Hi, All, I’m Bob, and I’ve been playing “Choice” games since the early days. I’ve written many indie games over the years, and I’ve finally decided to check out ChoiceScript. I found it very easy to use, so thanks for that
“BUNNIES!” was written so I could learn the language. It arose from 2 main sources: a conversation with my daughter (who loves bunnies) about exponential growth, and an old basic game called “hammurabi”, about feeding your city in the desert.
BUNNIES! is not your typical ChoiceScript game. You manage a colony for up to 40 seasons, and your choices are mostly the same each time. It’s all about how you manage various problems (predators and starvation), according to your strengths.
I’m certainly interested in any feedback, and I hope you enjoy this little diversion (a full game probably takes ten minutes or less).
And to the mods, maybe this thread doesn’t really belong in “off topic”, because it is 100% written in ChoiceScript. I apologize for the miscategorization, and would ask that it be moved to the appropriate place
Although simple, this game is really fun a dark, political allegory which forces the player into multiple moral dilemmas.
Whilst the threat of starvation, too, is a dangerous threat, predators threaten bunny existence. Is it morally permissible to stand idle against the predators until they have amassed enough forces to destroy the colony, or does is outweigh the tragedy that is the inane slaughter of bunny after bunny merely to commit genocide. Twice.
While Bob’s masterful game allows us to focus on foreign policy, it also allows us to rule the colony as we see fit. Good conditions leads to more happiness, which leads to more productivity, and so more good conditions. Although this positive feedback loop is not merely an ‘easy win’, for we are forced to decide whether the needs of the many (bunny colony) outweigh the few, the bunnies sent to their death, to reduce starvation and fend off predators.
Truly, BUNNIES is a game that not only forces us to look at our society with the explicit removal of the veil of ignorance, with “bunnies” a mere metaphor for real people, with families and emotions, but also within ourselves, and how our moral beliefs fare against the threat of starvation and predators, in the long and short term.
it ended because i just flat out killed all the predators early on and the game said oh no more predators you win, so i didn’t get to improve my happiness or odds of survival…not that there would be a bad odds given now only starvation and rebellion would be a threat…i was so happy i killed them all early so i could move on and build a mass colony then noticed game over.
fairly simple but fun game that kinda reminds me of this web browser space colony game in its simple but fun method.
This game is short but will made. I like it. It uses balancing threats well Queen Snowflake the brave ruled over the bunny colony wisely
The only thing I’d possibly add, is to give you one more season after you kill the predators to up the happiness meter if you need (since I’d imagine the bunnies would be pretty happy if they could frolic in the snake free fields
Is it long enough for a HG? As a free/ad supported game it could do well although it’s quite different being a stand alone management game. If not, perhaps you could add more interactions like you have with the ants and the owls. Some that have good outcomes and make some that are damage control and may not be beneficial (like with the storm, but perhaps you could expand on it like expanding into a farmer’s field that may give you more food but at the danger of attracting the attention of the farm dogs/cats each year or disagreements with other animals which you can bribe into allies at the cost of resources or have as enemies.(I feel that would make for better replayability and extend the length of if you need it.)
On that point, if you wanted to publish it as a quick and fun HG you could just sdd more levelz (using same basic structure) but with more things to do.
E.G. level 1 is warrens, farms, predators and happiness
Level 2 has harder predators, drought, rival bunny groups
Level 3 has the boss predator (hunter!) And have to destroy or unite other bunny trines before the hunters destroy you
@Drakeye, how did i forget about the HHG?! And good idea about “continuing after killing predators”, i think it’s good as a victory, but your experience (your intention to eliminate them as a gameplay option) and then the game just ended, I see that as a negative player experience, so I apologize for that. (and @Jacic too.)
As for releasing as a hosted game… well, that would be wonderful, but the game is 2802 words total, including code. The posted requirement is 30,000 , 10 times what I’ve got at the moment. So if they’d be willing to take relax that particular rule, I’d certainly be willing to polish it up a bit more…
I mean, as a short, free, simple game, it’d be pretty good to be published, at the very least a fun time-waster, however it costs like £/$1000 or something to publish a game on all platform, and so you’d be better off just hosting it on your (if you have one? Or social media) website, and perhaps asking them to tweet the link on their twitter and facebook.
fairlyfairfighter, you also made other suggestions, made me think of “jonathan livingston seagull”, the bunnies coming back in the next world where the challenges are harder, very cool!
As for other platforms, I have an account on google play (the easiest platform to publish on), and a few games on steam, but what other platforms (besides apple) are you thinking of? I don’t know everything that’s available for this sort of game.
There is itch. Using ren’p and there is Apple.
Just two not mentioned I can think of.
This is still something you could try to work with CoG about to see what rules might be considered for you as a free game(maybe perm adds), and what rules as a regular.
Edit: asking never hurts…well almost never.
I’m glad you’re enjoying it, it was really just a fun test. I’m much more interested in writing a sci-fi story and aiming to make it a Hosted Game. BUNNIES! is too small, but I can see maybe making some additions thanks to all of you
It reads like it’s longer than that, but that’s probably because of the repetition. You could either host it privately (Seedship is along similar lines and has done quite well I’m guessing as it was later released on the app stores as well.) Otherwise you could consider Sub-q which only accept short games. Otherwise if you feel like writing them, you see if COG would be ok with a few short games and bundled together to make up the word count.
Yes, I’ve played seedship, it’s one of the things that brought me back here after a long hiatus. I didn’t know about Sub-q, so thanks for that!
A bundle of short games is an interesting idea. Like, very interesting I’ve been thinking about it for that past 2 days.
My daughter (a huge source of inspiration for me) came home from school yesterday talking about her idea for a new choose your adventure game (her words!) about warring kingdoms… there’s another one right there
And now motivated by this thread, I’ve made some changes to the game, and published a new version on DashingDon. It now includes 3 difficulty modes, the highest of which introduces a new problem to contend with… And the game no longer ends if you eliminate all predators. You can continue towards the elusive goal of ONE MILLION BUNNIES!
In think there might be a bug in your too hard setting. (I wanted to see what the new issue you’d added was )
It quit on me after the second season saying I had less bunnies than I started with, but then gave me this message (since some bunnies died in the first season there definitely wasn’t 100% survival):
You ruled for 2 seasons, and your colony was made up of
Bunnies: 32
Land: 15
Warrens: 3
Farms: 0
Your bunnies were mostly happy.
Throughout your rule, a total of 32 bunnies were born, 0 bunnies starved to death, 50 bunnies were eaten by predators, and 0 brave bunnies were killed in war.
That means the average bunny citizen had a 100% chance of survival. That’s amazingly high, your bunnies are really lucky
Hey, Carlos.R, that’s a great idea… except I made a decision to only and always refer to them as “bunnies”, not rabbits. I guess it’ll be “Breeding like bunnies!”
As for the error, oops, you’re right. I was so excited to get the game up in a new place that I let that slide. I thought I had fixed it, but I wasn’t aggressive enough. That should no longer happen. (Feel free to prove me wrong.)
Queen Snowflake the brave ruled over the bunny colony wisely 
Thanks 
great job this is too funny