Lots of new hand-drawn art + visitors arriving on the island

New Features

1. Lots of new hand-drawn art + visitors arriving on the island

I added a lot of hand-drawn illustrations. Visitors can now come to the island, so if you have time, please open the game and check it out!

Right now, a child visitor can appear. I’ll be reading everyone’s feedback to decide future story developments, and whether other visitors will arrive later on.

Bunny also makes tasty grilled skewers for the child visitor.

I hand-drew many new illustrations for the storybook section too. How does the hand-drawn style feel? Does anything need improvement?

2. The mailbox is back

The mailbox feature has returned, now with new artwork I drew myself. There are already more than ten illustrations, and I’ll keep adding more when I have time.

You can now click the mailbox anytime to read old letters directly, instead of waiting for new mail to arrive.

Bug Fixes

Added well water support, fixed mailbox letter ordering, fixed rabbits lining up in shops, and more…

I often say in previous updates that “there isn’t much new, no need to reopen the game.” But this time, it’s a major update.

If you have time, please try opening the game and give me feedback. It would help me a lot. Thank you in advance~

(And if you’re shy, or bad at refusing requests, please don’t feel pressured. It’s completely okay. As an introverted and shy person myself, I really understand the pressure of seeing someone ask for feedback. So if it’s inconvenient, truly don’t worry about it~~)

During the next sale period, I’m planning to try a very deep discount to attract new players, then see how the new-player data performs. (Currently the data isn’t great — the median playtime is only around 20 minutes.)

Please give me feedback if you can~ It would really help~~

The Rest Is Just Casual Chatting~~

Recently I’ve been watching TV dramas where you have to wait several days for the next few episodes. Before every update, I always try guessing what happens next.

Another month has passed since the previous update. Maybe some of you also imagined what this update would be like. I wonder whether this update met your expectations? (o^^o)

Personally, I really like it. But to avoid my own self-obsession affecting my judgment, please give me honest feedback~~

1) Completely redrawn mailbox letters

The mailbox letter screens were all redrawn by hand, and the text was rewritten too.

The mailbox feature is finally back. There are fewer letters than before for now, but I’ll draw more artwork and write more letters later.

I stayed up late for many nights working on this, so if anything looks off, please tell me. It’s relatively easy to revise things right now. If possible, mention exactly which letter and what part looks wrong, and I’ll fix it.

After removing the Van Gogh-related content, I was surprised to discover that people really liked those letters. So I decided to redraw them myself.

There used to be around 30 letters, which meant 30 illustrations. My original plan was to finish all the mailbox art first, then work on the child visitor feature.

Back then, even using AI to generate Van Gogh-style images took forever — endlessly retrying prompts and rerolling results. And I draw extremely slowly…

Maybe after finishing all this artwork, I’ll stop complaining that coding is hard…

At least with programming, once I understand the solution, I can usually implement it relatively quickly. Drawing isn’t like that.

But after drawing for several days, I suddenly realized something:

This is part of the overall story.

Bunny and Pig are real to me. They’re living their lives, writing letters to each other. That process became genuinely fun.

This is what I originally wanted to create — a story about Bunny and Pig.

Suddenly it stopped feeling like “I have to draw.” Instead, I was writing little stories and creating scenes between these characters. The process became enjoyable.

Especially some illustrations that can probably mess with players a little — I’d suddenly remember them at midnight and start happily kicking my legs in bed~

People are least bothered by hard work when they’re doing something mischievous. ⊂((・x・))⊃

About paying tribute to idols vs. expressing yourself

Recently I’ve been reading a book about fan psychology. It talked about how fans sometimes become so focused on talking about their idols that they neglect their own self-expression.

I really do love Van Gogh, and I genuinely wanted to recreate the feeling of Starry Night through effects and visuals.

But in the end, those things were ways of paying tribute to someone else — not expressing myself.

After switching to my own drawings, Bunny’s voice feels much more authentic too.

Bugs Fixed This Time

Whenever I see bug reports or suggestions, my first reaction is always panic. I’m constantly afraid the issue will be beyond my ability to solve.

In actual game development, there are many systems I couldn’t truly implement properly, so I kept moving forward using workaround solutions instead. (Impostor Syndrome.)

Luckily, so far the problems have still been within my abilities.

I often encourage myself by saying: “Don’t get discouraged. Maybe this really is an interesting game. Don’t underestimate yourself.”

1) Unable to place wells

Several years ago, someone reported a bug where wells couldn’t be placed. I never understood it because it never happened on my own computer.

This time, I FINALLY discovered the issue. And fixed it.

Absolute shock!! Screaming!!

Because the playerbase is small, bugs are hard to discover. And if wells couldn’t be placed, the game basically became unplayable — but I had absolutely no idea this problem existed.

No matter how I tested it myself, I never encountered it… until years later.

Thankfully it’s fixed now.

2) Letter bugs + Bunny queueing bug

I tried fixing the Bunny queueing code and ended up refactoring part of the system again.

I thought it would take 1–2 days, maybe 3 at most. Instead, almost an entire week disappeared.

But eventually I fixed it. I sat there happily watching it run, almost tearing up from relief.

