Video Game / Rabbit & Steel

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Rabbit & Steel is a "raiding roguelike" developed by mino_dev, creator of Maiden & Spell, designed to emulate the combat environment of your standard MMORPG, but in a pick-up-and-play package. The game was released on May 9, 2024, and a free DLC "Extra Mode" was released on February 6, 2026 that adds four new stages along with three rabbit classes and new treasures.

A long time ago, a lonely rabbit wanted to have friends, looked towards the moon and asked it to be her friend. The moon, hearing the rabbit's words, listened to her troubles until sunrise, to which she would eventually found a kingdom for the lonely, which we know as the Moonlit Kingdom. However, months later, discord had blanketed the kingdom, causing all its denizens to attack outsiders on sight, and had expedition teams go missing, including Shira, the legendary hero rabbit. At the same time, a tower had appeared at the heart of the kingdom. You, as one of several adventurer rabbits, are tasked to investigate the kingdom and the tower, hoping to find answers to the incident and the missing hero.

Gameplay consists of six stages, beginning at the Kingdom Outskirts, before entering the kingdom proper starting with the stage chosen by the party leader during preparations. The final two stages are the Pale Keep and finally the tower itself, the Moonlit Pinnacle. True to its moniker, combat plays akin to a tab-target MMORPG like Final Fantasy XIV. Attacks are on a global cooldown, boss attacks are telegraphed, and, if you're bringing friends, work together to take the bosses down without causing a friendly fire-induced Total Party Kill. Before each major boss fight, treasure chests are presented before you, containing pieces of loot that power you up. However, you also have to share the wealth accordingly with your allies. If multiple players try to claim a piece of loot, dice rolls will dispute who will claim it; the winner will claim it, the others will have to pick again. At the start of a new stage, you're able to purchase items from the travelling merchant, ranging from potions, healing, and gems to augment your abilities.

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"To me, my tropes!":

• Ambiguously Gay: In some story events with Kuu and Pi, they refer to each other as "lovers" and "precious".
• An Adventurer Is You: A total of thirteen rabbit classes can be played, each of them providing their own unique style of combat.
  • Base Classes:
    • Wizard: The Nuker, having a focus on inflicting heavy damage from afar, but are also a stationary class with slow movement.
    • Assassin: The Backstabber, as the only rabbit with a skill that inflicts more damage from behind the boss, and has the ability to Vanish into position.
    • Heavyblade: The Blademaster, having heavy attacks, heavy movement, but makes up the slow movement with a gapclosing charge and a barrier to keep the party safe.
    • Dancer: The Scrapper, mixed with Buffer. The Dancer has quick movements, has the chance to reset cooldowns to keep the damage going, and can buff the party with the press of a button.
    • Druid: The DoT Master, whose skills have a slow but steady stream of damage, allowing them to focus on dodging attacks from a safe distance.
  • Unlockable Classes:
    • Spellsword: The Scrapper, with a Debuffer twist. Spellswords are magical fencers that rely on Darkspell, allowing their attacks to strike twice, and can debuff the enemy for a few seconds, making them take more damage.
    • Sniper: The Archer. While their aim is linear, the have the longest range out of any class. However, missing results in a punishing cooldown, so Snipers have to make sure their shots hit to avoid sitting around for a few seconds.
    • Bruiser: The Scrapper. While their main attack is a weak one-two punch, they're able to evoke an Hour of Power that greatly speeds up their attacks, allowing them to unleash their fists of fury on the enemy.
    • Defender: The Blade Master, with a lean on Magic Tank. Defenders are lancers with holy arts, whose lancing techniques charge up their holy magic to smite from afar. They can also protect their allies by rolling in and raising their shield.
    • Ancient: The Beastmaster. The Ancient is accompanied by their pet summon, and can command them to charge in and attack at their command.
  • Extra Mode Classes:
    • Hammermaid: The Blademaster. They are heavy attackers that are surprisingly nimble. Unlike her comrades, her stronger skills depend on her Primary and Secondary damage numbers shifting her away from standard strategies. Her rotation is also devoid of frills; she's good at swinging her hammer and not much else in utility.
