The gaming industry in 2024 has experienced dramatic highs and lows. Many big-budget titles, driven by BlackRock’s ESG mandates enforcing diversity and inclusivity quotas, have flopped such as Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad and Sony’s Concord. However, 2024 has also delivered heartwarming indie success stories, with games like Palworld and Black Myth: Wukong standing out as clear favorites.
One indie success story that often goes overlooked, in my opinion, is Qureate’s Bunny Garden. Released in April this year, the Japanese developers at Qureate unexpectedly produced a mega hit with their gentleman-themed dating simulator.
Launching on April 19th for the Nintendo Switch, Bunny Garden featured three captivating characters to win over, quickly soaring to the top of the Japanese eShop charts. Its popularity was so overwhelming that Qureate decided to release the PC version ahead of schedule.
Bunny Garden gained both fame and controversy, both in Japan and internationally. The game received glowing reviews, holding a 93% rating on Steam from a total of 845 reviews.
It became especially popular with Japanese streamers, though quite a lot of their livestreams were taken down by YouTube due to the game’s suggestive content despite the fact that LGBT content remains freely accessible to children on YouTube, however Bunny Garden proved to be too provocative for the puritans at YouTube.
Despite the censorship, Bunny Garden proved to be a major success.
In summary, Bunny Garden is set in a leisure bar where you, as the protagonist, aim to charm one of the three hostesses. You can buy them drinks, give gifts, and engage in casual conversations, with interactive minigames adding to the experience.
The standout feature of the game is the “PTA” (Pantsu Tankusan Arigatou) system, which translates to “Panties, Lots of them, Thank you.” This mechanic allows players to observe the heroines wearing different styles of underwear each day, and even purchase new panties for them to wear in-game.
Thanks to the overwhelming success of Bunny Garden, the small developers at Qureate have gone above and beyond, continuing to expand the game and deliver content their dedicated fanbase eagerly craves.
This popularity has even led to the creation of figures for the hostess “Rin,” produced by GoodSmile, further cementing the game’s impact and popularity.
More recently, Qureate has continued to roll out updates for Bunny Garden, with the 1.0.4 update introducing new poses for the in-game camera feature, as well as a variety of new panties for players to purchase and see worn by their chosen heroine.
Building on this success, the 1.0.5 update teases the addition of a potential fourth heroine. Players now have the chance to catch a glimpse of a new character when one of the current hostesses takes a day off, hinting at an exciting future addition to the game.
The latest update gives players a preview of a new bunny girl who’ll be tending bar at the familiar gentleman’s club, as shown on the right-hand side. She sports purple hair styled in a double ponytail, secured with deep violet ribbons.
At present, this purple-haired addition to Bunny Garden will only be visible in the background and won’t interact with players. However, it’s likely that Qureate is teasing fans with ongoing development for Bunny Garden.
This hints at a future update or possible DLC expansion that could fully introduce the new character, complete with her own unique outfits and dating events.
It’s a feel good moment to witness small-scale developers achieving significant success with their products. Unlike publicly traded giants like Capcom, Bandai Namco, SEGA and Square Enix who are all struggling financially by kneeling to Western sensitivities with censorship alongside fixating upon DEI initiatives influenced by global entities like BlackRock, companies like Qureate operate independently and continue to thrive.
As major companies continue to alienate consumers by focusing on “woke” and inclusive content, the gaming industry appears to be heading down a precarious path. Big-budget AAA titles are increasingly expensive and time-consuming to produce, often taking several years from inception to release.
Consumers are becoming more aware that these games are frequently designed to align with feminist perspectives or globalist ideologies, resulting in such poor market performance that they’re wiping out the studios responsible for its development.
For example, Sony’s live-service hero shooter Concord reportedly took eight years and nearly $200 million to develop, only to be shut down just two weeks after its release due to dismal sales.
The coming years look challenging for the gaming industry, which remains focused on censoring the female form alongside pushing progressive, inclusive content featuring androgynous, queer characters of color.
Developers like Compile Heart and Qureate, who adeptly manage their budgets and create games tailored to their specific audiences, are likely to not only survive but thrive upon the impending games crash.
Meanwhile, major companies like Microsoft, Sony, and Ubisoft, as well as many others, continue down this path, producing a series of commercial failures.
