Looking at the conventional approach to cozy games inspired solo developer Reky Studios to try something a little different in the upcoming baking game Cinnabunny, a follow-up to the successful greenhouse sim Bunhouse. Eschewing fishing for bird watching and farming for baking are two of the ways Reky puts a spin on the classic cozy formula found in games like Animal Crossing with Cinnabunny, but the Bunnyverse is far deeper than just innovation on the genre’s conventions.
Check out Cinnabunny's Kickstarter HERE
From aesthetic to philosophical through-lines, Cinnabunny is very much a successor to Bunhouse. The Best War Games spoke with Patrick Gauthier, the developer behind the Reky Studios brand, about what makes his bunny games so popular, where the idea came from, and what the future of the Bunnyverse may look like. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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A Cozy Bunny Bakery
Q: Can you introduce yourself?
Gauthier: Hello, my name is Patrick Gauthier. I am a solo dev. I kind of use the pseudonym Reky Studios, but that is me.
Q: What inspired Cinnabunny?
Gauthier: My previous game, Bunhouse, was originally a game I created for my wife, who both likes plants and bunnies. I just made this little thing fun for her, but I realized, “Hey, this is really, really cute. I probably should just bring this to market and share the bunnies with the world.” I had a Kickstarter for it, there was excellent reception, and Bunhouse lived.
Then I was thinking, people have been so nice to me, especially the rabbit-loving community. I wanted to do at least one more game that involved rabbits, so I basically just picked the next cozy thing I could think of, which was baking, and thus Cinnabunny was born.
Q: What recipes will players be baking?
Gauthier: The basic system in Cinnabunny is you have base recipes, which include things like bread, pies, cookies, cake, muffins, cupcakes, and things like that. To make these recipes on your own, you can also gather rare supplemental ingredients, and those would be things like fruit, herbs, chocolate, nuts, or something. You can combine up to three of those supplemental ingredients, and it will add to your baked good, creating something unique out of it.
Each ingredient also has a taste profile that might be bitter, salty, or sweet, and different bunny villagers in your game have different taste preferences. It's kind of a way of discovering what they like and what they don't like. You create new and unique combinations of things to figure out what makes them happy.
Q: What would you say is the core gameplay loop in Cinnabunny?
Gauthier: You start with a small little bakery, you sell your baked goods to get carrots, and then you can also gift your baked goods to increase your relationship with other bunnies in the community. There's kind of a two-fold gameplay loop. There is one where you're earning more carrots, so you can buy more ingredients, buy more things, and upgrade your bakery. And two, you're improving your relationship, so you can learn what they like and then unlock new recipes and stuff.
Q: What's multiplayer like?
Gauthier: In Buhouse, multiplayer was a shared camera with up to four players. The biggest feedback from Bunhouse was, “Hey, this is annoying, I want to be able to go a little bit further away.” And especially because the world's a bit bigger in Cinnabunny, I decided to go split-screen. It's up to two players. I couldn't do four because it would just be too much to render with split screen.
Essentially, the two players have their own cameras, and they can go anywhere in the village together. But if you want to head to your bakery, you'll have to go together. There's a little bit of planning still between you and your buddy, but other than that, you can kind of wander, talk to villagers, whoever you want to do different quests at different times, things like that.
What to Do in Sugar Creek Burrows
Q: There are other skills related to gameplay elements like bird watching and mushroom hunting. Can you share a little?
Gauthier: I don't know if you have played Stardew Valley before, but I'm a huge fan. Pretty much in every farming sim genre game, you have farming as the core gameplay loop. For me, it's baking, but then there are also other things to do. There are villagers to talk to, and a lot of games have fishing and other things. I looked at the farming sim genre, and every single one of them kind of has the same exact things: there's fishing, fossils, and bug finding, like the Animal Crossing trio. I wanted to do something a little bit different, but still kind of similar.
