The story takes place on the island of Lugaru, an unknown number of years after the fall of the human race; all of the characters are anthropomorphic animals.

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 had killed and eaten all of the prey that lived there, and came to Lugaru to find more food.

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.

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.

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.

Seeing no reason to continue the charade, Jack explains the entire situation to Turner before being killed by him in single combat.

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.

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.

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.

Lugaru was made almost solely by David Rosen, including the game engine, models, animations and story.

[7][8] In November 2016 David Rosen relicensed all assets under the open content CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons license which makes Lugaru a fully free video game.

Tim Soret would later improve the game's graphical textures, and Wolfire currently sells this updated version as Lugaru HD.

He also said, "It's a testament to the core gameplay that it continues to entertain well after the story mode is completed, and its blend of unusual ideas should be remembered and learned from in the future.

[16] 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.