Bunny Kingdom

Bunny Kingdom Deep Dive

What the Community Thinks About Bunny Kingdom

Across the videos that cover the original 2017 release, reviewers converge on two things: the production is stunning, and the central hybrid of card drafting and area control is unusually elegant. Adam in Wales - Board Game Design, who ranks Bunny Kingdom among their top five games of all time, frames it as a rare well-rounded design, praising the extensive, beautiful artwork and the lovely components that pull players into its world even though they admit the theme makes very little sense. Meeple University, who reviewed a copy supplied courtesy of the game's exclusive Australian distributor, likewise praised the cartoon-modern artwork and the cute rabbit figurines, calling the components good so long as they are handled carefully. Getting Games, covering Bunny Kingdom in a favorites list, focused less on looks and more on the tactical depth of reading a hand of cards and picking combinations, saying the planning decisions made the game consistently enjoyable.

Where the channels diverge is on the game's reliance on luck. Meeple University singled out the drafting of area-connecting camp cards as a source of frustration, since a player can be left waiting for a card that never comes, and an opponent can remove a placed camp to sever a chain of territory. Adam in Wales, by contrast, treats some of that uncertainty as part of the game's tension, describing the wait to fill a final connecting space or draw a specific resource as exciting rather than aggravating, even while agreeing that the long reveal of end-game objectives can drag. Jungus games, revisiting Bunny Kingdom after a long break from it, offered the simplest verdict of all: faced with culling a game collection, they kept Bunny Kingdom and let go of It's a Wonderful World, judging the two similar enough in rules weight that the decision came down to which one they would rather actually play.

Core Mechanics That Define Bunny Kingdom

Pick-and-Pass Card Drafting

Players hold a hand of cards and select two per turn, passing the remainder to the neighboring player, and this continues until the round's cards have all been taken. Getting Games noted that taking two cards per turn, rather than the single card typical of other drafting games, changes the calculus: players can pursue a combination between the two cards they grab in a turn instead of pulling one card and hoping something useful comes around later. Meeple University explained that the two-player variant swaps this hand-passing for individual reserve decks, where each turn a player draws one card from their own reserve into their hand and then discards one back, a system built specifically to deprive the opponent of whatever is most useful to them.

Area Control Through Connected Territories

Most cards direct a player to place a bunny token onto a matching grid coordinate on the shared board, while building cards add city tokens with towers onto a territory a player already occupies. Meeple University laid out the scoring math: any continuous, orthogonally connected group of a player's bunnies scores points equal to its strength, meaning the number of towers on its city tokens, multiplied by its wealth, meaning the number of different resources available in that group. Adam in Wales added that this scoring escalates sharply across the game's four rounds, pointing to their own scores climbing from six points in round one to fifteen in round two, forty in round three, and eighty in round four as players build on the foundations laid down in early turns.

The Bunny Kingdom Experience

Escalating Tension Across Four Rounds

Adam in Wales described the feel of play as a rising sense of momentum, with modest early scoring giving way to much larger totals once a player's connected territories mature, while secret parchment objectives stay hidden until the game's end to help decide the final standings. They called the wait for an opportunity to fill a final connecting space, or the hope of drawing the one resource that would complete an objective in the closing round, a genuine source of tension, challenge, and stress at the table, even as the escalating scores kept the pacing feeling about right to them.

Two-Player Versus Multiplayer Dynamics

Both Adam in Wales and Meeple University singled out the two-player mode as meaningfully different from games with more players. Adam in Wales explained that in the head-to-head version, each player draws from and discards to their own deck rather than passing hands around the table, and this ramps up negative interaction because the discarded card is always chosen to deprive the opponent, so a player consistently chooses one card to benefit themselves and one to block the other side; they admitted that even after years of frequent play, Adam and their spouse still get out of sync with all the passing, drawing, and discarding. Meeple University likewise found the reserve-card system strange at first but came, after playing it, to see it as a mechanism that balances the two-player game once a group gets used to it.

What Makes Bunny Kingdom Stand Out

A Fresh Combination of Familiar Mechanisms

Adam in Wales argued that while pick-and-pass drafting and area control have each been used many times independently, in games like Seven Wonders, Sushi Go, and Tigris and Euphrates, combining the two in Bunny Kingdom still feels fresh, and that in 2017 gamers were looking for a next step from the drafting formula that Seven Wonders and Sushi Go had established. Getting Games echoed the sense of freshness from the player's seat, noting that drafting two cards per turn instead of one meant constantly being handed new information and having to plan around whatever options had actually been passed along.

Striking, Distinctive Art Direction

Meeple University praised the cartoon-modern art style, the cute rabbits depicted on the cards, and the small rabbit figurines as some of the game's strongest components. Adam in Wales went further, setting the game's sugary pastel palette against the cute-critter aesthetics of Everdell and Root and calling Bunny Kingdom sickly sweet by comparison, while also praising the game's rulebook as accessible and welcoming and noting they have very few games this beautiful in their own collection.

Potential Drawbacks

Fiddly Setup and Drawn-Out Scoring

Adam in Wales listed the fiddly setup, the potential for analysis paralysis, and extended waits for players to choose their cards as the game's clearest pain points, adding that the end-game scoring, where players reveal their parchment objectives one by one and count up their bunnies on the board, can drag even though it is exciting to watch the final victor get revealed. Meeple University separately flagged the per-round area calculation as fiddly, since a player has to make sure not to miss any resource types or city strengths once they have accumulated more territories and buildings on the board.

Luck in the Draft

Meeple University's clearest criticism concerned the luck involved in connecting territory: a player can want a specific card to link up two areas, but the cards simply do not come out when needed, and the camps meant to bridge territories can be removed outright by an opponent who happens to hold the matching card, breaking the chain. Adam in Wales raised a related concern about the two-player deck-and-discard system, noting that as clever as it is, it is not a streamlined system, and a couple need to stay focused to keep from getting out of sync with it.

If You Enjoy Bunny Kingdom

Adam in Wales placed Bunny Kingdom in the lineage of pick-and-pass drafting established by Sushi Go and Seven Wonders, arguing the game offered the next step gamers wanted from that format back in 2017. They also set its pastel, cute-animal aesthetic alongside Everdell and Root, part of the same wave of deceptively weighty games wrapped in adorable art. Meeple University connected the game to designer Richard Garfield's other work, noting that King of Tokyo and King of New York share some of Bunny Kingdom's area-control feel despite being lighter, dice-driven games. Jungus games, weighing it directly against It's a Wonderful World while trimming a collection, judged the two similar enough in complexity that the choice came down to preference, and chose to keep Bunny Kingdom instead.