"BUNNEH"
Pâquerette Down the Bunburrows is a Puzzle Game byBunstack about a girl named Pâquerette on a quest to collect as many bunnies as possible from the local cave. To do so, she has to bait a bunny to run away from her into a dead end of a maze or into a cage.
If two bunnies happen to overlap, they stack and act as one bunny, while the game automatically collects a "baby bunny" as a bonus. The complexity of the puzzles increases exponentially, as the game requires getting every possible baby bunny as well. The game has many secret mechanics that allow moving bunnies between levels.
The demo was released on Itch.io on April 27, 2021 for the Ludum Dare 48 jam, with the full version released for PC stores on August 2, 2023. A bunny raising sim spin-off called Horribunnies is in development.
Pâquerette Down the Bunburrows provides examples of:
- Alertness Blink: The bunnies make chirp sound with ! overhead when they spot the player and can escape.
- Argument of Contradictions: Pâquerette and Ophéline have a back and forth about who should hold the Bundar until the latter settles with a blunt "no".
- Big Boo's Haunt: The Spooky Bunburrow has signs of decay and has bunny ghosts in the foreground. The Forgotten one has candles and bats.
- Catching Some Z's: If a bunny gets stuck in a loop it will fall asleep and show Z signs.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Pâquerette has an odd single-minded obsession with bunnies. When saddened by the thought of having to release the bunnies, she again gets excited by the idea of re-capturing them.
- The Collector: Pâquerette has an unhealthy obsession with getting the bunnies and getting every crossbreed of bunnies. When she senses cat hair in one of the cages she feels repulsed.
- Convenient Cranny: Solo Bunnies can enter small tunnels and automatically come out from the other side, but Pâquerette can't go into them. If there is no path for her to the other side, the bunny becomes inaccessible.
- Deadpan Snarker: Ophéline gladly helps Pâquerette out, but she does remark how ridiculous everything is whenever she can.
- Developer's Foresight:
- The proper solutions to many puzzles are often counterintuitive, including but not limited to using alternative methods of entering a level to change Pâquerette's starting position or breaking walls without using a pickaxe.
- It's possible to use the pickaxe to get out of bounds, which the game presents as a glitchy level. Some are not empty.
- Explosive Breeder: A pair of overlapping bunnies produce a baby instantaneously, which is automatically collected. Leading a bunny into a bunny stack creates that stack's size amount of extra babies.
- Failed a Spot Check: A bunny can be surprisingly smart and will ignore a Treat placed in a dead end, but will otherwise beeline for it and then readjust its position. On the other hand, a bunny will stand still even as Pâquerette is visibly blocking paths until she gets close enough.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: Entering the return elevator from the Forgotten (5th and last visible from the start) Bunburrow shows the credits despite there clearly being more things to do and the game continues without a fanfare.
- Foreshadowing: The 7th level shows a bunny in an inaccessible area, hinting at future methods of travel.
- Glitch Entity: There exist bunnies in some out of bounds areas that flicker between every bunny variant. Pâquerette reveals that they are also The Unpronounceable - even trying to mention one results in a garbled, ever-changing mess of characters that causes her dialogue portrait to begin cycling colors as well.
- Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: Pâquerette's head takes up a third of the body in the title screen and game cover art. In-game sprite's head takes up more than half of the character.
- Hand Wave:
- Returning to a level resets the layout and uncollected bunnies, even if those same bunnies were visible on the screen you just came from. Pondering how bunnies manage to return so quickly, Pâquerette thinks they're just "good nyoomers".
- Bunnies don't mate in the pen because they don't feel like it, and it would also skip most of the game.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: Pâquerette generally explains the controls to the player.
- Honor Before Reason: Pâquerette excuses her inability to move while a bunny is moving as being polite and letting them finish their turn.
- Hub Level: The surface has the access to every Bunburrow and Ophéline provides info on bunnies and upgrades.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Pâquerette asks Ophéline to call one bunny by "they" instead of "it" because they are "living creatures".
- Interface Spoiler: Checking the save menu will show the % of bunnies captured (not counting babies), and still having about 35% after completing all main Bunburrows should raise an eyebrow.
- Invisibility: There is one invisible bunny in the middle area.
- Lethal Lava Land: The aptly-named Hell is a fire themed area with unique fire tiles that prevent placing items.
- Lured into a Trap: Pâquerette can place trapboxes at strategic places. A bunny won't be able to move if it runs into one, but it will choose another path when possible. This can be used to alter the level layout and the pathfinding.
- Mad Scientist: Ophéline unapologetically does some experiments on bunnies offscreen, but Pâquerette doesn't want to hear about it. Her coat is also filled with scalpels and needles.
- Meaningful Name: Pâquerette means "Daisy", as in the flower she wears in her hair.
- Metapuzzle: Beside normal solutions, most captures require manipulating bunnies to go to other levels and even other bunburrows.
- Railroading: Twice Pâquerette refuses to go on until the player checks the new upgrade.
- Remembered I Could Fly: Pâquerette on separate occasions suddenly remembers she has a trapbox, pickaxe, treats, and shovel to progress. The amount that can be used differs in each level though.
- Retraux: The game is stylized as something that could be played on Game Boy Color.
- Robot Me: Ophéline creates Le Bunbot, a robot version of Pâquerette, which acts as an upgrade to instantly re-capture previously collected bunnies.
- Shout-Out:
- After reading Ophéline's note to not clog the elevator with fur, Pâquerette comments that the sign can't stop her even if she can read.
- Achievement System:
- "I saw the bunny vent, sus"
- "Bunny Instrumentality Project"
- "Hazbun Hotel"
- "High-Bunneh Renmei"
- "The Bunos Principle"
- Because water games: "Return of the Obra Bunn":Enter the Sunken Bunburrow.
- "Extreme Makeover: Bunburrow Edition"
- "Bunella Buni Bunoka Bunica"
- "BUNY IS FLEE, TRAP IS CATCH":
PQRT IS HAPPY - Super Not-Drowning Skills: The Sunken Bunburrow has a water filter and bubbles in the foreground. It has no effect on bunnies or Pâquerette except for allegedly making the fur wet. When asked by Ophéline, Pâquerette claims to be holding breath the entire time.
- Super-Senses: Pâquerette can somehow sense a dead end in the tutorial despite not seeing it and not being able to see the entire level. She can also smell bunnies through walls.
- Top-Down View: The player can see the entire level, but bunnies can't. This means bunnies can run into dead ends or enter tunnels with Pâquerette on the other side. Conveniently, bunnies keep no memory of the level layout.
- Variable Mix: When inactive, the music becomes more subdued.
- Wham Shot: After getting the pickaxe in the Hay Bunburrows the player can easily check that all five Bunburrows are actually sides of the same map, meaning bunnies can be paired with bunnies from other regions.
- What the Hell, Player?: Trying to use a pickaxe on a bunny will give a "No" achievement instead.
- Warp Whistle: Some levels contain an elevator, allowing Pâquerette to return to them from the surface. She can also return to the surface at any time after a certain point.
