and-play — the second player uses the same keyboard with arrow keys for movement, Enter for jump, and Shift for dash. The game detects the second player automatically when any key is pressed after the title screen. Remote co-op exists but is rough; the input sync isn't tight enough for the precision jumps the later zones demand. If you want to play this with someone remotely, I'd recommend just playing solo together on the same screen instead.

The game runs fine on integrated graphics. I played it on a 2018 MacBook Air (the non-Retina model, Intel HD 6000) at 720p and got a stable 60fps. The only issue I ran into was on certain AMD GPUs where the vignette effect in the boss arenas caused a stutter every 30 seconds or so. Turning off post-processing in the settings menu fixes it completely with no visual loss you'd actually notice during gameplay. It's short — a complete run with all upgrades maxed out in a single session is maybe 45 to 60 minutes. The replay value comes from the roguelike structure and the co-op experience, not from a deep narrative or massive content library. If you're looking for a 20-hour commitment, this isn't it. There's also no difficulty slider; the game scales automatically based on your average run length over the previous three attempts, which means if you're a fast player you'll face harder runs than a casual player. Some people find that scaling frustrating because it removes the ability to deliberately play on easy mode for a relaxed session. For that crowd, I'd suggest trying Rabiool or Paprium first as similar but more polished entry points. Run Rabbit Run Rabbit Run is charming and well-made for what it is, but it carries the typical indie-game roughness in its later zones and its multiplayer implementation.

Final Practical Thoughts

The game costs $4.99 on Itch.io with a pay-what-you-want option. I'd recommend paying the full price — the developer is a solo indie and the level design shows real care. The soundtrack by a composer going by "PixelFlame" is genuinely good and loops cleanly without getting annoying after repeated listens. If you find yourself enjoying it, the developer's upcoming title Mole Hill Madness (announced on their Twitter/X account) looks like it'll expand on the same mechanics with a larger map system and is worth following if this clicks for you.