Robber Rabbits for iPhone and iPad

Macworld - Robber Rabbits and Robber Rabbits HD are two cartoonish physics-based games from Alawar Entertainment.

You're part of a pair of truly rascally rabbits, fiendishly using a cork gun to shoot down the carrot ice cream some unknown baddie has placed out of reach. If your aim is especially true, you can ensure that the falling ice cream, knocked off its perch by your well-placed cork bullet, hits the three magically floating carrots positioned somewhere between the frozen treat and the ice-cream catching sack held by your partner in crime.

If you accidentally send the ice cream crashing to the floor, you're forced to restart the level. And Robber Rabbits is packed with complicated levels, continually adding in additional obstacles and power-ups to mix things up.

The controls are deliciously simple: Tap where you'd like to fire your cork. Tap on your rabbit to switch among different guns with different fire power. With some guns, your supply of cork pellets is infinite, so you can shoot at will. Other specialty weaponry, however, severely limits your cork arsenal, requiring more precise shooting.

Robber Rabbits packs in plenty of personality. The bag-holding rabbit cries if you let the ice cream crash to the floor. He gets angry--fairly enough, I suppose--if you shoot him instead of the actual targets. And the game's cartoony graphics are quite charming.

I must admit, though, that Robber Rabbits doesn't feel quite as fun as I had hoped it would be. It's a good game, well implemented, and nicely drawn. But I actually prefer a very similar iOS game called Drop the Chicken, which I feel does a better job of steadily increasing the game's difficulty and teaching you the new skills you'll need to proceed.

Drop the Chicken's other big advantage over Robber Rabbits is that the latter game places too heavy a focus on in-app purchases. If you want to use Robber Rabbit's fancier guns with their rapid-fire or more powerful shooting abilities, you'll need to pony up cash for ammunition. Since Drop the Chicken eschews bullets--you arrange various on-screen elements to help guide your dropped chicken into his nest--there's nothing left to buy once you own the game.

That's not to say Robber Rabbits is bad--it's not. It's well-made and enjoyable to play. But you may find it increasingly difficult to capture the three carrots on each level without doling out some extra cash; if you choose not to spend that money, the game can start to feel like a bit of a chore. I ever-so-slightly prefer the roomier iPad version to the iPhone edition, but both versions are fun.

Lex Friedman is a Macworld staff writer.