Bunny rabbit combat. It's all well and good until there's bunny death and bloodshed. Because then, of course, there has to be bunny vengeance.

Oh come on, you've read Watership Down. You know how anthropomorphized rabbits are! You know they can make for pretty good storytelling.

Admittedly, Wolfire Game's bunny fighting game Lugaru is less story -- far less story -- and more action. Although the game's environmental graphics might seem rather simple at first, the rabbit characters themselves are fairly detailed and expressive. And when it comes to rabbit-to-rabbit combat, that's where Lugaru really shines. Making the most of crouch, run, jump, kick, the game's combat system is actually pretty sophisticated. True there's only one "attack" button, but with a variety of other key controls and with a good sense of timing, fighting in Lugaru is deceptively complex. Every move can be countered (and the game's AI really does work to counter you), and the scoring system rewards you for not simply repeating the same blows. Button-mashing -- ye old gaming standby -- is actually a recipe for failure, rather than success.

As a novice at Lugaru's combat, I admit, I wished for a health bar. And thanks to the beauty of open source collaboration, such a thing exists.

Truth be told, I am far more motivated to play a video game due to its storytelling than its combat mechanics. But I've spent many an afternoon kicking the shit out of various virtual characters in my day -- enough to find quite a bit of satisfaction in Lugaru. If you have the right moves, you can beat the game fairly easily, although there are different challenge modes which I found a lot more difficult.