Added story book, help page, and visitor buildings.

New Features

1. One-click island reset tools

   You can now remove all buildings (store them) with one click, or remove all plants with one click.

   This makes it much easier to redesign the whole island.

2. Storybook added

   There is now a story tab. The first button in the bottom tab opens it.

   It contains many newly drawn hand-drawn illustrations.

3. Help page added

   A help page has been added for new players to understand how the game works.

   You can find it at the last button in the bottom tab.

4. All AI artwork removed

   Previously the Van Gogh-style 2D paintings used AI-generated assets.

   I have now replaced all of them. There are no AI assets in the game anymore.

5. New visitor buildings

   A visitor treehouse for sleeping and a Bunny barbecue stand have been added.

   However, Bunnies do not barbecue yet — that code has not been written yet.

The Unnecessarily Long Dev Diary That You Really Don’t Need To Read

1. Fixing bugs…

Right after publishing a bug-fix update, I happily went to sleep. Today I played the game myself and discovered a new bug. A very serious bug that could stop the game from continuing.

My blood instantly ran cold…

Even though outside the sun was shining and there was a heat warning.I remembered something my professor once said: "Never suddenly change your answer right before handing in your exam."

Sometimes code was working, and then you suddenly modify something without testing… and everything breaks.

If the code runs, you at least get the minimum score.

If it doesn’t run, you get zero.

Back in school, the professor also said that if your project had a null reference, the whole project got zero. Everyone complained it was too strict. But this time… my bug was also a null error.

And yes — it made the game unable to run.

So… the professor was right. Null is a very serious error.

I started panicking again and regretting everything.

I kept telling myself: “Luckily there are almost no players. Daily active users is maybe one person.”

But I was still nervous. What if someone recommended the game to a friend… and their friend installed it and couldn’t play because of a bug?

Null checks should be basic common sense. In this game, items can be added and removed constantly,

so references easily become null. But somehow I always forget.

Anyway, it’s fixed now and re-uploaded.

One day later

I was happy for a few hours. Then I discovered another bug. If the player sets Bunny work hours to the lowest setting, Bunnies would never go play, because the time accumulation logic was written incorrectly.

I jumped up in shock and started hunting for the cause. Typos in normal writing are fine. But typos in code can be painful.

Some places that should have been:

yield return new WaitForSeconds(3f);

I accidentally wrote:

yield return 3;

The game still ran, so I didn’t notice until today.

A few days later

I thought all bugs were fixed. I happily prepared to drink something… Then I discovered a save notification bug. I was completely stunned. And worse — I had no idea how to fix it. It was beyond what I could understand.

Even asking AI wasn’t very helpful. AI can solve common mistakes experienced engineers make. But my code is written in very non-standard ways, and the mistakes are often… unusual.

I stared at the code for a long time. Couldn’t find the problem.

Then I lay on the floor for a while in despair. Even my drink didn’t taste good anymore.

Eventually I decided: If I can’t find it, I’ll rewrite the entire function.

If the rewritten version still has the same bug, then it’s beyond my ability and I’ll just apologize to players. Luckily, rewriting fixed it.

When coding skill is low, it’s easy to make reference mistakes or logic errors without realizing it. Fortunately it’s fixed now.

A broken save system might be the most frustrating bug of all.

A few days later again

I was enjoying drawing. Then suddenly I discovered another bug in saving and deleting items

that appears when dragging items rapidly. I jumped up and fixed it.

The process was so painful that I don’t want to remember it.

Now I understand why so many documentaries show filmmakers solving unexpected problems during production.

You walk toward the stars, but the ground is full of mud and thorns.

2. Help page added

Players suggested adding a tutorial long ago. The reason I didn’t add one earlier was simple: I didn’t know what the final game would become. The early version on Steam was not the gameplay I actually wanted.

Since the mechanics kept changing, any tutorial I wrote would quickly become outdated. Now the game is slowly approaching completion, so it’s finally time to add tutorials.

Please let me know if anything in the help page should be improved.

3. Removed the mailbox and some assets

Although Van Gogh’s works are in the public domain, I understand that many people dislike AI art. AI has already discouraged many artists from creating. So I removed all Van Gogh AI assets.

When AI first appeared a few years ago, people were excited to see their favorite artists “come back to life”. But later we realized it could harm the creator ecosystem.

Creating something original takes a long time. Copying takes seconds. That makes life harder for artists.

Maybe new systems will appear in the future to protect creators. But since I plan to finish the game soon, and I may not maintain it long term, I decided to remove that part entirely.

