Celestial Games

All the while we have been working on Toxic Bunny HD we have constantly kept ourselves in check about making large sweeping changes to the game play. We really wanted to be as true to the original game as we could be while revamping graphics sounds and so on.

In hindsight this was a mistake.

We knew the current game play could use improvements. We decided not to make those improvements as a question of integrity, staying true to the game. The thing is Toxic Bunny was never about the game play and it was never really about the graphics it was always about breaking the rules and being your own “bunny”. Its filled with anti game patterns and surprises. Surprises that in some places are a bit too surprising without a few sign posts. For example the game has several hidden passages in the first level. I have seen some lets plays that referred to the hidden passages as collision glitches. I can see how we have failed that audience. Its like throwing a surprise party at a friends house jumping our yelling surprise but forgetting the streamers and cake and possibly wearing a hockey mask and holding a bloody knife. Your friend is surprised but not necessarily happily so, and hopefully not carrying a hamster launcher.

Our audience in the 90’s was far more open to this sort of subversive comedy. Less canned laughter less signposting. This is in part I think to the fact doing all that work back then was just about impossible on top of all the rest. But today we have it much easier engines and editing suits. Graphics editors (we don’t have to write our own graphics editing tool) and so on. So we have more time for signposting.

Perhaps not exactly like this ;)

So today we sketched out about 40 core changes to the game we going to make. I won’t be blogging about each change now since some might end up on the cutting floor. Also I should say there are some that would be too high an investment at this late stage and we will rather keep for a new game. There is only so much HD work we can do before it stops been an HD remake after all.

I am hopeful that these changes will be a pleasant set of surprises to our excising fans while allowing us to also appeal to our newer audience, our undiscovered country. Allowing a new generation of people to become their own bunnies.

We remain grateful to all those who have supported us and also taking time to give us feedback on Toxic Bunny HD. In so doing have allowed us to learn more about our audience and how we might best engage with you and hopefully grow as game developers.

– Travis (@tbulford)

*EDIT: Fixed a typo*