So, The Bunny Graveyard's DEMO just came out...
...and it seems like no one played it!
Yep... no one at all, not a single soul....
Ok, all jokes aside, I'm truly grateful for all of your support. It looks like a lot of you really enjoyed that demo! 😂
BUT it's time to get back to work, we have a game to make and a deadline to meet, so here's what we're planning to do and what we've learned so far.
Minigames
So after we released the DEMO, we received a lot of feedback! And we saw that some of our players found the minigames to be a bit frustrating, this is because some of them are based on pure luck, which is not really that good for something you need to do to make progress in the game, so we're working on improving them for the full version.
Finding Secrets
We noticed a lot of our players liked going back to see what happens when you pick other options and exploring to see if there's something hidden within the garden, and that's exactly what we're looking for.
We didn't have much time to add that many secrets to the DEMO, because we thought it would be better to leave them for the full game, so for those of you who want more of that, expect more dialogue options, collectables and secrets in the full release!
How do we get to this point in the story?
This is a question we've been getting a lot! The footage in the trailers is a bit different from what the DEMO itself has shown and we are fully aware that Skye's appearance seems different too.
But don't worry, this question will 100% be answered in the first chapter... you'll just have to wait and see!
Episodic?
We know the episodic release sounds a bit strange, but we're fully committed to releasing every chapter 2-3 months after the last one. We know many games tend to take years to release a chapter, but trust me, we're NOT going to ever make you wait an entire year for a new chapter of The Bunny Graveyard.
Chapter 1 and 2 are already halfway done, and development is going smoothly so far... but just as a reminder, we're a team of only two people! So please have patience :D
Q & A
We asked our members on the Discord Server to ask us any questions they had about the game, so here's some of them.
1.Each Chapter will have a different opening but the outro might get reused.
2.Puzzles will get a little bit difficult the more you progress, but not to the point where it's impossible.
3.Yes and no, some sprites are easy to make but the animated cutscenes take a while to perfect, especially with such a limited resolution.
Absolutely! There are a ton of new characters we have yet to show.
As we mentioned before, yes, the game will release episodically first and we're already halfway done with Chapter 1 and 2, and the story for the next chapters has already been written.
It's hard to prove it, but we came up with the concept of The Bunny Graveyard by ourselves. We actually didn't know about Pony Island until now, and I can see some slight similarities but I wouldn't say they're the same thing. (Also, it looks like a good game btw I should play it)
Yes, each chapter will have some drastic gameplay changes, HOWEVER, the top-down/point and click gameplay will stay throughout the entire game.
a LOT.
So, yeah that's about all the questions I could answer so far.
Final Thoughts
Finally, I wanted to say that we are aiming for a Halloween release, but if that's not possible, expect the game to drop sometime in Early December. This is a big project, but unlike our previous ones, we know we are capable of finishing this one, and we have a lot of faith in it.
And one final thing I forgot to mention, it's possible that the game itself might not release under the Early Access label, cause we think it doesn't really fit the game's status. Early Access is meant for unfinished games that might have bugs on them and are still in active development, but The Bunny Graveyard only has an unfinished story, the game itself will release in a stable state.
Stay tuned to our social media accounts (@/pichongames on Twitter/Instagram or just here) where we'll be posting updates on development and important announcements regarding the game.
So yeah, I'm gonna stop talking and get back to work, if you read all of this, comment I LOVE BOX!
-Ken