    • Pyromancer: The Nuker. Their aim is to launch as many powerful attacks as they can, though the main way to reset that attack is on a cooldown itself.
    • Grenadier: The Gunner. They can augment their guns and bombs, having the most drastic changes to their main attacks. However, their attacks have limited ammo and need to be reloaded.
    • Shadow: The Scrapper(?). They are extremely speedy and can be quite powerful, but has a self-sealing debuff that will make it difficult to use a set rotation unlike other classes.
• And the Adventure Continues: Even though the rabbits avert the crisis in the Moonlit Kingdom, there's still faint remnants of the spell, with Asha inviting the rabbits to return and sweep up what's left of it. The Extra Stages follow up on this, with the rabbits diving underneath the Kingdom to seek out the true mastermind.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Trinkets can be unlocked throughout the game, and they don't do much but react to the game itself. Getting Hard and Lunar clears between the Kingdom and Extra runs also unlock unique palettes for your chosen rabbit.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • All the loot sets and characters have the alternate unlock condition of "defeat X amount of bosses", allowing anyone to eventually get everything through frequent play.
  • If you're attempting to unlock the Levitation Rings behind clearing a True or Chaos Random with every rabbit in the game, you'll be granted the Rings of lower difficulty requirement if you obtain a Ring locked behind a higher difficulty. e.g. If you're able unlock the Hard difficulty Ring, the game assumes you're overqualified for the Normal one.
  • The Bosses in the Subterra Sanctum have their health linked to any minions they summon, ensuring no time is wasted trying to defeat them to solve a mechanic.
  • However, the creator argues against implementing a Practice mode, as it would undermine the sensation of finally clearing a difficult fight and the punishment of losing your progress found in a MMORPG raid or roguelike.
• Beat the Curse Out of Him: The spell causing everyone to go mad could be fought out of them. Asha insists the afflicted are fine after they get a thorough beating.
• Bullet Hell: Some elements of this are present in combat, but it's much more pronounced when adventuring solo. Due to the fundamentally different playstyle demanded from solo play, the game takes count of both solo and multiplayer clears.
• Cat Girl: Asha was the only known cat in the game, who stands out among the crows, wolves, frogs, mice, and even dragons. You can even pet her! Extra mode adds Stella, a lighter cat that seems to be Asha's friend.
• Challenge Run: Certain trinkets can only be unlocked by playing the game with certain restrictions.
  • The special Floof Ball trinkets are unlocked by clearing a run with a perfect Floof Ball, essentially forcing you on a No-Damage Run for your chosen difficulty and route.
  • One of the levitation rings is unlocked by clearing a run with each of the five Magicklock trinkets on Hard or above. Which type of Magicklock you choose to equip will disable a certain ability (or for Magicklock Icosa, slows you down), forcing you to play smart and efficient with what you're allowed to use.
• Company Cross-References: Several color palettes are references to the characters from Maiden & Spell, but the Ancient Rabbit is far more blatant about it, having the color and pet referencing the respective maidens.
• Continuing Is Painful: If you're in a party, getting knocked out in combat causes you to forfeit the EXP for the fight and make you fall behind in levels. You'll be able to get back up after a set amount of time, but each subsequent KO will extend your downtime.
• Cooldown Manipulation:
  • A few classes, but the Dancer Rabbit revolves around this, having a 50% chance to reset the Special cooldown every time her Primary or Secondary is used.
  • The Bruiser Rabbit's Special gives herself the Fury status, speeding up her GCD to 0.8s for a few seconds. This allows her to spam her heavy-hitting but sluggish Primary (which is on a 1.6s GCD) for some serious damage.
  • Some loot allows you to reset your Special and Defensive skills' cooldowns, such as the Necronomicon and Battery Shield. There's also loot such as the Pajama Hat that reduces cooldowns by a flat amount, making them ready sooner. Conversely, some loot can also slow your cooldowns as a drawback, such as the Dragonhead Spear.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: Whether it's couch co-op or online, you can bring up to three friends for your adventuring party.
