BUN-hop by LDJam user 250825
Take control of BUN - a crystal powered cyber bunny and speedrun to safety!
Use [esc] menu for volume and quality settings! I recommend completing all the levels before starting to optimize too much.
Developer times:

Changelog:
- v1.1 (4h post-compo): Broken camera and exit in level 5, pause menu so you can close the game, quality options for web build, minor misc level geometry fixes
- v1.2 (6h post-compo): Missing full-screen button in level 3 (yes, it is actually duplicated in every level scene, proper LD moment)
- v1.3 (3.10.): Fixed one transition in player animation states
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/bun-hop |
Ratings
| Overall | 12th | 4.209⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 15th | 4.169⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 193th | 3.418⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 215th | 3.644⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 67th | 4.047⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 20th | 4.182⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 155th | 3.008⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 33th | 3.952⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 88🗳️ | 173🗨️ |
I love BUN! I love this simple 3D style and dash jumping is sooo satisfying! The game's level design slowly increased in its difficulty which was nice. Also the fact that I can go back and replay the older levels to gain enough crystals for the final level was cool! I could implement my newly gained knowledge about BUN into these levels and it worked great. I had a bunch of fun, great job! (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)
I like the smooth character animations. The bunny looks soft and cute!
I've completed all the levels but I could not optimize to dev times XD
By the way there is a small problem in level 5 that you can keep momentum even after hitting a wall

It doesn't matter after all. Nice entry!
Everything is on point, great job !
Overall I had a pretty fun time.
Bun-hop is a game with a vision. And that vision deploys itself fully, beautifully, in that final level. At the start, the movement feels slow and slightly floaty; but once you get to dash-jumping everywhere, and especially when navigating very tight platforms, crouch-dash-jumping through laser walls... It feels like you're flying. More importantly, it feels like you're actually *bunny hopping*. The character controller just springs to life as the gameplay starts to reveal itself, and that last level is truly touched by grace. A lesson in controller design and level design.
I didn't get times as good as yours, but I had a lot of fun getting everything sub-10 seconds! So many super smart design decisions in this game.
I love the soundtrack. Especially the way the two level themes interplay, the very chill, ambient theme from the safe burrows, and how it fade into that much more tense song with those clock noises integrated directly into it. After a while, it feels like that song turns a backdrop against which the sheet music of the player inputs are played. Optimal play becomes a melody.
I think this game catches in a bottle the essence of why speedrun experiences are good, why they work, finding all these little optimisation, and the controller becoming an extension of the self. This game is tightly scoped, polished, and masterfully done.
Thank you very much, I had a wonderful time!
I really liked the level where you had to turn back. Solid level design!
@moebiusmeow You are right about the velocity thing, I probably over tuned the acceleration a bit as I was afraid that small physics bumps would kill the velocity and game feel.
@waddle "Knowledge checkpoints" was exactly what I was going for! It's the reason there's no controls in the description for example (yea I know that's kind of cheesy way to do it, at least later there's some actions that wouldn't get spoiled by only controls!). I just tried to get the feeling of "whew I could have done that all along" if you replay earlier levels (or just restart the game)
@cowgummiboy I was debating whether to wall off that cliff or not but I decided to leave it in for some variety in levels but from what I've seen you're far from the only one stubbornly jumping off to the right :D
@fae-pdf Thank you so much for the extremely well thought out comment, I really lost it after seeing it :D I'm so happy that my vision could come through as I *really* was trying to condense the speedrun experience (weird movement techniques, breaking the "intended" flow of the level, etc) and you were able to put it in words better than I ever could! Also those are some great times, especially the last one, I know that one requires some tricky movement but is so satisfying to get right!
I hurt my fingers trying to get through Level 5. :sweat_smile:

Some thoughts:
- I love how smooth are the movements (it's quite difficult to master run + jump)
- I didn't understand what happened with the crystals until the last level
I absolutely love the slight parallax with the giant numbers in the background. Incredible.
The music slaps too. I recorded myself playing this game if you want some extra feedback:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gng7peQP_s
@mrwarranty Sorry about your fingers :D
@thebmxeur Yea the controls are quite awkward on one hand, I was considering forcing it to arrow keys but I feel like that would have made a lot of people upset. I guess not teaching all the controls at once also makes it impossible for players to form informed decisions of what keys to us, as you don't want to re-learn earlier binds in the light of later combos you need to do.
@100th-coin Ahhhhh thanks a ton for the video, it's super useful for analyzing the design (also well played :D you managed to do an unintended skip at 7:50 to beat the 10 second time without knowing of the duck-dash). I agree that the players should have been taught the dash in the beginning, it always felt wrong to withhold keybinds from the player (the dash still works, players just don't know the key). Also there was the second part of the duck-dash tutorial that you missed where you can do duck-dash-jump to fly through obstacles (though the low-tech dialogue system makes it very easy to miss), I was wondering if I should have made that mandatory but I wanted to leave some harder-to-execute techniques as optional (that one is pretty bad on full-left-hand binds, see my reply above). Lots to learn from analyzing this, and congratulations on the sub-10s row also!
This is an excellent submission, fun and challenging. I'm not a speedrunning type though so I'm not going to try to optimize that run further lol. Great abilities and level design. Overall a top-notch entry!
otherwise it's a very good platformer game, the the two crystals are a very good idea for gameplay. Musics are awesome, give true vibes !
here my time :


