Murtop is essentially a mashup of Dig Dug and Bomberman. Except instead of a guy in a diving suit, you play as a rabbit who poops bombs. And that’s it…that’s more or less my whole review right there. It only took two sentences though, so I guess I should elaborate further.

Even though it was released last year, Murtop is an old fashioned, single-screen arcade game, looking very much like games 40 years its senior. It sports appropriately pixelated sprites, with the limited color palette one would expect from a game of that vintage. Its music is boppy little chiptunes. It even has interstitial cutscenes preceding its levels, much like the intermissions in Pac-Man.

You play as Murti, the bomb-pooping rabbit, as she attempts to thwart an army of moles who have invaded her home. Each level you have 60 seconds to clear the stage of enemies, relying only on your wits, natural digging ability, and Murti’s uncanny ability to defecate high-explosives. A few rocks are strewn about the playfield which, if undermined, can drop and crush unsuspecting creatures below. In addition to rocks, carrots can also be found randomly about dirt, and these provide bonus points if collected.

After every fifth level there’s a Bonus Stage in which carrots and rocks rain from the sky. Murti can run laterally back and forth to try to catch as many root vegetables as possible without getting hit by a stone. (Perhaps using carrots and sticks for this would’ve been a little too on the nose?) Bonus Stages last 20 seconds.

It must be said that the visual design of Murtop is basically perfect. From the pixel art character designs, to the simple stage backgrounds, this game looks tremendously charming from all angles.

I especially love the design of Murti, who’s basically just a rabbit, and not even an anthropomorphized or overly cartoonish one either. She drops bombs in her wake, sure, but Murti doesn’t walk around like Bugs Bunny; she’s just a rabbit. The 8-bit sprite of a little white bunny realistically running around is just delightful.

Opponent-wise, all of the enemies Murti encounters appear to be some variety of mole. There are pink shovel-wielding moles that will give chase if they spot you. Then there are brown moles wearing construction hats—who look a lot like Mr. Resetti from Animal Crossing—that only move laterally across the screen and will throw a rock at you on sight like they’re pitching a baseball. Finally, there are big purple moles that appear on every fifth stage. They pace around on the surface at the top of the stage and roll boulders down at you from above. These big boulder moles appear to be invulnerable to harm, as Murti can’t lay bombs on the surface to take them out, so they mainly act as new obstacles for you to avoid.

Murtop’s gameplay is fast and furious…but particularly fast! It took me a while to get a handle on how to play the game, with a steeper than expected learning curve.

Bombs, for example, detonate very quickly. They have maybe a 1-second fuse? The explosion, expanding out in perpendicular lines, also goes all the way across the screen until it hits something. Unlike Bomberman, Murti doesn’t need any power-ups; fire for her bombs is always cranked up to 11. But a short fuse and high blast radius can be tricky to work with, and placing bombs takes some getting used to.

At first I was blowing myself up quite a lot. It took a while for me to grasp that the bomb will always drop directly behind Murti, so you need to turn a corner in that 1-second window.

On the negative side, Murtop’s music is a little too intense, and a little too repetitive, for my personal tastes. Especially during the initial levels, it can be a bit grating. After enough playtime though, the chiptunes did seem to grow on me; or at least they grew to be less distracting. The music here is not bad by any means, I just think there could have been more variation.

All in all, Murtop is a retro delight. If you enjoy single-screen arcade games from the 80’s—particularly Dig Dug and/or Bomberman—then you really must give this one a try. The game is only $5 whether you pick it up on Steam, itch.io, or Nintendo Switch, so you will definitely get your money’s worth whatever your platform of choice.

So take it from an incisor, the game hare is 24-carrot gold, and players will be lapin it up.