Bunni: How We First Met is an incredibly simple resource management game that never really gets too busy or complicated. The mechanics in the game are easy to pick up, and the world size and variety of items offer just the right amount of variety to keep you bouncing from one area to another to check on your workers and further expand your dominion. It may seem simple by genre standards, but simple is something that’s certainly welcome in a world of traditionally all-consuming resource sims.
Bunni: How We First Met is an incredibly simple resource management game that never really gets too busy or complicated. The mechanics in the game are easy to pick up, and the world size and variety of items offer just the right amount of variety to keep you bouncing from one area to another to check on your workers and further expand your dominion. It may seem simple by genre standards, but simple is something that’s certainly welcome in a world of traditionally all-consuming resource sims.
As the game begins you’ll awaken on a small island, all alone save for a helpful ghost. The island was once populated with bunni’s such as yourself, and the ghost will serve as your tutorial to help you restore your land to its previous glory. You’ll quickly discover your first set of resources — a forest, a mill, and a bunni house. You’ll use the bunni house to make bunnis and put them to work at the mill harvesting the forest. It’s this simple three-step dynamic that defines almost everything you’ll be doing in Bunni: How We First Met.
Harvesting materials like wood, rock and gold isn’t all you’ll be doing in the game. These resources will be spent to do things like open up new areas, build stores that offer new items, and help fend off the occasional deer or monster. New little pieces of gameplay evolve as you unlock new sections of the game. As time goes on you’ll be introduced to fruit trees that will feed your bunni’s and provide bonuses, new characters that you can interact with and solve teeny tiny quests for, and decorations that will improve the overall look of the place. These little introductions of new twists help to keep things moving along at a good pace without ever feeling stale.
The gameplay never really changes all that drastically, but there’s enough here to keep things fun for as long a period of time as you’re looking to commit. The only real downside here is the lack of payoff. Bunni: How We First Met doesn’t really offer any sort of a long term goal and it never really ends. There are 24 short term goals in the game that they refer to as “motes,” but they don’t really provide the big picture story that’s needed here.
You’ll earn these motes for accomplishing things like opening a certain kind of store, buying gifts for your girlfriend or visiting the Bunni forums. Collecting these motes helps to give the game a sense of purpose, but once you’ve done that there’s really nowhere left to go. You can continue harvesting and battling deer, but there’s not much point. The problem with Bunni is that the game lacks any kind of cohesive story or closure, so you never really know when to stop or what to do once you have all the motes. While there is one big event towards the end, it’s just not enough to make you feel like it’s part of a larger story.
Fans of other simple resource games like A Kingdom for Keflings or Little King Story will feel right at home with Bunni: How We First Met. It’s a fun little way to pass the time, even if the gameplay isn’t purpose-driven. The lack of a “big picture” approach definitely hurts Bunni, but not so much that you should skip it. Even without a destination, you’ll likely enjoy the ride that Bunni: How We First Met has to offer.
