Screenshot by Bonus Action
In cozy gaming, several activities are basically a given. Farming, fishing, community building, and cooking are cornerstones of the genre from Stardew Valley to Animal Crossing and beyond. Reky Studios’ Cinnabunny delivers all of these activities, with a much-needed additional twist. You’re a bunny.
Yes, you read that correctly. In Cinnabunny, you play as a bunny who leaves home to use their farming and baking skills to earn enough carrots to help their family find a new place to live. The game features foraging, baking, community building, bird watching, and more, all while hopping around the cozy world as a customizable bunny avatar. It also has a co-hop mode so you can join up with your favorite fellow bunny to get things done.
I had high hopes going into Cinnabunny. Baking is one of my favorite game mechanics, and doing it as a bunny is the added cuteness we all need in our lives. Thankfully, Cinnabunny manages to deliver all that and more in a beautifully rendered world full of new things to discover.
Key Details
- Developer: Reky Studios
- Platform: PC via Steam
- Price: $24.99
- Review Code Provided: Yes
Build-a-Bunny with Just The Right Amount of Customization
When it comes to cozy gaming, I want to be able to customize my avatar to a certain extent. But at the same time, I don’t want to spend hours in a complicated character creation tool before I can get to planting seeds and baking bread. Cinnabunny lets you choose some of your bunny avatar’s basic features without getting too bogged down in the process. You pick your ear shape, facial expression, and fur pattern for a bun that feels like your own without too much fuss.
As you dig into the game, more cutomization options for your bun and their bakery will present themselves. In the town square, you can buy flooring and wallpaper to change up your bakery’s appearance, while also having access to various furniture items to make the space your own. There’s also a variety of hats (including dragon wings) that you can get to give your bunny self a little touch of whimsy.
For me, Cinnabunny strikes the right balance of letting you customize your character and world without bogging you down in the details. If you’re not super into decorating, the game doesn’t force it on you. Your only required items are those you’ll need for the ever-expanding catalog of bakes. Same goes for hats. You can ignore them or grab the ones that strike your fancy, but they’re never required for quests or objectives.
The houses are as adorable as the bunnies, as well. Each one looks a bit like a hobbit house from the outside. If you venture in to your neighbor bun’s homes, you’ll see how they’ve decorated their space to reflect their personality. Even if you aren’t into decorating your own home, visiting those around you can be a fun way to spend time in this game, and you might even pick up a few new quests while you do.
Robust Gift-Giving System with True Rewards
Like many cozy games, Cinnabunny incorporates giving gifts to your neighbors to build relationships. But while you can ignore this entirely in many games, it is an essential component to progress here. Finding the perfect baked good for each of your neighbors is how you’ll unlock new recipes and the tools to make them.
The gift-giving system gives gamers a challenge they’ll need to pay attention to solve. Each bun has various preferences, and some are pickier than others. Cinnabunny gives you a journal to jot down notes as you uncover each bun’s likes and dislikes, with the goal of finding the perfect baked good gift for everyone.
This isn’t straightforward, as some buns need several different components before they’re satisfied. It takes a good bit of trial and error, as well as diligent notetaking, to solve. But the rewards? Impeccable. The animation when you find the perfect gift is adorable, and you unlock a new baked good and the required materials whenever you see it.
On occasion, this mechanic can feel a bit frustrating. Because you can’t unlock new recipes until you’ve found the perfect gift for each bun, it can be a bit of a roadblock to the next step.
However, it’s a fun puzzle to solve, one that gives you a bit more focus with your baking than you might find in some, more aimless cozy games. Ultimately, I like the level of challenge and complexity this gift-giving mechanic offers. The journal making you take your own notes is a fun way to keep the player engaged, giving you something satisfying to do even when you give a less-than-perfect gift to that hard-to-please bun.
Satisfying Progression That Could Use a Few Minor Tweaks
In Cinnabunny, you’ve got a variety of side skills and tasks to accomplish while building your bakery. Players will be able to forage mushrooms, mine salt, take photos of birds, and round up recyclying robots from an experiment gone wrong. For each of these side activities, as well as the core focus of baking, you have a skill level. Increasing your skill unlocks new items to discover, giving the game a satisfying feeling of progression. The more mushrooms you forage, the more new varities you’ll uncover. The same with snapping pictures of birds and using the net gun to grab recycling.
Similarly, you’ll gain access to new areas of the map as you earn Carrots to spend on community projects. It’s exciting to head to the Post Office to pay for an expansion of your little bun’s world, unlocking the mines and the forest to find new ways to spend your day between bakes. Each new area gives you new skills and ways to level them up, giving you the sense that the game expands the more you play.
That said, I did find myself a bit frustrated by the progression at times. Mainly, the community quest board asking me to accomplish things well before I had unlocked the ability to do them. I’d have liked to see these requests come more frequently, and with better relation to where I was actually at in the game. I’ve had two different requests for Pink Salt since I started and have yet to figure out what level or mining skill or in-game location I need to reach before I can check off the requests.
Final Score – 9/10
Despite a few minor snags with progression pacing, Cinnabunny is every bit the cozy delight those cute bunny graphics promise. The animation for each and every task is absolutely adorable, and I never tire of seeing my little bunny avatar hop to it with their daily tasks. The world is equally wholesome, with beautifully animated grass, birds, and nature to put you at ease as you settle into your day as a bunny baker. And did I mention the bunny yoga? Because yeah, the bunnies do yoga together in the town square.
If you’re looking for your next cozy baking and farming sim that works well as a solo or co-op adventure, Cinnabunny will almost certainly fit the bill. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find the right combination of flavors for the pickiest of bunnies so I can see that look of pure joy on their faces.
**Bonus Action was provided with a Steam copy of Cinnabunny for the purpose of this review**
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