• Creative Closing Credits: After clearing the spell over the Moonlit Kingdom, there's an extra "stage" for the credits roll. There's nothing to fight, just interacting with the cast of characters to check in how they're doing post-incident, while the credits take the place of the stage title cards.
• Critical Hit: Everyone has a base 30% critical hit chance, which does 75% more damage, and can be influenced by increasing luck or certain pieces of loot. The Queen's Crown boosts the damage to a hefty 175% increase, and the Sharpedge Set specializes in granting bonuses for critical hits, including having loot that allows the player to auto-crit under certain conditions.
• Death Throws: Not you, but the bosses. Once a boss is defeated, they get flung out of the screen with a spin as if you flicked them off the field.
• Difficult, but Awesome: In an unconventional way, the Timegem Set. It forces you to become a Mighty Glacier by adding cooldowns and slowing your global cooldown, as the boons are derived from how long your cooldowns are. You'd have to do some math to even consider using the set's weapons, as there's a subtractive variable that determines how strong your skill becomes. If the numbers are off, taking the weapons result in a damage loss for the affected skill. If calculated correctly, your chosen skill's power can easily hit sky-high numbers.
• Dragon Hoard: The dragons are mainly concerned with status, beauty, riches, and success, and Red Darkhouse, the location where the dragon's are holed up, is where you can find shiny objects and luxurious items.
• Excuse Plot: The story itself is rather light and rudimentary, simply establishing the setting and residents of the Moonlit Kingdom.
• Flunky Boss: The Subterra Sanctum is full of these, with bosses that can summon minions to compliment their own attacks. Unlike most cases, their health is also tied to their minions, so no time is wasted trying to get rid of them to resolve a mechanic.
• Game Mod: Patch 1.0.4.0 implemented mod support, allowing the implementation of art swapping, new boss encounters, and more treasures to play with.
• Gameplay Randomization: Your run can be done in a random order, which gives you an extra 10 gold for leaving the route to fate. There's a Random option for both the base Kingdom areas, the Extra areas, a "True Random" that randomizes the route between both Kingdom and Extra, and a "Chaos Random" that throws logic out the window and randomizes both the bosses and areas you encounter them in.
• Harder Than Hard: The Lunar difficulty, which not only increases the bosses' HP further, but also amps up the speed of attacks, demanding preemptive positioning to avoid an early end of your run. Your lives are also cut down from five to three, so you cannot afford to make any mistakes.
• Head Pet: The animal trinkets such as the Small Rabbit and Small Frog perch right on your rabbit's head.
• Hitbox Dissonance: The white circle on your character is not an accurate representation of your already small hitbox. The Sunflower Crown allows you to invoke this further, allowing you to graze into bullets closer than the normal player should.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Everyone in the Moonlit Kingdom has some desire for love and companionship, though the spell cast over the kingdom has magnified their feelings of loneliness, clouding their reason for wanting it in the first place.
  • Ranalie wanted to lay siege the Moonlit Kingdom so she could be hailed as the hero who brought the dragons back to their former glory after being forced to flee into the Red Darkhouse by Shira, the hero rabbit. However, she realizes that she never wanted to rule, and has alienated her subjects to the point of becoming the villain. Realizing her folly, she calls off the invasion.
  • Twili has been obsessing over study of the stars, and hardly has time to give her sister Saya the time of day since the spell was cast on her. After the spell has been cleared from her, she realizes how pointless her obsession is, and finally steps out of the Scholar's Nest to spend time with Saya.
  • Matti holds herself to a strict standard, having to keep her sword up to emulate the strength of Shira so she could protect the Churchmouse Streets at any cost. She eventually realizes how overzealous she is, learning the adventurer rabbit means no harm and allowing them passage.
  • Merran is the designated leader of her pack, but due to her subjects constantly dueling her for leadership, she's become tired of fighting, but has to continue out of fear of losing all the respect and prestige she accumulated. After her final defeat, the pack realizes they've asked for too much out of her, and decide to lay off the challenges to be equals.
  • Avy is afraid of fading out of the spotlight, constantly holding performances to keep herself known by her friends, while her friends Lette and Jay feel unable to perform together without feeling like riding off of Avy's fame. After Avy's final defeat, her friends reach out to her to finally have a collaborative show together.
