Can you imagine what it would be like to exist in an unfinished space? Imagine wandering around a broken and surreal desert wilderness, populated by geometrically uniform rocks, the same identical couple of shrubs, and animals that wandered in set paths, back and forwards? Then imagine a haunting, lonely melody playing over the sound of the shifting sands, and you have the lonely, strangely haunting experience of Lugaru HD.

At once a fusion of kung fu action movies, anthropomorphic animated shows, and a strange tech demo, Lugaru HD casts you as a hardened rabbit martial artist, who, rather predictably, must take revenge on a group of raiders after they invade his village and kill his family. A bog-standard revenge plot, but this is all elevated by two things: the way the game controls, and the game’s mood and feel.

The game is an admittedly somewhat unfinished open-area fighting game. Released in 2005, the game is most certainly a product of its time, yet remains a thoroughly worthwhile experience. It is the kind of game with a ruthless philosophy; either the player adapts to the gameplay, or the player is ruthlessly massacred. Early levels fluctuate between “simple” and “surprisingly difficult”. You play as a vengeful ex-warrior-rabbit who must fight his way to the edges of his world in a quest that will take him from forests to deserts to icy plains, almost devoid of life.

Gameplay consists of a simple cycle of stealth – brawling – stealth, perhaps interrupted by running for your life somewhere in there. You have a robust set of moves at your disposal – stealth attacks, three melee weapons, jump kicks, parries, reversals, wall attacks, enormous jumps and flips (you are a rabbit, after all), tackles, and several different modes of movement, either bipedal or “animal”, where you run like an actual bunny.

The challenge in the game is essentially ever-present, especially when you run into the first non-rabbit enemy, who will make mincemeat out of you several times before you crack the code. Then the game will later decide to pit three such enemies against you, and that is perhaps where the challenge is heaviest. But, like many of the games I enjoy, the potential frustration of the challenge is countered by the joy of surmounting the obstacle. Lugaru HD is a constant push-pull of the two emotions, as you chip your way through levels, sometimes being killed by the final enemy in the level, the expected joy yanked away from you like a rug being pulled from beneath your rabbit feet. But you try again, adapting your strategies, getting better every time. You learn that if you are facing rabbit enemies, you can’t afford to rustle the bushes – their big rabbit ears can hear you easily, after all! But against the other type of enemy, they can’t hear you if you do that. It’s gentle little touches that make the game feel like something made with genuine thought and care.

It’s not quite perfect, though. The gameplay feels just a little rough; exactly the kind of rough that gives it an endearing quality for me, but might turn some people off. Sometimes, it’s unclear why the occasional attack didn’t land as you expected, or you might wonder why the sprint attack is so hard to wrangle with, and getting a grasp of the game’s stealth does take some time (until you figure out the quick roll is silent).

Still, the game would be worth playing even if the gameplay was all that recommended it. It is frequently on sale and is frequently very, very cheap – so even as some kind of tech demo where you fought in a blank environment against different assortments of enemies, it would still be worth investigating. But what really interests me about the game is the sense of unreality that permeates it – yet there is some quality to the game I cannot quite put my finger on that gives it precisely a feeling of reality.

The environments are, as I’ve mentioned, strangely formed places, as though from a half-remembered dream. The leaves from the trees move strangely uniformly in an invisible breeze; there are enormous square slabs scattered mysteriously through many levels; the entrances to caverns are formed with the same square slabs, simply rotated. But the game has a very natural feel, using the most minimal elements and pushing them cleverly towards reality by using textures with a naturalistic palette. Think of how Pathologic is made drab and depressing, sucking the life from the player and encouraging a walk through the steppe, using only the colours in and around the Town. Lugaru HD does much the same, except there is no contrast – there is, in essence, only the wild. The world is entirely untamed, and is thus uniquely natural in feel. When the enemies can smell the blood on your knife if you are standing in a place where that invisible wind can funnel right to them, and they come roaring towards you, you feel as though this is a world that can exist. Yet you would have only noticed the wind was blowing in that direction if you paid attention to the uniform trees, swaying in that breeze. The intersection of the real and the unreal is constant.

As an advocate for games that don’t have to use cutting edge graphics to tell an effective story, I found Lugaru HD to tell a great story through its environment. The implication is that the inhabitants of Lugaru HD live in some post-human world – the enormous granite blocks are given purpose, but yet remain mysterious, essentially monoliths for some eldritch, precursor race. They also serve no purpose towards the story, and I don’t believe are ever actually confirmed as being human ruins. The game’s ecological message comes home in both the visual framing as well as the story. Working in conjunction, Lugaru HD tells a story that is ostensibly about revenge, but is also more about survival, as well as responsibility. It asks hard questions that perhaps we as individuals don’t have a solid answer to, and intoxicates with a dreamlike atmosphere that makes you think deeply about the task you are undergoing. Opening another rabbit’s jugular with a knife is strangely both sad and exhilirating. The music encourages a meditative approach, while the gameplay encourages the thrill of battle. Again – intersection. Reality and unreality; sadness and a rush of adrenalin.

The game has a sequel, Overgrowth. It is a far more modern construction, with shinier graphics, probably smoother gameplay, and a longer campaign. But yet, looking just at the images on the store page, I don’t see it being quite the same for me. It looks like it was made with more time, perhaps, and maybe more money – but it has lost that elusive beauty. The beauty of a game made with a love and respect for both the video game medium, as well as ecology – a game that pushes everything it has to the limits, and sure, sometimes falls a little flat in its ambition, but it is in that ambition that great games are forged. This is not to besmirch the work that has obviously gone into Overgrowth, or to say that perhaps it is inferior. I simply don’t know – but it looks less interesting. Lugaru HD is a fascinating and constantly engaging experience; a rough diamond – if there ever was such a thing in video games, this is it.

You can buy Lugaru HD from Steam.