Hello, everyone.
This is Kenneth, Creator and Developer of The Bunny Graveyard, but you can call me Pichon.
In July, I made the announcement that the next The Bunny Graveyard chapters are no longer planned to be sold as DLC, and instead they will be made as full sequels. After I made this announcement, it was met with a lot of divide, some people understood why I made the decision, other called me a scammer for this.
This will be the last time I talk about this whole thing, but before I begin, I just want to reassure everyone with this post that I'm not here to scam anyone, I'm not here to follow the footsteps of scummy videogame developers who only see you as numbers for their bank accounts, and I'm not here to make "mascot horror slop" as people call it these days (Which is a term I find to be disrespectful to some actual good mascot horror games out there, but that's beside the point because TBG isn't even a mascot horror game...).
I understand where you're coming from, Steam is a large platform that unfortunately has a vast majority of scummy publishers and developers who sacrifice their good reputations for a quick buck, but Pichon Games is not here to follow those footsteps. So, let me speak to you from the heart and explain why I'm doing this. I urge you to please read the full post before commenting.
The Beginning of Pichon Games
In around 2015-2016 I found the demo for a little game called Undertale, when I first played the demo, I instantly loved it, and my immediate reaction was to look up more stuff about it on the internet so I can buy the whole game! While looking through everything I remember stumbling upon some sort of article or something, and it said the developer of Undertale, actually made the entire game by themselves.
After seeing this, I was shocked, and it actually gave me hope that I could one day make a game by myself. So I began to save money and eventually bought GameMaker Studio 1.4, where I began to make my first ever video game, Pixolar. A cringey RPG game with a massive scope that I was not able to fulfill, eventually making me give up on it and start a new project. The years went by, and I was making more and more games, but every single one failed to be fully released due to the same problem: I wanted my first game to be something memorable and great, but I was alone and could not fully release anything. This was the beginning of what would soon become Pichon Games.
The Beginning of The Bunny Graveyard
One day in the year 2020, while working on one of the games that never released. I invited my best friend, Jorge Ramirez (Now writer for The Bunny Graveyard), to join me in creating a new project, This project was The Bunny Graveyard.
For more than two years... me and Jorge were creating the full story and lore behind the game. The story was massive, and it was perfect, everything fit together nicely and we didn't had to come up with the story as we made the game, because we already had it! So, it was time to create the game... but there was a problem, even if Jorge was with me on all this, he was only the writer, if I wanted to make one massive game, it had to be with a large team.... and we are only two guys.
Unfortunately, at the time, trying to get a whole game development team in my country, Puerto Rico, is just as dumb as trying to walk on water. Game development was something that was laughed at in my country, and is still sort of is! So I had to face the truth, I had to make this game by myself, and I made the tough decision, to separate the story in chapters. Luckily, the story was already divided into big arcs, so this was an easy move for us, but it was a tough pill to swallow due to the fact that we could not tell the full story in one game.
Changes in development
When we first released TBG, I promised that we would release all of its chapters as DLC. The reason I made this promise was because the fact that the story was not complete was something that actually bothered me... a LOT. I felt like I just released an incomplete game, and that made me sad, but I eventually had to face the reality of the situation, there is no way I could make one big game with the entirety of The Bunny Graveyard's story.
I was very indecisive when it came to how we released The Bunny Graveyard, I was even planning on scrapping the game completely and just dumbing down the entire story to a 5 hour game. But I knew that doing that would make me regret it in the long run, because the story needs to be told in its entirety. So I decided to still go with the chapter release strategy. I kept saying that the rest of the game was releasing as DLC so people knew that more was coming, not realizing that I just released an almost 3 hour long game, and I was making people think that I just released an incomplete product.
Chapter 2 turns into The Bunny Graveyard II
So we began development on Chapter 2, and we immediately faced some issues. The game had to be cut short. We wanted to make Chapter 2 bigger than Chapter 1, but that would've been impossible due to the fact that the game was a DLC, not a full game.
We knew deep in our hearts that we wanted The Bunny Graveyard: Chapter 2...
- To improve on every gameplay aspect of the last game.
- Have a bigger story.
- Have an entirely new cast of characters.
- Have a story that stands on its own and doesn't completely rely on the last chapter, letting new players play the game.
- Have new mechanics that would change the gameplay.
- Have better animation, better quality and better music.
- New minigames that will keep challenging us to create new and exciting experiences.
- Have full voice acting for all characters.
It checked every single box for a sequel, but we were holding ourselves back due to one thing, it HAD to be a DLC... right? Well, that's when it came to me. We're not making the next chapter anymore, we're making something bigger and better, the sequel to The Bunny Graveyard. I eventually realized, that even if the story is not complete, The Bunny Graveyard was a full game, with a beginning and an end. Is it a short game? Of course. But to me, length never equals quality, and just because a game is short, doesn't mean it's incomplete or just a bad game. Did the story end in a cliffhanger? Yes, because there is so much more to the story, and I want to tell it in its entirety, but it will take me more than one game to do so.
So I made the decision, but I wanted to be honest with the community, and I made a formal announcement on Steam and social media.
The announcement of The Bunny Graveyard II
The Bunny Graveyard II was announced in July, and like I mentioned, divided the community. Why? Because I broke that first promise. So today, I'm asking not only for your patience, but your trust. I ask you to trust me and all the people who help me make this game a reality to deliver you an experience that you will never forget. I know it's hard to believe when the game is still in development, when I still haven't showed a single thing about the game, but I ask you for your trust. So with this, I want to apologize to the people who played this game and think I'm just another scammer, for not being able to fulfill my promise of releasing the rest of the chapters as DLCs.
So here is my new promise for you all....
My promise for The Bunny Graveyard II
My promise is to create not only the sequel to The Bunny Graveyard, but the best game we've ever made. I want this game to defy all of your expectations, I want it to be the best experience you've had, I want it to be worthy of the II in the title.
It would be a lie if I told you the first game is perfect, no game is perfect and I sure wish it was longer and better. But I am satisfied with what we made, and I could not be more proud of my first game to ever release. You will have to wait for the sequel, unfortunately, but I promise the wait will be worth it, and that I will stick to this plan until the very end. I promise that I will keep pushing myself to make better games, to improve on what we failed and to keep moving forward, no... matter... what.
In September 22nd, we celebrate the first year anniversary of The Bunny Graveyard and I'm preparing a little surprise for you all. I'm doing my best to get it out as soon as possible, so please look forward to it.
I will also soon release a roadmap of everything we want to make, so we no longer cause any confusion among the community and everyone can stay in the same page.
So with this, I want to end this discussion once and for all, as always, thank you all for putting me into this position, thank you for helping me release my first game and now moving on to the next one and thank you for supporting us.
Now, I have to get back to work, see y'all soon.
- Kenneth Alvarez "ElPichon"