This feature was honestly slightly beyond my current skill level, and it’s such a tiny feature that it probably wasn’t worth spending that much time on.

Still, I was really happy after finally getting it working.

Then I slightly adjusted a parameter in a plugin…

…and the entire game completely broke.

And somehow I hadn’t committed my progress to git.

So I had to rollback everything and rewrite it all from scratch.

I seriously wanted to cry.

It felt like a terrible dilemma:

• either upgrade to the newest plugin version and pay a monthly fee,

• or keep using the old unstable bug-ridden version where one crash could make the entire game unplayable.

Unless I completely rewrite that whole system myself — but I no longer have enough time.

Back when I started this project, I didn’t have enough development experience. Now I understand this plugin was a massive trap and I should never have used it.

But it’s too late to back out and rewrite everything myself. I don’t have enough time or energy anymore.

I went to Reddit and saw other developers angrily complaining about the same plugin.

Sigh.

Indie developer stories are all kind of similar. Development is full of obstacles, setbacks, and betrayals. And even after surviving all that, there’s still no guarantee you’ll make a good game.

(No need to comfort me here — almost every developer encounters traps like this. It’s a very common kind of suffering.)

A few days later:

I figured out a new workaround for the plugin bug, rewrote everything again…

…and actually fixed it.

Bunny lining up~ Bunny happy~ I stared at the screen, and I was happy too~

A few days later:

I finished the storybook NPC startup section and testing worked perfectly.

I was about to reuse code from another old project…

…and discovered that old project suddenly wouldn’t open anymore.

Just completely dead. Wouldn’t launch at all.

Hahahaha…

When people become truly desperate, they sometimes start laughing instead.

Luckily, I already knew many game developers go through things like this. I’ve even heard stories of developers losing entire projects permanently.

I know I’m not the worst case.

But I still sat there bitterly laughing for a long time.

“Hahahahahaha… this is so tragic…”

Eventually, upgrading Unity to the newest version fixed it.

3) About Ending the Game

Last time I mentioned eventually ending the game, but please don’t feel too sad about it.

It won’t end this week or this month. I still need to finish the major features first.

We’ll slowly bring this game to its conclusion together through our interactions. Your opinions and feedback will become part of the game permanently.

Right now, the storybook system was implemented in the simplest possible way — not the most efficient way. Depending on feedback, if the storybook becomes very large later on, I may refactor it.

Maybe because I know the game is approaching its ending, I’ve started looking at bugs and technical problems with a strange sadness.

That plugin I mentioned earlier keeps getting more unstable. Sometimes simply clicking to edit something can freeze the entire project permanently.

I’ve had to keep multiple backup copies, manually delete corrupted files from local folders, and use all kinds of weird tricks just to avoid triggering plugin bugs.

But strangely, when I think: “Once this game is finished, I’ll never have to deal with these problems again…”

…I also feel a weird sadness.

I used to hate bugs.

Now it feels like the final episode of a TV series, sadly saying goodbye to the villain. Once the story ends, the villain disappears too.

(Please don’t get overly emotional because of my writing style~~ Everyone feels a little sad when ending a long-term project~~ Awoooo~~)

Creating NPC content has been much slower than I expected.

Especially drawing.

When I’m in “art mode,” I can spend forever on a single image, revising it repeatedly.

Then my rational brain starts screaming: “This isn’t worth it! It’s just a PNG image! You should go back to coding!”

But the artistic side of my brain gets upset. The artistic brain hates compromise.

So I keep having to find ways to emotionally bribe my own brain into being happy enough to continue development.

Recently I’ve been watching romance dramas. Real life has been too miserable lately — I absolutely don’t want realistic stories anymore. I just want happy stories.

Stories where two protagonists each have their own struggles, accidentally meet each other, support one another, solve each other’s life problems together, and eventually reach a happy ending.

I finally survived the painful development phase and prepared to upload the build first, then refine things later based on feedback.

And then…

…the Unity exported build wouldn’t launch.

Hahahahaha…

So tragic.

I KNEW some disaster was waiting for me. I just didn’t expect it to be “the game literally won’t open.”

There weren’t even error messages, so I couldn’t understand what was wrong.

It worked perfectly inside the editor.

Why was I ever so confident that I could smoothly develop a game as a beginner…?

(The real problem was my lack of coding ability, and underestimating how difficult game development actually is. Very common beginner mistakes.)

Thankfully I eventually found the cause: a checkbox setting in a plugin had been set incorrectly.

Because of that setting, the editor displayed errors but still ran fine. After I changed it, the editor stopped showing errors…

…but the exported build completely stopped working.

That plugin is far beyond my level of understanding. I still don’t know why it behaves that way.

Anyway, after switching the checkbox back, the exported game finally worked again.

There are probably still some bugs left.

But I’m planning to rest for a few days before continuing.

There are also a few animations I didn’t finish in time, so I skipped them for now.

I want to see player feedback first, then decide what to polish further.

That’s about it.

I hope you enjoy the new features. The changes are pretty large, and I’m honestly terrified that I introduced bugs I still haven’t discovered.

Nervously waiting for feedback.

Thank you for reading~ ⊂((・x・))⊃