August 2023

Hello Killer Bunnies fans!

Welcome to the first update about the Killer Bunnies models made by Hale-Bent! You can expect an update from us at least once per month. This first one is a doozy, but in order to help you understand where the project is currently at, we need to start from the beginning.

STORYTIME! (You can skip this part if you don't like stories.)

It all started a little over a year ago with an idea I had while playing Journey to Jupiter. I thought, "It's not very intuitive for me to know where I can navigate my ship and where it's not allowed. Wouldn't it be so much clearer if those Restricted Spaces had something that physically blocked movement on them?" The idea piqued my interest and I started by tinkering with a 3D model that could be placed over the Asteroid Cavern. Pretty quickly, my interest bled into the other areas of the board and before I knew it, I had models for the other four Restricted Spaces in the Starter Deck.

I brought them with me on our trip to do playtesting of J2J to give as a gift to Jeff and Jonathan. They were so excited about them that after the trip they continued giving me direction to help align my models to their vision. We pretty quickly realised there was lots more potential here beyond the Restricted Spaces. I began designing the markers with the goal of making the carrots (the objective of the whole game) easier to identify, and soon tried my hand at modeling the ships. Pretty soon I had something workable for everything in the Starter and Laser Red decks (everything that was published so far) and sent it over to Jeff as a birthday present. He loved it and used everything in the next round of playtesting. 

MY PROGRESS

Now, as I inch closer and closer to realizing my vision of a fully 3D game of Jupiter, I have completed at least rough draft designs for every marker, ship, and Restricted Space in every booster. I have about 80% of those models in a printable form and about half of them in a refined, usable state. However, as I am now preparing these models to be distributed, I want to have an extremely cohesive, uniform game that holds nothing back. If we find anything that will improve the playing experience, I want to make it a reality. I want to create the absolute max deluxe version that could possibly be envisioned for Jupiter. I will stop at nothing to bring this game to the heights of its fullest potential! And for anyone else who wants that, too, I want to make it for you.

THE PLAN

To accomplish this aim, it's time to revisit everything. Every marker, ship, and Restricted Space model needs to be refined so much that it cannot be refined any more. I'm going to start with the bare necessities of the full deluxe game and incrementally move forward until every single piece has had its turn to be considered, reconsidered, and improved far beyond what I could have initially thought possible. I've come a long way since that first Asteroid Cavern model I created. Along the way I have developed a lot of standards that I want to incorporate into all my pieces to produce a clean, cohesive look and feel. 

I have decided to start with the markers. I'll get all the game markers in the Starter Deck completely cleaned up, freshly printed, tested, tweaked, and reprinted to have a final, polished design. After that I'll develop all Booster markers to the same point. We're going to call those two efforts Tier 1. After that I'll do the same thing with all ships for Tier 2 and then Restricted Spaces for Tier 3. However, this last tier will comprise 4 sections: Starter Deck, Laser Red, Ultra Violet, and Orbital Orange. 

In summary...

• Tier 1: Markers

  • Starter Deck

  • Boosters

• Tier 2: Ships

  • Starter Deck

  • Booster

• Tier 3: Restricted Spaces

  • Starter Deck

  • Laser Red

  • Ultra Violet

  • Orbital Orange 

With 8 sections in total, some will go faster than others. For example, all ships in Tier 2: Starter Deck are already quite refined, being on their third or fourth version. But most ships in Tier 2: Booster Decks are still in their first rough draft (mostly due to all those Specialty ships...). After a section is refined and ready to print en masse, it'll go on the queue for the next phase of designing the boxing and shipping. I'm not sure how many sections I'll have finished before getting to that phase, so we'll see as time goes on. At some point, we'll put each section up for pre-order and prioritize getting at least Tiers 1 and 2 delivered to your door by the time the game is actually published next year. We'll see how far I get on Tier 3, which might start being available after the Kickstarter version is shipped.

WHERE I'M AT NOW

This week I have made good progress on my revisit of the Carrot and Minilth markers, adding a couple final ideas to them. We also just ordered a new 3D printing machine that adds some more capability beyond our old one. More details to follow next time, but needless to say, I'm very excited for that to come. I'm now preparing the first planets (Earth, Mars, and Jupiter) to be ready when it arrives. I'll likely finish these Starter markers and get on to refining the Booster markers for Tier 1 next month.

I've come a very long way since I first started this project. It has led me to meeting the creators and designing a deluxe version of Journey to Jupiter with them. However, since Quest has always been my favorite card game, I couldn't help but design at least a few models for Quest, too. I have so many models....

And that's it for this update! Thanks for following!

~Hale-Bent