Base price: ~$41.
1 – 4 players.
Play time: 30 – 60 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter!
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A preview copy of Moon Bunny was provided by Hot Banana Games. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game.
The mere concept of months is truly unfair. I completely forgot how Labor Day works and thought it was somewhere around the 20th or 25th of August for literally several weeks. A lot of things became messed up as a result. If you’re waiting on an email or a message from me, I apologize; until a few days ago (as of posting, which is worse) I literally thought it was still August. I’m working out of that hole. It will happen in its own season. I think the month boundary + long holiday weekend + friend visiting annihilated my sense of time and space, so that’s cool. This is all to say that the Moon Bunny Kickstarter has already been posted and funded, but dammit, I’m going to tell you what I think of the game anyways.
In Moon Bunny, players take on the role of bunny alchemists, doing what they do best: scouring the moon for rare ingredients so that they can make special recipes. As you do. Unclear if it counts as a farming game, though I know y’all love farming games, so I’m going to make a special exception. Your goal isn’t too complicated, either: just the legendary elixir of life. No problem! Whip that up in an afternoon. So you’ve got a lot to do and a little bit of time to do it. Will you be able to shoot for the moon?
Contents
Setup
First up, place the Moon Board in the center of the play area, based on your player count:
Shuffle the various tiles, and return eighteen of them to the box if you’re playing with one or two players:
Place them on the board to fill it out. Recipes go on the spaces; Herbs on the other. Each player gets two Recipes (without the black diamonds on the bottom-right). Next up, make a Recipe Stack! You use the Recipe side of the tiles for that, based on player count:
- 1 / 2 players: 12 Recipes
- 3 players: 16 Recipes
- 4 players: 18 Recipes
The Herb Stack comes next! You’ll add Craters and Recipe Placement Tiles:
Again, do this based on player count:
- 1 / 2 players: 8 Craters / 1 Recipe Placement Tile
- 3 players: 12 Craters / 2 Recipe Placement Tiles
- 4 players: 14 Craters / 2 Recipe Placement Tiles
Shuffle the Scrolls up:
Add four or six scrolls (for 1 – 2 or 3 – 4 players) to the Lounge Board:
Then, place the Mooncakes:
Each player gets a player board:
And they get both bunnies in their color!
They place the Hopping Bunny (three black squares) on the corner of the board closest to their player board. Each player then returns one Recipe to the Lounge Board, setting it as a public goal, and places the other in the storage area of their board. You’re ready to start!
Gameplay
Moon Bunny is a game about making recipes to try and brew the elixir of life! On your turn, you start by moving your bunny.
You have two different bunnies, and can swap between them by spending a mooncake before you move. The Hopping Bunny can move three spaces orthogonally, as long as it doesn’t end up next to its starting space. The Dashing Bunny can move any number of spaces (at least one) in any orthogonal direction. So pick your bunny and get moving! Note that if you reach the end of the board, it wraps around! I appreciate there’s no flat-moon conspiracy going around, here.
Once you stop on a tile, take it and place it on your board! Your first tile placed must be on one of the spaces on your Workshop, and all subsequent tiles must be placed adjacent to one of your previously-placed tiles. You can also place a tile from your Storage, if one’s there, or place your taken tile in Storage.
If you completely surround a recipe tile with Herbs, you get a bonus turn! You move and take a tile again, and if you surround a recipe tile again you get another bonus turn. That’s hard to do, though, so we will see how many you can chain up. Then, refill the board! If you draw a Crater Tile, that becomes an empty space that you can’t stop on anymore. If a Recipe Placement Tile is drawn, refill that space by placing a Recipe tile on top of the tile; it’s a Recipe space from now on.
Scrolls also exist! You can purchase one for a Mooncake, but each is single-use! If someone else gets it before you, it’s theirs now.
Once the Herb or Recipe stack runs out, the game ends! Finish the current round, and then play one more round. Tally up points from your Recipes and earn 1 point for each remaining Mooncake you have. The player with the most points wins!
Player Count Differences
Not a ton! With a lot of players, you’ll use the larger side of the board, specifically to make things feel a bit less congested (and to prevent too much blocking). To make sure nobody gets too much stuff, you’ll have more crater tiles to contend with, as well, but I wouldn’t say that the game feels meaningfully different at four than it does at two. There’s still a bit of a racing element if players want the same things or are going after the same lucrative recipe, but otherwise, you’re not directly negatively impacting a player unless you take something they specifically want. No matter how many players you have, the game plays pretty quickly, too; the tiles scale with player count nicely, to that effect. No strong player count preference, as a result.
Oh! There’s also a solo mode! Haven’t played it; not generally my scene.
Strategy
- Your goals are really “get ingredients” or “get recipes”, so figure out which one you need at any given time. Stay flexible! This game is largely about making a bunch of micro-optimizations to get certain things so that you can max out all the scoring conditions you’re going after. Don’t just grab recipes to grab them, either! That speeds up the end of the game, so be strategic.
- Try not to run out of Mooncakes; they’re pretty useful for a variety of things. They can swap around the rabbits you have and they can give you access to scrolls, which are pretty convenient. I try to have at least one at any point.
- Movement can be pretty tricky, so consider swapping rabbits. Having to move three spaces all the time is great for changing directions mid-turn, but it’s not always the best way to cover a lot of ground (or even a little, since you can’t end up adjacent to where you started). Being able to switch between the rabbits is a useful trick, especially since you can do it on your turn. Makes it more difficult for your opponents to predict what you’ll go after.
