One of the best feelings when playing indie games is when you stumble into one that surprises you and exceeds your expectations. Granted, I may be a little more jaded than the average gamer, but when I start out a puzzle game with a retro look like Runny Bunny, my interest tends to go south in a hurry. I’ve played more than enough puzzlers where the challenge is to grab every coin (or whatever it may be) on each level, but you’ll only be able to move in any given direction until you hit a wall, requiring some planning and pathfinding. Where Runny Bunny then goes the extra mile though, is in finding a variety of ways to turn up the heat on you periodically.

Getting through the first handful of levels isn’t hard in the least, and for people used to this sort of game it will probably be a bit tedious. At first I was surprised that the game wasn’t concerning itself with the time I was taking, or the moves I was using, just content to allow me to grab everything at my leisure before exiting the level. New elements continued to be added to throw in a little more complexity for me to consider in my routes, but it generally remained a casual affair at first… until it wasn’t anymore. 

Once you hit Level 10 the true nature of the game begins to show itself more clearly, to be the tough version of this sort of puzzler. While the intensity of play does go up and down from that point, in particular whenever you’ve got the creeping red wall moving in from the left you’re really going to have to be on top of your game to get through. Since nothing is explained explicitly, it actually took the first few deaths to really understand what was going on, but from that point on whenever a level had it I could be sure it would be a challenge. In those particular stages it isn’t so much about figuring out the route as practically having it memorized, and then executing each turn as quickly as possible to keep ahead of that red creeping death.

While I wouldn’t consider it a revolution, and its appeal may still be limited, I can at least respect the game for daring to be more directly tougher than most I’ve played like this in the subgenre. Some games will opt for leaderboards or other methods to push you return to stages to try to get better times, but in this case you won’t be able to move on until you’ve shown a fair degree of mastery of the stage and some nimbleness in your controller execution. Perhaps it isn’t a masterpiece for everyone to enjoy, but if you're looking for a budget puzzler that likes to spice things up with a challenge this is actually a very good option to have out there.