The deceptively cute, quietly massive bullet hell Metroidvania Rabi-Ribi is on sale for $5 on Steam until August 14, and regardless of your views on anime bunny girls, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot. The action is air-tight and some of the bosses are still all but peerless.
This 2016 classic went on to shape the likes of 2019's Touhou Luna Nights and the 2023 Early Access hit Touhou Hero of Ice Fairy. I do not have time to explain the Touhou rabbit hole today, so we're going to swiftly move on.
Just know that this one of those easy-to-miss precursors that's in some way had a hand in many cult hits within this particular genre. Well, I say cult hit, but Rabi-Ribi has almost 10,000 reviews on Steam and 96% of them are positive. Still, I'm willing to bet that a lot of people don't know about it or why it's so good.
Rabi-Ribi is a non-linear 2D side-scroller about collecting power-ups and hammering the daylights out of bosses in a surprisingly large and varied world. It's also chock-full of cute, pixelated, and pastel anime girls, which I realize might be a deal-breaker for some people and an absolute can't-miss selling point for others. And I'm sorry, but the soundtrack is quantifiably a bop. It's also way less sexed-up than its trailer and character designs may suggest. It's pretty tame even for a T-rated game.
You can't argue with the spectacle of it all or the sheer wealth of content that's currently available for just $5. There are multiple, frankly absurd difficulty settings that dramatically change up the experience of Rabi-Ribi's 40+ bosses. Seriously, this is some Cuphead shit, or at least it can be if you want it to. And it's got some of the cleverest sequence-breaking you'll find in a Metroidvania. There are dozens of items and upgrades as well as speedrun and boss rush modes to test you after the main story. There's a reason some people have put upwards of 300 hours into what's normally a mercifully short game.
You can get Rabi-Ribi on Switch and PlayStation, but it's only on sale on Steam right now. This is also a good time to learn the ways of Rabi-Ribi because developer CreSpirit has a new game coming out this year that looks like a spiritual successor. It's called TEVI, it's got much sharper art, and it, too, has bunny girls. Some people just know what they want.
Nowadays, the hottest Metroidvania on Steam is a $6 blast from the 3D past.