The Van Gogh gallery has now become Pig’s Gallery, displaying some of my own drawings. The mailbox system was originally tied to the Van Gogh paintings and letters. Without the paintings, the letters no longer made sense. So I removed the mailbox as well.

(update: Thanks for the nice feedback! I will add the mailbox back in the future, and I will include some of my drawings in the bunnies’ letters.)

I also removed the Pig character model for now. Pig may remain a character who is mentioned in the story, but does not appear directly. Pig still has a home and a spaceship, but Pig might not appear physically.

Early players have witnessed a lot of additions and removals during development. It’s quite an interesting journey.

4. I started working on the story

The hand-drawn parts are really fun. My drawing skills aren’t great — my lines shake and wobble. But drawing makes me happy. And that’s enough.

I haven’t drawn for a very long time. My iPad and Apple Pencil are old now. My acrylic paints and brushes have been sitting dusty on the shelf. Fortunately I chose a 3D development path, right?

Sometimes I look at beautiful 2D indie games and feel very jealous. I can’t draw perfect lines. But drawing is still fun. There’s something called art therapy — you draw without worrying about whether it’s good or bad. It helps you relax.

Maybe if I keep drawing again,my drawings will slowly improve. If that happens, later illustrations in the game may look better than the early ones. That means the art style might be a bit inconsistent. But… That’s human. Humans are not perfect.

5. The game is slowly reaching the end

Honestly, I’m lucky. Even though I was exploring blindly, the game somehow came together and runs. But it’s very exhausting. The emotional roller coaster of fixing bugs every day is scary.

I remember my professor once saying:If you try very hard and things still don’t work,you might consider another career.There are many interesting jobs in the world.

If no matter what I do I cannot defeat bugs…maybe I shouldn’t push myself too hard. Life shouldn’t only about fighting bugs. It should also have poetry and distant fields.

So I decided to slowly finish this game. There will be a small story at the end. After learning the Bunny Island skills, the story will conclude.

The game industry losing me is like a fish losing its bicycle. ⊂((・x・))⊃

But this is the first game I’ve ever made, and maybe also the last. So I will finish it properly.

Please don’t worry too much about me.

The most positive part is simple: I wanted to make a game. And I actually made one. Real players played it. That alone is already a very good ending.

Many indie games are abandoned or never find players. So please don’t comfort me too much.

Before, fixing a serious bug could take 3–5 days, sometimes a week. Now I can usually fix them within a few hours. When I see a bug now, I can roughly guess where the problem is, reproduce it, and fix it.

So after being beaten by bugs repeatedly… my coding skills improved a little.

Another reason

A Unity plugin I bought recently announced it will change from one-time purchase to monthly subscription. If I stop paying monthly, the project may eventually stop opening. That surprised my poor wallet. Rewriting that part of the code would be an enormous workload. So I decided not to upgrade the plugin, use the old version, and finish the game before the plugin stops working.

I really love Blender. It’s a free 3D software that anyone can use, even poor developers like me. I never have to worry about losing access to my own work.

I told you that I am preparing to finish the game because chatting with you sometimes feels like talking with unseen friends.

When I was a child, I hated when a friend suddenly transferred schools without saying goodbye.

Of course… maybe the story will still surprise us. Maybe the game will suddenly become popular,

earn money, and I can buy plugins and keep making games.

So don’t worry. In the end, the work itself will decide the ending.

6. Bunny Barbecue Stand & Visitor Treehouse

The Bunny barbecue stand and the visitor treehouse look pretty nice, right?

To add visitor NPCs, I need to:

• write a lot of code

• build character meshes

• rig skeletons

• create animations

It’s a lot of tedious work. But I like watching Bunnies grilling barbecue. Bunny barbecue must taste great.

So I told myself: “Imagine Bunnies grilling food for little visitors. That will be fun.” So I built the barbecue stand first, and the visitor characters later.

That makes the development process more enjoyable.

The process includes modeling, rigging, animation, coding, save system changes…a lot of repetitive work.

During this time my brain keeps arguing with itself:

One part says: Nobody is playing anyway. Just lie down and scroll your phone.

Another part says: Keep developing. If you don’t write it, nobody will. There will be no bunnies.

Another part says: Just finish this one last project.

Right now the part that wants to finish the game is winning. But I am very tired. Originally I wanted to finish the visitor characters before releasing this update. But I was too tired. So I released this update halfway through development.

Visitor modeling, animation, and code are currently in progress.

If you have ideas, please leave a comment.

That’s all for this update.

I hope you enjoy the hand-drawn illustrations.

Thank you for talking with me.