- Watch out for Craters, since they’ll even further limit your movement. You can’t end up on a crater, so, the more there are, the less freely you’ll be able to move around. I try to avoid parts of the board with too many craters, lest I get completely stuck (not that I can’t move, but I might be forced to take tiles I don’t want to get realigned).
- With “most” or “least”, keep in mind that even if they’re on your board, you still have to beat the other players. It would be kind of vacuously true otherwise, but yes, other players can mess up you getting points for that. They don’t get them either; nobody does. So it’s just kind of rude.
- The first recipe you pick can matter a fair bit, since the one you don’t pick becomes a public goal for everyone. You can try to throw a frustrating or difficult recipe into the center so that it lowers the number of possible points everyone can get, if you draw one, but in my experience all the recipes are pretty accessible if you get them early enough.
- There’s a lot of recipe synergy if you can luck out and grab it. Not only can they play well with each other, but also, completely surrounding one grants you an extra bonus turn, which you can use to quickly snap up either another ingredient or another recipe to help along that synergy. It’s pretty convenient. Having certain recipes that double-count (in that the same tile works for both of them) is also very nice.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- I love the art style of this game, particularly, the color work. A blue and purple with some vibrance really works for me, and the game looks absolutely wonderful. I think the cover really sets the tone for the game in a lot of ways, and the box art here is fantastic. Looks like it’s Serene Chan‘s first game, at least as far as BGG has recorded, and I’m hoping to see more in the future! It’s really great art.
- This is a nice evolution from Steam Up! Very different game, but you can see how the design is expanding. This is really the point that I want to focus on, so I might speak to it a bit more than others. I like Steam Up! I think it does a really good job of making a fun concept approachable in game form, though it’s often a bit simple for my taste. I like that there’s a bit of a step up in complexity and also in player freedom! There’s a lot you can do during the game and you have a lot of control in your own way. It has some of the same feel as Point Salad, but the drafting element is more complicated, like Realm of Sand. It has that nice iterative feel. It’s good. I’m excited to see what the design pair come up with next! They seem to be really expanding their design chops and consciousness while still being grounded in themes and stories they want to tell. It’s the kind of stuff you like to see from designers who want to focus on the cultural exchange and the cultural experience of gaming. That’s what I thought was so exciting about Steam Up, and I think Moon Bunny keeps the party going. I have no doubt that Pauline and Marie are growing as designers, and that’s exciting to see. Moon Bunny is a great next step.
- I really like the dynamic scoring elements of the game! You can build up what you want and need pretty easily. Like I said, I like the Point Salad-esque momentum of just figuring out what you want to do and how you want to land it. As you do, you’ll try to grab scoring conditions that aren’t just aspirational; you want them to reflect what you’e already done so far. I think that tension is satisfying and it plays well. Plus, like I said; it’s fun.
- The other players aren’t necessarily in direct conflict with you, but it’s a very interactive game, since you can block other players from going to certain spots and you can impact their scoring. It’s a nice bit of interactivity. I can’t mess with what you’ve already placed, but I can sneak in and take things that you thought were definitely yours, if you don’t lock them down before I can get them. I like that kind of interactivity in a lot of these types of games.
- For a tile game, I do love an inset board. This is less interesting, but, I do like it. It makes the whole “placing tiles” part nicely.
- Plays pretty quickly. It’s a good and quick game! It’s fairly casual in that regard.
Mehs
- The iconography on the tiles could stand to be a bit larger, both in terms of which get left out early and distinguishing colors. The icons are a little small, and it’s kind of difficult to distinguish them for early recipe stuff. The colorblind iconography is a bit easier to distinguish, but making it larger would be helpful.
Cons
- I think there are too many tiles for a “tile stack” sort of play, and it causes weird strategic things to happen. If you can see a tile, you can theoretically choose where it’s going to end up next. This can be a thing for Crater placement, for instance; if you see one coming you might go grab a recipe instead. It kind of seems like the best fix for this is just … using an opaque tile bag. We did that for Carcassonne; it can be done again.
Overall: 8 / 10
Overall, I think there’s a lot to like from Moon Bunny! For me, I’m always a big fan of games where spatial reasoning is king, and you have two layers of that, here: you have to manage your movement around the board, yes, but you also have to manage what you’re placing where for certain scoring opportunities and to physically take the scoring tiles that will grant you points farther down the line. That’s cool! The game is elevated further by fantastic art and color work from Serene Chan, so, you love to see that. I need to check the Kickstarter and see if they’re doing prints or pins or something. Seems wise. As I mention elsewhere, I’m also just pleased to see more iterating and development from Hot Banana Games. I thought Steam Up was an important game to see the success that it’s seen in the States because it makes a hugely important aspect of food culture something that’s approachable and fun for a wide audience (and, clearly, Barnes & Noble agreed, among others). There are plenty of food games, granted, but Steam Up had a great and simple ramp-up to it that earned it a lot of favor. Hell, I still see it in Paper Source. Moon Bunny has a similar vibe in what it’s shooting for, but it also benefits from the game design and development and product work that came from Steam Up. It’s a great sophomore title. I’m not as culturally or personally familiar with the theme, so I can’t speak to it as much, but I enjoyed what I got to learn about it and found the concept engaging that I went to go learn more about it on my time, which is about the best you can hope for from a game like this. I feel like I’m not talking about the game enough? There’s a good interactivity to it where things are hectic and chaotic on the main board, but you have a lot of control over your space, so players who crave those interactions will have them but players who don’t like that can look to their own space for calm serenity. So a bit of something for everyone. If you’re excited about another game from the Hot Banana team, you enjoy a bit of tile-laying and spatial reasoning, or you just want to push some rabbits around a board, I’d recommend Moon Bunny! It’s a lot of fun.
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