Very Bunny Haha

Fable

In the Beginning…

The start of Development of this game was a very special time.

Ender was in High school and working on their Senior project. They decided to create a game with an expert. The expert was ME, their Dad.

Although the rules for the project was to learn something new from an expert that was not family. They did bend the rule as I was a very available expert and Ender gave them a great initial presentation of the project.

So we decided to create a farming game. Something simple and something interesting. Also something we could enjoy playing ourselves.

The thing is we came up with a lot of ideas, and Ender was a drawing and creative energizer bunny. Some of the ideas were for characters that were cool to engage with, so we then needed reasons to talk to these cool characters.

This led to Quests. And well, quests led to stories to drive them, and next thing ya know we had a Whole lot of quests and stories to tell.

That then led to more Scenes and more characters.

What happened next?

Be Warned, This is a Long fable spanning 9 years so far…

What happened next was that Concerned Ape released Stardew Valley. A game you, the reader, have surely heard of. We had spent five years tirelessly working (don’t tell my Highschool that we were working on VBHh before my highschool career started) and suddenly the genre we had been working in had a new contender. And then a new KING! It was encouraging, and really really cool seeing another Indie Creator making a game in the genre get a big win!

But difficult. Because the farming sims we were basing Very Bunny on?
They never ended. And neither did Stardew, if you didn’t put down the controller. Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, these games didn’t have an end, didn’t have somewhere to finally really get to. Start over. You never got older and died, giving up your farm to the next farmer.

But what had really happened next was that VBHh wasn’t… just a farming sim, anymore. In fact, in the rush of it all, we had made something almost entirely different, unrecognizable! An adventure game full of Quests! A cute platformer with goals! A very long story line with different characters and personalities! A collectathon of random stuff on the ground! A minigame bonanza with a nod and a wink!

Dad and I had spent countless lunches at our favourite pizza spot by his work discussing, working, formulating something that is… Exactly the kind of game we’d love to play.

There was just one last problem… well… two.

Problem One:

The End of the Game wasn’t finished. It still

isn’t. A Cutscene in Unity at that time wasn’t

impossible, just difficult, it was the last thing

I was working on. But the Game wasn’t DONE.

A few more bugs to fix. A few more animations

to make.

Perhaps a really good evil laugh.

A black screen.

Problem Two:

If you’ve read some of the other Parables, you may have noticed…
We’re not Publishers. We’re creators! But the toughest thing for us is absolutely getting what we made into your hands. It’s easy! Yes, Steam makes things really simple, overall… but… Not for us. We’d much rather make you something than sell you something. Which… May be a little funny, considering the paragraphs you’ve just read. We love to talk. And write. But Advertising? Neither of us are advertising gurus.

We wanted Very Bunny, of everything, to have the best fighting chance. We didn’t want to just… leave it out and hope.

BUT! We’re learning. And when we get VBHh updated to the latest Unity, and when I finally finish the animations I have surely left half finished…

Then it’s going to be in your hands. Warts and all, maybe a little bumpy. But that’s something I think we both love about it. About working on it. It’s not perfect. But it’s really something quite special and fun, and it’s THE most labour of love you will ever see!

I’m still really proud of us. I was when I was up on the stage telling people how we made it. And I am now, telling you, reader of verbose web pages. Very Bunny Ha ha is no joke, but every bit of it deserves to be enjoyed by you. I hope there’s a Link to Steam below these words, and that you’ll see it  for yourself very soon.

This is a very very very

Old Drawing Ender did in 2010 or so, when we first talked about making a game like this!

Stories…

The thing is, we wanted to tell the stories, and we had an enormous amount of energy for creating the VBHh world. Was it scope creep, maybe if we had actually ever settled on what our scope would be, but we never had, instead just freeform creating it. Just to put this into a bit of perspective, for our full story arc we ended up with just under 200 quests.

Our collaboration was awesome as we fed off each others energy to keep creating the game. 10 minigames and dozens of scenes later we had an engaging game.

Senior Project Presentation…

Ender then had a STEM presentation on stage to present their Senior project. I have to admit that I was incredibly proud to see my eldest child stand up on the stage and talk about the Video of the game playing in the background.

They talked about all the details that go into making a Video game, including game engine, animation, textures, audio, physics, testing and player controls. So many details and Ender had not only learned them all, but could tell a crowd of people how to put it all together to make a game.

I sat in the crowd watching and listening to the presentation.

I am so proud. The memory will last me forever.