Bunhouse
I am an absolute sucker for building games. Any game where I get to faff about for a bit, then point to what I’ve spent the last couple of hours on with a triumphant “look what I did” face is a good game in my book.
I built a messy collection of pots!
Bunhouse is a building game. You play as a cute bunny (mine is named Larry!) running a garden business. You buy seeds, sell plants, and design a lovely greenhouse full of happy plants. It moves at the pace you want it to move, and is a very sweet and casual take on the genre.
Not to mention that you can’t go wrong when you are a bunny.
Larry is a special bunny
However, this is not to say that Bunhouse is without issue. Many building games or farming simulators have a multiplayer option, but not a multiplayer requirement. Bunhouse has the same multiplayer option, but feels very much more like it needs multiple players to be a complete game.
As with any building game or farming simulator, there are issues of scale. In order to make more money, a business has to grow larger, and to grow larger, it both has to invest in physical scale and automation scale. In Bunhouse, the player can buy as many pots as they’d like, as well as an automatic waterer and fertiliser. The potential for scaling is there, but is held back by a selling mechanic that requires carrying each pot to the sellpoint individually, and which requires carrying each seed individually to the pot. The limiting factor ceases to be money, and instead becomes time, of which there is a distinctly limited quantity.
All this to say that I took a cute game about plants and bunnies and got upset that it wouldn’t let me Do A Capitalism.
“Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.” - Larry the Farmer Bunny
This isn’t necessarily a slight against the game. I have a habit of taking pleasant escapist gardening simulators and immediately trying to exploit them for all they’re worth. For some games, that results in a more interesting experience than others. For Bunhouse, it means ramming up against the walls of the mechanics and recognising that, without friends, there is a limit to scaling that can’t be breeched. Perhaps someday I will get friends. Until then, Larry the bunny will content himself to nibble on the excess plants and dream of a mass greenhouse cycling through ever greater production.
Developer: Reky Studios
Genre: Simulation
Year: 2021
Country: United States
Language: English
Play Time: As Long As You Like