Thank you for submition
The sound design is great, it's always a pleasure to see games that do more with the music than just putting it in the game and calling it a day. Music in a video game shines when it goes with the gameplay, which is the case in your game!
The only nitpick I have (And it's a veeeeery tiny nitpick) would be that it's a bit difficult to judge the distance you need to get through "barriers" when doing a "Crouch dash". I try to refer to the animation for help, but maybe a small highlight or effect on the character (Like a slight tint when the character is invincible) could help in discerning the invincibility, especially when you follow the crouch dash by a jump, since it visually just looks like a jump unless I'm missing something. But like I said, it's a very very tiny nitpick, the game is absolutely amazing. Great job!
On another note, I almost beat dev time on the 5th level ;)

@itooh Thanks, good to know my choices weren't way off! I was actually worried about the UX of the huge timer as sometimes the level obscures it and it's not detailed enough for speedrunning (ie. 0.0x is not visible) but it seems to work good enough, especially as the core game is about those 10sec increments shown by the crystal. Originally the crystal was just 3 UI sprites on the bottom left that got taken away every time you lot one, but my 2D art skills are so bad that I decided to move it into the game world, seems to have been a good decision :D
@shadowcast Wow it's so cool that some of that managed to come through! I guess even with a tiny bit of dialogue my idea of the world comes through in word choices and such :D But yes outside of the burrows it's a barren wasteland where the BUNs can't maintain themselves without the crystallized energy thingies, and most now drained, we have these islands of BUNs trapped in their burrows. Kinda depressing now that I think about it..
@snesgaard Yea I agree that precise platforming doesn't feel great with the character controller, it was really designed for faster movement in mind (yet there are levels requiring precise platforming (until you get really good and just fly through the levels with a couple of jumps :D) ). I guess in the future I should have more non-me people test the game and give feedback on controls.
@kuviman Thanks for playing it on stream! Solid times for sure, and a great level 4 (might have something to do with it being the level you tried to optimize a bit :D).
@sethios Great times! Especially the last one, usually I get similar times for the last one unless I try really hard (actually I got concerned enough to go back and retry that I didn't break something in a quickfix after getting that time, managed to get 7.08 with a bit of room for improvement so I'll say it's legit (late edit: on a later day I discovered a new technique and got the time down to 6.98, sub-7s!) ) :D And yea I should have added some kind of effect to it (or removed the weird "you must hold the jump direction" requirement), the reason it doesn't have any is that I didn't want players to discover it accidentally and I kinda wanted it to feel like a bug (felt fitting as the game is about speedrunning :D), but that's a risky design decision for sure.
What I really like about Bun Hop is that it is a TOTALLY condensed experience of that, which fits me much better. I quickly realized after stage 2 that I could go back to stage 1 and redo it. I opted out of that because I figured I could do it later. But once you showed the crouch dash I was like alllllllright, let's optimize some of these old ones. As a result, every stage felt exciting to start because I figured I was going to learn something new and useful, rather than being another practice chamber like Celeste would be.
The levels are timed tightly! Some of them I was beating at just under the 10s mark. Looking at your screenshot, you definitely went way under though, so I guess it's only tight for the intermediate player :)
Overall I felt like this game was a pretty unique experience due to its speed of progression. I had an unexpected amount of fun with this because quickly you learn things and get to apply them to past stages. And at some point, you realize that every stage can be completed in under 10 secs, which not only made me curious htf some people cleared a stage, but it would also motivate me to try it. There are stages in say, Super Meat Boy that can take a minute to clear, and it's super frustrating to die near the end. But with a 10s limit, you know you're not going to waste much time if you fail. You did a great job exploring this genre with the theme applied to it, well done!
Currently stuck at the last level, but I'll try it again tomorow…
I really enjoyed playing your game, good job
I definitely won't be trying to beat those dev times (not my thing), but I enjoyed playing. The controls work well, jumping feels just right, and the whole game feels polished. The crystal concept is great, as it allows experiencing the game without necessarily going for the optimized speedrun, but leaves the option to go for that optimized speedrun for those who enjoy it and gives them an incentive to do so.
Very nice job!
The diegetic timer in the background looks great, and make a proper level of stress for the player.

Also, caught myself in the moment when I just jumped through the level forward, but then returned back since I had missed extra dialog with the bunny NPC down below :relaxed: :rabbit:

My time so far, but I didn't do 2nd attempts (except 1st level due to lack of crystals)


I'm far from dev time, but I will call it a day ;)
Once again, very nice entry
https://youtu.be/Cdp-bqGHL0o
@eptwalabha Wow hanks for coming back, congratulations on the single crystal times on all levels!
@vykri Oh man what a video! Great analysis on the design, agree with you on pretty much everything. The dash issue you encountered at 13:30 is due to janky duck-dash conditions which is also the reason your duck-dash-jumps didn't work, you need to be moving to a direction at the same time as well for it to work (but only when in air..). I had the condition so players wouldn't accidentally do that but that was an unnecessary fear and the game would have been better without that restriction. Also I know the controls are pretty terrible when using WASD, it was kind of an afterthought from my part as I use arrows+up+Z for movement, but most people here seem to use WASD. I should have provided a right hand key for dash and suggested it for WASD, it's really bad to have all the controls on one hand. Anyways thanks again for the through analysis, it really helps!