After only a few minutes with Bunny Park, I was ready to throw in the towel, convinced this was one of the worst games I’ve played in a long time. But actually, I’m glad I decided to stick with it.
I’ll go out on a limb and say I won’t be the only person to make such a harsh first impression. Bunny Park isn’t exactly cutting edge in any way. This very simple park building game throws you into a field filled with weeds, stones, plants and logs. And a couple of bunnies. Clicking on objects deletes them or moves them around. You can pet a bunny. Aw, cute. You can earn coins by removing weeds and unwanted stones, and you can spend those coins on new decorations. That’s it. That’s the game.
There’s no real sense of progression to Bunny Park because everything is available to you at the outset. Your only barrier is the amount of coins you have. And so your only driving force is to keep earning coins. It’s tedious work, simply moving a cursor around the screen and clicking on objects. Click, click, click. Yawn.
So, yes, you can probably see why I was eager to turn the game off so quickly. It’s not much fun in those early minutes. But stick with it long enough to earn a few thousand coins, and you’ll start to see the little sparks of joy that Bunny Park holds close to its chest. Buy butterflies – the game’s answer to autonomous workers – and debris will be cleared for you automatically, with coins magically appearing in your balance without you needing to lift a finger. It’s only at this point that you can begin to forget about the busywork and concentrate on what you were here for to begin with: to build a beautifully cute Bunny Park.
It’s a nice feeling when your creation starts coming together. Lay paths, plant flowers and shrubs, and place vegetable patches so your bunnies have something to snack on. You can expand your land area, too, by buying empty plots all around your starting position. Before long you’ll have a huge, thriving park, and you’ll feel proud of what you’ve made.
But while my enjoyment of Bunny Park may have exceeded my initial expectations, it’d be a stretch to call this a “good game” in any way. There’s a lot to be desired, particularly on console. Playing with a controller is sluggish and frustrating; this is clearly a game where a mouse cursor would be king. Navigation isn’t very user-friendly, and moving around the screen is laborious thanks to the oh-so-slow speed of the cursor. You do become accustomed to it over time, but it should be better to begin with. Particularly considering that the PS5 version I’ve reviewed costs four times as much as the PC version (£15.99 versus £3.99).
There’s also the fact that you’ll have probably exhausted everything there is to do in Bunny Park in a few hours. In less than three hours, I’d expanded my park as far as it could go and nicely decorated it with a varied choice of items and plants. Sure, I could have stuck more in there, but once you reach that point, there’s nothing to do except occasionally pet a bunny and sit around while coins automatically roll into your bank account.
Stick with Bunny Park past its opening moments, and you’ll probably have a decent time with it. Don’t expect any real depth, though, but if the idea of a very simple simulation game where you can design your own cute garden appeals to you, you’ll at least get two or three hours’ enjoyment here.
Bunny Park Review – GameSpew’s Score
