Often when driving for work I burn through podcasts like there is no tomorrow. I am also the type of person that finds one or two podcasts in a genre and rarely listens to anything else in that genre. Midlife Gamer and historic years of the Year of Shame Challenge fill my gaming genre quota.

I was looking for something new and different. The problem I find with iTunes is that it makes recommendations based on what you currently listen to so you end up with much of a muchness on your listening device of choice. This is where our very own Uncle Fista comes in; having already made me addicted to Serial and it’s follow-up S-Town, I put the question to him to which he recommended The Black Tapes.

To cut a long story short, The Black Tapes is the latest from Pacific Northwest Stories, a “subsidiary” of the Public Radio Alliance and after a brief dive down a rabbit hole led me, via Tanis, to Rabbits (Note, if you haven’t listened to The Black Tapes and Tanis download these too).

So what is Rabbits?

Rabbits is the third series from Pacific Northwest Stories, a podcast company who, in their words, make “television for your ears”. As per their previous stories, Rabbits is a docu-drama which blends and blurs the lines between fiction and reality and is the series to listen to for gamers and conspiracy theorists alike.

To not give too much away, Rabbits is a story about an ancient game that has updated to the digital age. When Investigative Journalist and narrator Carly Parkers friend goes missing in mysterious circumstances, Carly begins to investigate, documenting everything on a podcast whilst she unwraps the many layers of a world she never knew existed. Rabbits has been around, and lured people in, for centuries with an unclear prize for the winner and the risk of great and deadly loss for being unsuccessful.

The script and story is well formulated with no real plot-holes visible and leaves you with a “what happens next?” feeling at the end of each episode. Luckily the entire first season is now up, so binge listening is a real possibility. As the lines of reality and fiction are blurred, you will often be left wondering what is real and what is not but I guess that kind of puts you in Carly’s shoes.

The one draw-back I would say is that sometimes, the producers try and get so much information, both fiction and real, into an episode occasionally that it feels like an overload of data but as I said this is only occasional. If that snaps you out of the story slightly then rest assured the voice acting will drag you right back in. Although polished the voice acting of Carly Parker (remember what I said about the lines blurring between fiction and reality? You find the name of the actor playing her.) is raw and undiluted although she does occasionally suffer from “X factor result” style pauses in her sentences.

If you like gaming, conspiracy theories, horror audio or alternative reality gaming (you must remember Find Oceanic 815 when Lost was the must see TV programme) then Rabbits is the audio television show for you.

Midlife Gamer Rating: 9/10     Format:  Podcast      Release Date: Out Now

Disclosure: SiStevens downloaded  Rabbits for listening purposes and just wanted to share his find with the Midlife Gamer Community.  For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.

Tags: alternative reality, audio, docudrama, gaming, Podcast, rabbits, voice acting

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