Stupid Rabbits for Android Press Release

Edit: This is among the most thorough Press Releases I've received.

In brief


“Stupid Rabbits” is a new arcade-puzzle game, developed by an indie Russian software studio Mobiquest (http://mobiquest.ru, note: Russian language website). Released independently.

The game takes players through a number of short puzzle levels, where they must combine thought, precision and good timing to lead a variable number of rabbits from level starting point to the exit. Physics-based motion adds a spark of realistic qualities and extra replay value to the game.

Toon-style graphics and funny sounds accompany bunnies along the way.

Plot

Although the game itself is a bit scarce on how and why the bunnies are lost and need saving, there’s actually a serious plot behind the sufferings of these cute little mammals…

Grandpa Rabbit was taking a hike in the woods with a considerable number of his grandsons. The little bastards were sneaking here and there until they encountered a strange-looking Hat in which, of course, they jumped quickly and thoughtlessly just to find themselves lost inside the magic world of the Hat.

The bunny-grandchildren were all dispatched in different places of the Hat-world. In each of them there’s a Magic Exit Hat, which takes them back home.
Gameplay core

The player starts each level with a few bunnies (2-3 is the most common set) and a number of gadgets. Initially the bunnies start all in one place together, while on later levels they start in different parts of the level so that the player will have to use a greater attention span to control the situation.

Levels consist mostly of multiple grassy platforms with trees small to huge, and err… more platforms. If a bunny falls down from the platform into the deadly bushes at the very bottom, it dies. If a bunny falls down from one platform to another and the falling height was serious enough – it dies too. That’s about it. So the primary concern of the player will be keeping the bunnies out of harm’s way by not letting them fall down too hard or too far.

To sweeten things up there are three juicy carrots on each level. However getting each carrot is usually associated with a high amount of bunny-risk.

Now, the user has a number of “gadgets”, which include bunnypults (like a catapult, but for bunnies), wooden sticks, rockets, haystacks, stop signs, air fans and so on… (more gadgets will be revealed in coming updates).

Each of 12 authored levels (more to come in updates very soon, a matter of days, actually) can be played through in just two or three minutes. However, before a level can be successfully completed, it must be “solved”: the player must find out in which places the bunny-helping gadgets must be placed, so that all of the bunnies make it safely to level exit.

Once the player has completed the level, he or she may want to play it once again to achieve the perfect level score result, players have to collect three carrots, scattered across the level in places, that can’t be easily reached by bunnies without a specific and precise gadget placement layout.

The game was developed with best casual gameplay practices in mind, so a usual session will last for just about 5-10 minutes and won’t be too demanding of the player. But harder levels will, of course, call some amount of sweat from you.

Extra features

Initial levels include graphic tutorials on the bunny-saving basics to help newbie gamers. The controls themselves are pretty intuitive with touch-based inertial scrolling and pinch zoom and just a few buttons. Phone menu buttons is used to call the in-game menu.

A notable option is the level of detail setting. As the game supports even older 1.6 devices, this option allows users with low-end devices (e.g. HTC Hero) deny themselves a few bells and whistles to win more FPS.

Dev Story

Mobiquest is serial startup company does various sorts of software development and consulting and employs a number of people. This game, however, was developed by Mobiquest founding team only – Mike Urinson and Denny Kolesnichenko in about a month.

The starting idea was just a brief insight during a lunch discussion and the actual development processes started short after. Gameplay concept though changed quite a bit in the process, as initially we wanted to employ the Lemming’s (one of the prototypes of the game) principle directly – bunnies would have been assigned roles of digger, paratrooper, bomber etc. The gadget placement concept was invented later and caught on as a more innovative approach.

No advertising budget is available for the game so it’s growing organically ever since launch.
Game Art

Every single piece of game art is authentic. Most of the elements are vector graphics, so an HD version of the game is coming soon.

Technology Components

Stupid Rabbits is developed using AndEngine (open-source Android OpenGL engine) and Box2D (open-source cross-platform physics engine). Both projects are absolutely awesome and we owe much to their respective communities.
Did you know?

Rabbits can be milked for science! Dial 1-800-MILK-BUNNY or learn more about this activity here:

http://mobiquest.ru/milk-rabbits-howto.html