I’ve been playing Of Carrots & Blood for nearly 7 years. I don’t know why I keep coming back to it. It’s not the most amazing game but it has a unique premise.

Of Carrots & Blood is an arena twin stick shooter. You start off as a rabbit trying to protect a carrot from hungry mutants. These mutants also want to eat you. There’s various power-ups. You can’t shoot the carrot or let the mutants eat the carrot – if the carrot’s life reaches 0%, it’s game over.

At different points of the game, you can upgrade your equipment or play as a different character. But the same stage remains the same – there’s no variation.

I wish there was more variation. As in, wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to keep protecting a carrot in a forest?

But the aesthetic is nice. I tend to like pixel art. And the graphics really remind me of the 16-bit era.

Not very many people have played Of Carrots & Blood, and I doubt it will ever be regarded as a classic. But I keep trying to beat my old high score anyway.

I guess I keep coming back to it because of just how bizarre this game is. It’s one thing to kill mutants. But a rabbit protecting a carrot? Why?

I mean, if mutants want to eat a carrot, just let them. I eat carrots all the time. I don’t even think anything of it. And hell, don’t rabbits eat carrots too?

One nice thing about Of Carrots & Blood is that it requires minimal specs and can be played on most PCs. It just needs a 2.16Ghz single core CPU, 1GB RAM, and 200MB hard drive space. A controller is recommended. It’s available on Windows and Mac, though Linux requires Proton.

This game can get repetitious. But it also has charm. One nice aspect about this, almost unrelated to the game, is that there’s a vinyl shop. And if you collect enough vinyl in the game, you can go to the shop and listen to chiptunes. And the chiptunes are awesome.

That part is really nice. In some ways, I like that aspect perhaps more than the game itself. I wish other games had a vinyl shop.