LifeisXbox’s Bunny Factory duo review |
Alexis’ perspective: My temperature is rising… My blood pressure is dropping. I feel as if I am about to faint. What has happened for things to get this far… I can hear the soft laughter in the background… It is coming closer. Oh god… Thunk… Bonk… I jump into my bunny bot and try to escape. Arranging complex puzzles, I try to further my progress so that I can escape this dreaded nightmare. But, to no avail. Behind me I can hear the mechanical sliding of a door, followed by the clunking thuds of another bunny bot. And it is then that I knew… I’m done for. I slowly turn around to see it standing there, glaring at me. There stood… Maui.
Maui’s perspective: I can see the fear in bunny Alexis’ eyes, and I absolutely love it. I thrive on it, muahahaha! As I come closer, I get ready to try and help him out with his complex puzzles. But it’s no use, I’m too tired to think so I decide to kick his little bunny ass, again and again. I can feel his annoyance getting bigger, and my smile getting larger. I am so ready for this!
Uck. Yes, it has finally happened. I and my arch-nemesis are doing… a duo review. So let us introduce you to this cute little puzzle game called Bunny Factory, brought to us by DillyFrame. This game centers around sentient rabbits that have operatable robots. You are dropped into a factory that has fully shut down. It is your task to bring back life in this desolate factory by solving pattern puzzles. Want to discover what this hippity hopping game is all about? Then prepare your bunny butt! Because this is our duo review of… Bunny Factory!
We played Bunny Factory for 6 hours on the Xbox Series X. This game is also available on PC.
What we liked!
- Put your thinking cap on | In Bunny Factory, you’ll be solving 100 color-coded puzzles, which puts your brain to work. It’s a playful way of keeping your mind sharp, which I could definitely appreciate (and I’m sure Alexis could use). Even though it took me a little getting used to, I did really enjoying the thinking that was required for Bunny Factory. I also know I won’t be playing this after a long day of work because then my brain needs to take a break. Anyway, the puzzles weren’t too difficult, but not too easy either. The added ‘challenge’ that comes with also having to color the blocks correctly, was faint, but it kept the game from getting too repetitive in the beginning. I liked how in-sync Alex and I were from the start, each went for a different color, and actually worked very well together. Who would’ve guessed, right?
- You can kick each other | When I read the description for Bunny Factory, the thing that stood out for me personally was the ability to kick your teammates. Somehow, when I told Alexis about this, he wasn’t as excited as me. How weird, right?! The actual kicking is pretty fun. When you kick your friend, they slowly stumble around for a few seconds, unable to do anything. It all happens kind of in slow motions, so I could enjoy Alexis’ defenseless bunny to the max. I ended up using this feature a lot, and had a blast doing so! Oh, you can also wave to each other but of course, this is less interesting than kicking.
- Increasing difficulty | The game starts fairly easily with blocks in just one color, and the puzzle itself isn’t that hard to solve. Soon, another color will be added. And a little while later, there will be colorless blocks! Before adding the blocks to the correct tile, you’ll need to put them through a machine in order to get the right color. As the game continues, the puzzles gradually become more challenging.
Somewhere between
- Song | There really isn’t much to say about this. It’s the same song, over and over and over. On a loop. My tip? Turn off the music in the in-game settings, and just play your own Spotify playlist! You’ll keep your sanity that way. Because trust me, after a while constantly hearing the same notes over and over. You’ll turn into a dull boy. A pity, they could’ve added a few fun songs, but decided on just adding one song, put on a forever loop..! There really isn’t more to say about it!
- Repetitive | While Bunny Factory‘s puzzles exist out of you getting blocks, placing them in the correct spots to fill the entire blueprint up, and then placing your reward block (if you’re successful) on its corresponding socket to unlock the next puzzle? It gets really boring, really fast. This doesn’t get aided when the puzzles go all innovative on your ass and force you to color dye colorless blocks. And it’s not as if this is an instant thing either. Nope, you got to bring the block to a dyer, wait for it to finish, and then take it to the puzzle. Got one wrong? That’s okay buddy! Just take it out and re-dye it… This is one of those placebo effects to artificially lengthen what would otherwise be a short game, and tag on a few extra hours by adding filler activities like this. And that’s pretty much the entire mechanic of Bunny Factory. Over, and over,… The worst part is when you play in solo mode, because everything takes twice as long, and running back and forth is quite dreadful.
- Today‘s color Brown | *blinks*. Uhm? I wonder if there was a bargain sale for either rusty panels or every shade of brown imaginable in the hardware store, because god damn. It’s the dominant color throughout the biggest part of the game and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I couldn’t bear to play for long each time because it actually was quite hard to look at, and that for a color that isn’t bright at all. Also, who the heck has ever seen a factory that exists entirely out of brown!
- Local co-op | I felt a little disappointed I could only play with Alexis. Not because it’s Alexis, but because I would love to give Bunny Factory a try with my boyfriend. Unfortunately, there is no possibility available to play local multiplayer. You either play in solo mode or in online multiplayer. I guess maybe the developers think a split-screen kind of thing wouldn’t be ideal here, but still, having friends over and puzzling through a game together is something I do enjoy.
What we disliked
- Peer-to-peer | I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this one, trust me. I really did. But why is it that in this day and age, those modern games are still being released with a peer-to-peer connection! When I and Maui connected with each other, one thing became immediately obvious. We were lagging like crazy. And it’s not as if we are both on a dial-up connection. Well, I’m not. It wouldn’t surprise me if cheapskate Maui didn’t get the best connection she possibly could have. So I came to the only logical conclusion. Since we both in solo didn’t have this problem, when we connected to each other, my lag was surprisingly worse than hers and the lobby system is where you invite others to join you? That we were working with a peer-to-peer system. Her lag was induced to her modem throttling her speed, and me getting the worst of it all. One tip DillyFrame? If you want to work with a co-op system? Make sure you have dedicated servers. The lag was so bad at times, that I couldn’t make certain puzzle moves, without being warped all over the place. And Maui took this opportunity to continuously kick me in the butt.
How long to beat the story | 8 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 3-4 hours
Similar with | Any other co-op puzzle game out there.
CONCLUSION
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