In Cinnabunny, instead of going fishing, you go bird watching. You have your bird-oculars, and you'll be able to hear true-to-life bird calls, hopefully learning more about the birds and being able to recognize them. You can Pokemon Snap-style take pictures of the birds and get points for your different pictures. Then there's also mushrooming, which is just sort of a collectathon. You explore the forest or the caves, and you look for mushrooms of different types to collect them all.
Q: And there are rogue recycling robots?
Gauthier: There are! A scientist bun made them, Rowan I believe is the name I’m going with. He's an eccentric type, and he wanted to solve the world's littering problem. He's like, “Well, if I give trash robot legs, I can help trash pickup other trash!” But sadly, the experiment went horribly awry, and now they just run amok. You have to use your net gun to capture these recycler robots to bring back to him, so we can study them further.
Q: Tell me about the other residents of Sugar Creek Burrows?
Gauthier: There are lots of residents so far. To be honest, I haven't fleshed all of them out completely, but there are lots there. We have some carpenters. We have a horticulturist. We have some grocers. We have a guy who's really into spelunking. Everyone kind of has their own little niche.
And, you know, we have a lot of different personalities, too. We have the happy-go-lucky, bubbly types. We have curmudgeons. We have the general wayward bonds. Just like humans, there's a whole bunch of different personalities. It’s true to life; actual rabbits have very different personalities as well, as I'm sure you're aware. So yeah, I tried to capture that a little bit. There are plenty of "people" to talk to and to learn about their lives.
Into the Bunnyverse
Q: Is this set in the same world as Bunhouse?
Gauthier: I haven't decided yet. It’s one of the things that no one ever probably thinks of, but for me, it was like a lot of cognitive dissonance–these bunnies in Bunhouse are fishing. Why are the bunnies sentient, but the fish aren't? It was sort of like, how do I work around that and that's kind of the same thing for Cinnabunny as well, in that bunnies are sentient, but the birds aren't. They're just normal birds that tweet and stuff. So yeah, I think it's in the same Bunnyverse, which is this universe where bunnies just take the place of people and do people things.
Q: You mentioned multiplayer–what other lessons from Bunhouse went into Cinnabunny?
Gauthier: Oh my gosh, so much. I look at the old Bunhouse code I made, and it's not the best, to be honest with you. I've learned so much in terms of just coding practices, in terms of how to make the experience more engaging for the player. But most of all, I think my art has really improved. Cinnabunny is definitely a more cartoony sort of art style, but I think it's a lot more unified than Bunhouse. Yeah, I think I've made lots of little improvements for sure.
Q: Why bunnies?
Gauthier: It all started with just my wife liking rabbits and rabbits taking care of a greenhouse was just such a funny, silly, wholesome thing. And then the kind of community I built up around Bunhouse, everyone just loves rabbits so much. I just wanted to give them another rabbit game. It's really that simple.
Q: What is it about bunnies that you think has attracted such a community to your games?
Gauthier: I think there are two things. The obvious one is just that bunnies are flippin’ cute and people like cute things. I think, on a deeper level, there are really not a lot of games that represent bunnies. There are a few, they're all pretty indie, but it's a niche. We had Stray, which was a very, very popular game that you got to play as a cat. There are a lot of dog-based games too or at the very least there are dogs in most games. In those games, you can usually pet the dogs too. That's like the top requested thing in any game is to be able to pet your little animal. I think rabbits are just a little bit underrepresented, so I think this kind of provides that to that niche of people that really, really like rabbits.
Q: You've actually done a non-Bunnyverse game too, right?
Gauthier: Yes. That was back when I was just learning game development, just like a fun little project I worked on. And yes, it is on Steam as well.
Q: Tell us a little tiny bit about that?
Gauthier: It's called You're Not Special. It's very different from Bunhouse and Cinnabunny. It's a top-down RPG. The premise is that the world is doomed. Only the chosen one can stop the evil from happening, but you're not the chosen one. You're just like some guy. You just follow in his footsteps and he does all the major things. It's very puzzle-based. If you're into puzzles, then yeah, for sure check it out. I would describe it looking back as charmingly amateur.