  • Shira, the hero rabbit and queen of the Moonlit Kingdom, was overwhelmed with loneliness in spite of being a rabbit of high prestige and authority. She even wished for the moon itself to marry her, but her obsession with being loved caused her to be rejected, if only because she was misguided in her ambition. The adventurer rabbits eventually reach out to her once the spell on her is gone.
• Loophole Abuse: Four of the Cultist set items permanently makes a select ability unusable. However, it specifically prevents you from directly using the ability. If you have an upgrade that allows it to be used indirectly (e.g. Druid Rabbit's Sapphire Primary, which also activates on any other ability use), you'll get around the limitation just fine.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: The Rabbitluck status increases the chances of % chances of activating. It doesn't say how much more frequent you get those activations, but it's a very significant boost that makes builds around it worthwhile.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • The Heavyblade Rabbit, fittingly, has hard-hitting attacks that's offset by her slow movement. She may not be able to swing her sword rapidly, but her weapon packs a punch.
  • Ruby Gem upgrades generally leans the rabbit towards this, giving big potency upgrades in exchange for slower a GCD, cooldown time, less hits, or slowing movement while performing the ability.
• Morph Weapon: The Daynight Set, which are functionally four pairs of loot instead of eight individual pieces. The set's loot will change form after a set amount of abilities cast, changing its ability to an opposite, but complimenting effect.
• Mr. Exposition: Asha, the merchant cat, is one of the few unaffected by the incident, and is able to tell you some info about the Moonlit Kingdom before you move on. When Asha goes missing in the Extra story, Saya and Tassha take her place, making observations on the corridors underneath the Moonlit Kingdom.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Each skill can only have one gem upgrade at a time. Buying a different gem for an already-upgraded skill will overwrite the previous one.
• Power at a Price: The Cultist Set has loot that gives you strong buffs such as more damage and faster GCD, but either disincentivizes using certain abilities, or flat out disables the select ability entirely.
• The Quiet One: Blush is a frog who'd much rather draw than talk to anybody and enjoys it when nobody's around to chat with her about what she's drawing.
• Sandbox Mode: The Toybox, which allows you pick and choose a combination of Loot you've previously used in any past run, then utilize that setup in a simulated fight against a dummy Treasure Box to test the build. The Treasure Box can also be configured to have different amounts of HP, and can be made to perform simple attacks to simulate an active combat setting.
• Secret Character: The Spellsword, Sniper, Bruiser, Defender and Ancient rabbit classes all have to be unlocked by either completing a certain area on Hard or by beating a number of bosses. The same goes for Hammermaid, Pyromancer, Grenadier and Shadow on an Extra run in Hard or by beating a number of Extra bosses.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Story events play out through quick conversations with the bosses or Asha, letting you listen in to what goes on in the Moonlit Kingdom before everything went awry.
• Sugar Bowl: Aside from the Spell causing its denizens to act irrationally in the name of desiring love, the Moonlit Kingdom is rather pleasant to visit, being a place that offers companionship for the lonely, an even has a pretty lakeside that is home to the frogs that work as entertainers.
• Time-Limit Boss: On the Hard difficulty, the bosses will now have an invisible time limit that will cause them to start bombing the arena with increasingly rapid screen-wide attacks designed to chip away at your life as punishment for taking too long. You could utilize your Defensive skills to avoid the hits, but the increasing rate of attacks will eventually outpace even the most rapid Defensive cooldown resets. Lunar is even more strict about its time limit, demanding you to always be casting before the boss takes you and your party down.
  • Even on normal difficulty, The Lonely Rabbit will eventually start using undodgeable attacks if you don't defeat them soon enough.
• Unanthropomorphic Transformation: This happens during the second phases of the final bosses of each area.
• Variable Mix: Each of the areas has a "Calm" and "Action" version of their theme, playing the Calm version in-between fights, and Action when in-combat. The most noticeable example of this is the Emerald Lakeside, featuring simple "la la" vocals in the Calm version, and full lyrics in the Action version.
• Wolf Man: All the wolves in King's Arsenal are this.