Lugaru

Story

The story takes place on the island of Lugaru, an unknown number of years after the fall of the Human race. The story focuses on Turner, a mildly famous retired warrior rabbit who lives in a small village with his family and friends.

Unbeknownst to Turner, a pack of wolves from a nearby island killed and eaten all of the prey that lived there, and have come to Lugaru to find more food. Not wanting to make the same mistakes as before, they plan to conserve their food supply by enslaving and farming the citizens of the rabbit kingdom rather than hunting their new food supply to extinction. Afraid for his life, the rabbit king Hickory agreed to this takeover, providing that the wolves do not harm him. To secure the deal, he sent Jack, one of his most loyal servants, to kill the local raiders, since they would be the only real resistance the wolves would encounter. To do this, Jack decides to trick Turner into killing the raiders. Jack manipulates Skipper, a close friend of Turner's, convincing him to leave Turner's village undefended as part of a ploy to spur him into killing the raiders. Jack tells him nothing about the wolves, and assures him that no one will actually be harmed during the attack. He then pays the raiders to kill everyone in the village, including Skipper.

Jack's plan is largely successful. The raiders lure Turner away from the village and attack while he is absent, murdering his entire family and nearly all of his friends. Jack stages his own death during the attack. Turner makes it his mission to avenge the deaths of his loved ones, and begins to systematically kill all of the raiders, unwittingly opening the way for the wolves to conquer Lugaru. However, everything did not go exactly to plan: the raiders decided keep Skipper alive for a ransom. Once most of the raiders have been killed, Turner encounters Skipper in one of the raiders' camps. Skipper tells Turner how Jack manipulated him, which prompts Turner to return to his village and confirm the location of Jack's corpse. After seeing that Jack's body is missing, Turner correctly surmises that Jack had gone to the Rocky Hall (the location of the Rabbit Kingdom's monarchy) after betraying him, and decides to pursue him there.

After Turner reaches the Rocky Hall, one of the guards there informs him that Jack has offered a reward for killing him. However, most of the guards see Turner as a hero and refuse to attack him, instead pretending that they haven't seen him. Grateful, Turner leaves the Hall and goes north to continue pursuing Jack. On the way, Turner encounters and is forced to fight a desperate guard in need of money who had tracked him after he left the hall, a wolf, and five rabbit soldiers Jack had sent to kill him. Despite this, Turner finally tracks Jack down, finding him not far from where the soldiers were defeated. Seeing no reason to continue the charade, Jack explains the entire situation to Turner before being killed by him in single combat.

Having learned the terrible truth, Turner confronts king Hickory about the wolves. Hickory orders his guards to kill Turner, but in light of Hickory's dealings with the wolves, they refuse. With the full support of the king's guard, Turner proceeds to take power in a bloodless coup. He then vows to the other rabbits that he will meet with the Alpha wolf, and if need be, kill him. Hickory, despite being dethroned, uses his connections with the wolf pack to send three wolf assassins to try and stop Turner before he reaches the Alpha. However, Turner manages to defeat the assassins and later finds Hickory hiding in the mountains with two of his most loyal guards. Not knowing the fate of the assassins, Hickory threatens Turner with them, and is shocked when Turner reveals he was able to kill them. Turner confronts Hickory over his cowardice in not even trying to fight against the wolf conquest, angering him, and prompting him to attack. Turner kills Hickory in the ensuing battle and takes his sword.

Bolstered by his recent victories, and growing misanthropic due to his recent struggles, Turner finally reaches the wolves' den and kills every wolf there, including the mothers and children. Ash, the alpha wolf, arrives later. Ash warns that if Turner defeats him it would mean ruin for the rabbits as they would overpopulate, causing famine and civil war without the wolves enforcing the natural order. Turner counters this by stating that if he doesn't kill the wolves, they would just lose control and kill all the rabbits again, starving themselves out, and that a death by his hand would be more honorable. In the ensuing battle, Turner manages to successfully overpower Ash and defeat him. After this he returns to the Rocky Hall, where he is offered the chance to become king, since no one would dare challenge the power of a rabbit who killed an entire wolf pack. Turner declines, feeling that he is not up to governing, and decides wander the island trying to find a new purpose for his life.

Gameplay

Most of Lugaru's gameplay consists of Hand-to-hand combat with a heavy emphasis on Martial arts, and in many cases the combat incorporates knives, swords, and bo staves. The player can perform disarms, reversals, and counter-reversals. Despite the focus on melee combat, the player is not limited to outright attacking their enemies, since Lugaru has pronounced elements of stealth gameplay, and actively rewards players for defeating foes while remaining undetected.

Lugaru's combat controls are entirely original. There are only three context-sensitive action buttons: one attack button, a jump button, and a more general crouch-reverse button. This setup puts special emphasis on the timing and positioning of attacks to maximize their effectiveness, rather than memorizing complicated key combinations to do more damage.

There is no HUD, so the player must rely entirely on visual cues to determine Turner's current state of health; most notably the character's posture, visible injuries on his body, darkness and blurred vision. The player must also keep note of various environmental factors such as sounds, the direction of the wind and the presence of blood on their weapons; since Wolf enemies have a strong sense of smell and are less approachable from downwind, and can also smell blood from both open wounds and soiled weaponry. Similarly, rabbits have great hearing and are sensitive to noises generated by rustled bushes.

The game can be played in campaign mode, which includes mission specific objectives and the storyline, as well as a "challenge" mode, which involves the player progressing through a series of fourteen maps with the goal of clearing them of all hostile creatures. There is also an interactive tutorial.

Modifications

Lugaru also has a number of mods made by the many fans of the game. You can choose to download the "Lugaru Downloader" (discontinued seeks a new developer) which gives you a list of all the Fan-made mods so far. Lugaru Downloader also extracts and backs up the files and installs the mod automatically, rather than forcing users to back up files themselves and risk errors and glitches. The Wolfire forums for a link and information, and the website with the download link and info.

Advanced modding, namely modifying skeletons to work custom animated characters into the game, 3D Model customization, animation editing and map editing have been made possible by reverse-engineering the file formats and writing Python plugins for Blender. An overview of all modification resources, done modifications and how-to documentation can be found in this thread on the Wolfire forums.

After the game's success as part of the first Humble Indie Bundle, Wolfire released the source code of Ryan C. Gordon's code branch of Lugaru under the GNU General Public License on May 11, 2010. This source code has allowed the game to be ported to additional platforms such as AmigaOS 4. Later an open source HD version followed.

Reception

Ian Beck of InsideMacGames.com gave Lugaru an 8.25 out of 10 after an in-depth, three page review. He criticized the game's linear story as a minor drawback and the ragdoll physics as being "mildly ridiculous". However, he praised the game's graphics as being "very good" (with consideration given to the game's low budget), and he also praised the motion blur, slow motion effects, and the attention the developer gave to environmental details like the blood effects on both the terrain and the character models. He especially praised the context-based combat system.

As of June 2013, GameRankings lists only a single review for the game: David Vizcaino of Gamers Daily News, who gave Lugaru an 8.3, stated the game is "well worth trying out if you're looking for something fun/challenging to play". GamingOnLinux reviewer Hamish Paul Wilson gave the game 8/10, stating that it is "an impressive feat, if anything over ambitious and yet still executed with a fair amount of competence and skill. Though it has some rough edges, it offers an experience unparalleled by any other title, be it the console fighting games that established the genre or its counterparts on the desktop computer."