Q: Do you think there might be a whole rabbit franchise in you?
Gauthier: I don't think so. Don't quote me on this, but I think Cinnabunny will be my last rabbit game. I do plan to update it frequently. I'd love to have the longevity Stardew Valley has, where ConcernedApe just kind of keeps updating even now. I don't think that this will be the end of all, you know, bunny-based updates, but yeah, I think in my next game I would like to branch out from the Bunnyverse.
Gaming for a Cause
Q: With Bunhouse, you partnered with a charity in Grand Rapids, Michigan?
Gauthier: That's right. Small Critter Haven is the name of it. Yeah, I donated a good bunch of money to them. They are awesome and do good work, for sure.
Q: Why did you choose this particular charity?
Gauthier: I wanted something that was kind of close to my home, which at the time was Michigan, and I am passionate about it in general. It’s nondescript activism, where I think there's just so much in the world, there's so much good to be done. I love making a bunny game, it's awesome, and I love the peace that it will bring people. But I think I'd love for that to have more real-world consequences as well. The fact that I was able to give some of that money to a good cause, and that people would buy it and know not only do I get to be a bunny and have fun in this beautiful greenhouse, but I get to help a real-world cause as well, I think it makes the game more meaningful for others as well.
I'm doing something similar for Cinnabunny as well. This one I'm going to be partnering with a charity that provides birthday cakes for children in the foster care system. Not quite animal-based, but still baking-based.
Q: What's that charity called?
Gauthier: The charity is called For Goodness Cakes. They're a nonprofit, and they team up with a bunch of baking volunteers to get birthday cakes for foster kids who might not get them otherwise. You can go to their website if you're into baking and see if there's a chapter near you to bring some baked goods to kids that might need them.
Kickstarting the Bunnyverse
Q: You are launching a Kickstarter later this month, right?
Gauthier: That's correct. March 20.
Q: Bunhouse was also kickstarted?
Gauthier: Yeah, yeah. I didn't really expect anything out of it. I had, I think, 11 Kickstarter followers before I launched it. I took to Twitter and just posted about it, and people really just liked the idea of bunnies running greenhouses. It worked out very well. I'm hoping that Cinnabunny is as successful.
Q: Tell us a little bit about the Kickstarter campaign.
Gauthier: Yeah, with pledge levels, I tried to simplify things a little bit for this one. Having run a Kickstarter before, I have a lot of better ideas for ways to do things. But yeah, there's the standard stuff; there's the early bird reward where you can pay a little bit less and get a copy of Cinnabunny when it releases a digital copy. That's kind of a limited quantity. There's a tier for the default if you just want the game then support this one. There's a tier for if you want to get into the beta test. There's a higher tier for helping me create a decoration that can go in your bakery. Another one is where you can send me pictures of your bunny or ideas of what bunny you want in the game, and I'll make the full pattern, which I also had for Bunhouse as well, and that was a very popular one.
Q: Do you have any stretch goal ideas?
Gauthier: Yes, I do have stretch goal ideas outside of porting to consoles, which the process for was far more painful than I ever thought it would be for Bunhouse. So that will be a bigger stretch goal for sure. But in addition to that, I'd love to include some other fun little gameplay things.
Maybe some cake decorating is on there, like a system for making your cakes, you know, frosting them, specifically putting little decorations on them. I would love to add that if I had time. Then adding some gliders, so you can explore the landscape of the forest. It'd be fun. Yeah, some other miscellaneous things like that. Just little gameplay things that would be cool.
Q: And lastly, is there anything else you'd like to add?
Gauthier: I just love being able to provide peaceful, wholesome, cozy games for people. I hope if you are a bunny person or a baking person, you would check out my Kickstarter? That would mean so much to me.
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Cinnabunny will release on Steam in March 2025.