Bunny Bond Review by Foxxelle
Unashamedly GxB female-gaze chatroom based very spicy otome. Funny, sweet, arousing, naughty - it's all here.
If you are not part of the target audience for Bunny Bond:
Warning! Male nudity!
If you are part of the target audience for Bunny Bond:
Good news! Female gaze VN!
Get time off work without using annual leave!
Overview
Bunny Bond is an interactive novel aimed squarely at the heterosexual female audience, pitting the reader as the sole girl amongst six attractive guys, locked into one of seven adjoining motel rooms as part of a ten day long study. The only interaction possible with any or all of your fellow participants is via the provided computer or smartphone within an online discrete chatroom.
After an entertaining intro section with jovial tune accompanying close ups of your counterparts, the game proper then opens with some questions about your loneliness.
There was no option to answer "no", so I knew that I immediately had to get my head into playing as the MC. There is no "reading this as a third party observer" approach to be taken here. You're either all-in, or you're playing the wrong game.
Presentation
Whilst most of the game takes place within the chatrooms – both as a group and within one-to-one DMs; these sections are linked together by brief passages presented in a more familiar visual novel format within four rooms inside the motel that you have been placed at. The text during these sections is written in second person format ("You" did this.. etc) which does separate the reader from the MC, which is a pity; but these sections are brief and involve no other-character interactions, so damage to immersion is negligible.
The chatrooms are where the real meat of the game lies, and yes, the choice of description there was entirely intentional. Within the group chats, the joshing and attempted one-upmanship among the guys is entertaining during its quieter moments, and outright hilarious when it really gets going. There is a scrollbar to enable you to flick back and forth to view all of the chat in the current session, so you should never miss anything.
It's when you take the chat to a private room for some one-to-one time that things really start to heat up. As you become closer to any one of the guys, photographs get exchanged, and the spicier the chat becomes, the more revealing the photos sent. If you are, shall we say, especially virtuous, then you do run the risk of being offended by the graphics coming your way – but if that's the case, what would you be doing playing a game of this nature in the first place? Meat and two veg is certainly the order of the day once you hit the DMs. Don't expect your MC to be a shrinking violet when it comes to following up with the chat, either. You can, however, expect to get a little, um, hot under the collar? And other areas, come to that.
Graphics, U/I
Due to the chatroom nature of the game, there is not a wealth of supporting graphics outside of the photographs sent and the opening sequence – although the animated scenes at the halfway stage certainly came as both a surprise and source of great amusement. I'll let you find out more about those for yourself. Suffice to say that any straight males playing this game might be less appreciative than its target reader.
There are a good number of available controls for player comfort, many of them displayed at the top of the large text box which features very clear, easy to read text in both motel and chatroom formats. The game also features a skip option which can be accessed and stopped by a tap of the tab key, though it is worth noting that once having chosen which of the guys to "get serious with" (at about the halfway point), the skip function does not recognize group chatroom sessions which are shared in all routes, as being previously read – so you will have to manually forward through those time and again. Responses to mouse clicks/trackpad taps are so fast though (like the skip itself – the quickest I've ever come across) that this becomes less arduous than you might expect.
From the title menu there are also several graphics quality and screen resolution options, in addition to a rather funky choice of seven different cursor designs. A very nice little touch. There is also a gallery for all of the photographs you are sent, some of which are dependent upon your choices; though ensuring you don't miss any is made easy by the excellent Quick Save option. Varying responses to different choices are usually very brief, so a quick save/choice/quick load sequence will ensure you don't easily miss anything.
Bugs
I found two bugs within the game, neither of which is game breaking, and one that you're unlikely to come across at all. The obvious one is the implementation of Steam achievements. Sadly, it's a bit of a hash. I'm not quite sure what goes on – it feels like the game clears them at the end of each gameplay session, and then awards them again when you restart, although I don't think that's it. Don't be surprised when you've accrued 4 or 5 achievements, only to find that Steam thinks you have 1 or 0 to date. It is possible to get them all, I somehow fluked it, but it's not easily apparent how.
If you go into the history log, many entries have a little timer icon to their immediate left. I wondered if this was a rollback feature (as there is no back option for the motel room sequences) when I discovered that this icon is clickable. The result was that the game did, indeed, go back to the caption relating to the icon I clicked, but story progress froze at that point with the timer present in the middle of the screen, that timer icon appears as a result of an avoidable bug.
Oddly, all other functions within the game still worked. I just couldn't move it forward any more.
Summary and verdict
I noticed in the game's community hub, someone asked about obtaining the true ending. I managed this, and whilst not sure if what I did is a guaranteed route to success, I will post a comment underneath this review containing details, so you can avoid seeing the spoiler if you wish. As to whether you should buy this game? If you're a hetero female – hello? Where've you gone? Oh, you've abandoned this review and are playing the game already? Good. I approve!
Although the game is strictly "female gaze", any guys curious about this should not be put off – so long as you have an open mind – as the fun and amusement levels within the group chats serve as plenty reason enough for you to take a punt also. Writing quality in bringing out several different personalities is excellent, and typing accuracy is well over 99.9% - I spotted a couple of misplaced apostrophes and one single letter typo in the entire text.
And to end with, I return to this review headline. It's easy! Play the later stages of any of these routes on the journey to work. When you arrive, flushed, hot and sweaty, your boss will take one look, assume you have a fever, and send you home for a few days to recover – leaving you plenty of time to enjoy the other routes at your leisure. You're welcome!
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