COLOURED STATIC PRESS / HANDS-ON GAME REVIEW / NINTENDO
Most farming games let you take your time. Air Hares asks you to grow a field of carrots while piloting a plane, avoiding enemy birds and being bullied by the weather. Apparently, agriculture needed more danger.
Developed by Wondoro LLC and published by indie.io, Air Hares puts Captain Rabbo Sunskipper in the cockpit of a tiny aircraft, determined to bring life back to the farmland of Winrose Warren. The Black Blaze has left the land barren, and a gang of extremely unfriendly birds has no intention of letting anybody fix it.
The Nintendo Switch release arrived on 29 October 2026. This review covers the Switch game played on Nintendo Switch 2 through compatibility, rather than a separate native Switch 2 edition.
Farming at full throttle
The central idea is wonderfully straightforward. Fly over a field, fire seeds into the bare patches of soil, then water them to make the crops grow. In practice, the entire operation feels like trying to complete a gardening checklist during an airshow.
Rabbo’s plane never gives you much breathing room. You’re constantly moving, lining up the next stretch of farmland and trying to keep track of where the reticle is pointing. Water is a limited resource, but a trip through the clouds will refill it. Feathers dropped by enemy birds help restore health. Even when everything is going to plan, there is always another small decision waiting to be made.
And then the birds arrive.
Feathered troublemakers and the pursuit of a better score
The attackers aren’t just scenery. They swoop into your path while you’re busy planting and watering, forcing you to dodge, parry and occasionally abandon what was a perfectly respectable farming operation. There is a handy looping manoeuvre that lets the plane double back when you’ve missed a patch, and it becomes particularly useful once the pressure starts building.
Parrying is one of the more enjoyable distractions. Getting the timing right is satisfying enough that it’s possible to get caught up dealing with an incoming bird, only to realise the entire row of crops has passed underneath untouched. Defending the farm is important. Remembering to actually grow something would also help.
What keeps the runs interesting is the scoring. You don’t need to plant and water every available patch to finish a level, but there’s a real incentive to clean up your performance. Missing a field by a whisker becomes an invitation to try again. A good run makes the next one tempting, especially when you know exactly where those precious points slipped away.
Big personalities, bright skies and some very grumpy birds
Air Hares has an immediately likeable visual style. The pixel art has colour and character, and the changing landscapes stop the farming from becoming one long stretch of identical scenery. Bright blue skies give way to dusty, brown terrain and darker, rain-soaked areas. The weather isn’t simply decorative either. Wind can throw the aircraft off line just when you’re trying to hit a particular patch of soil.
The bird introductions are a particular highlight. Bull Hog arrives billed as the Muscular Menace, while High Top gets the equally magnificent title of Handsome Henchman. They sound more like a wrestling tag team than agricultural pests, which makes their determined efforts to ruin your harvest even funnier.
None of this loses sight of the fact that the skies are dangerous. As the stages get tougher, the birds become more aggressive and less forgiving, and the calmer early sections start to feel a long way behind you.
When the aiming becomes the real opponent
There’s an awkward problem at the heart of all this airborne multitasking: the aiming reticle.
With the plane constantly travelling forward, shooting a seed into a particular patch and then watering the same spot can be more difficult than it ought to be. The reticle shifts as you move. An accurately planted seed can be followed almost immediately by a spray of water landing somewhere completely different. When you’re already watching the sky for a bird and keeping an eye on your supplies, wrestling with the controls isn’t the kind of extra challenge the game needs.
It gets more frustrating as the difficulty climbs. Windy stages make accurate farming harder, while later rain and cloud areas bring faster, more troublesome attackers. Parrying helps, but doesn’t solve the problem of having to juggle several demanding systems while struggling to keep a target under the reticle.
That’s the moment when a good idea starts to rub against its own controls. The frantic pace is part of the appeal; the occasional feeling that your hands and the plane are having separate conversations is not.
It’s a shame because the underlying loop works. Planting, watering, defending the plane and chasing a better result should make for an entertaining rhythm, and often they do. A clean pass over a field feels excellent. So does turning a nearly disastrous run into a decent score. There are plenty of moments when Air Hares delivers precisely the joyful chaos it promises.
The tougher stages simply demand more precision than the aiming consistently makes comfortable. There’s a difference between being beaten by a clever enemy and being beaten by a watering can that won’t stay pointed at the right carrot.
Final verdict: 80/100
Air Hares is a charming and genuinely unusual spin on the farming game. The combination of aerial movement, defensive manoeuvres, lively pixel art and score chasing gives it an identity of its own. Those gloriously over-the-top bird introductions are a bonus.
The aiming lets the experience down when the action becomes busiest, particularly in the later, harsher stages. A little more forgiveness there would let the strongest parts of the game shine more consistently.
Still, there’s plenty of fun in this airborne carrot-growing business. If you’re hoping for a peaceful afternoon tending vegetables, you’ve taken a very wrong turn. If you like arcade-style runs, colourful characters and the prospect of defending your crops at several hundred knots, there’s a lot here to enjoy.
Developer: Wondoro LLC · Publisher: indie.io · Switch release: 29 October 2026 · Reviewed: Nintendo Switch software played on Switch 2.
Editorial note: This 80/100 review is based on original hands-on gameplay notes supplied to Coloured Static Press and the six accompanying in-game screenshots. The verdict reflects the reviewed play experience, including the control criticisms described above. Images are original gameplay captures, not AI-generated artwork. Review credit: the Coloured Static Press team. The Nintendo release is a Switch game supported on Switch 2, not a separately verified native Switch 2 edition.