The Rabbit Haul News

It's August, and our team is heading off to Gamescom Germany to showcase The Rabbit Haul. This month is big for us in terms of updates and giving the opportunity for new people to try our game at the event and on our Discord!


Get ready for an exclusive, week-long playtest during Gamescom week, August 19 - 26, 2024! We are so excited to have two unique playtests available: one being hosted at the event, where attendees will have the chance to try out new features in a shortened, 6-wave run, provide feedback, and interact with our development team.

Our other playtest, hosted on our Discord server, will be a test of the full game, including our out-of-run upgrade and unlock system. This will be an excellent opportunity for our players to give some of their final feedback on the prototype version of The Rabbit Haul, as we head into our production of the full game - do not worry if your suggestions are not yet implemented, we have everything noted and will be working on them during our production phase!



As we head into one of our final playtests of the summer, we just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to each and every one of our players, who have tested any and every iteration of The Rabbit Haul, and who have provided the most valuable feedback about all elements of the game. We spend so much time looking over your answers, reviewing what we can do better and implementing plans to make each test a unique experience. Our community is the reason we are able to do what we do, and we truly appreciate your support.


Now to the juicy part - what’s new in The Rabbit Haul for July! We have a new crop and two new towers - one offensive and one defensive. In addition, there are language updates to note.

[h2]Watermelon Crop[/h2]
The Watermelon is a purchasable crop that has a longer growing time than most of our other crops. However, it sells for a high value, and if it's put in the haul, it will punish enemies who try to steal it.

When a raccoon picks up a Watermelon, a "heavy" effect will appear, and the enemy will be slowed while trying to exit the playing field, allowing the player extra time to attack and get back their crop!



[h2]Stink Bomb Tower[/h2]
Stink Bombs are our second wild encounter, after the blueberry bush that we introduced you to last month. They will appear sporadically, and can be picked up by the player to be placed where they prefer.

If an enemy walks over the Stink Bomb, they will be damaged with a chance of "poison" effect, where there will be damage applied over time. These are a one-time use tower, so be careful about when and where you use them!

[h2]Sprinklers[/h2]
We've heard you about how tedious watering can be, so we've implemented a new tower that can help speed up the process for you, and will also assist you during the night as well!

Sprinklers can be purchased at Gerald's Greens, and have 3 stages.

• Stage 1: waters in a plus (+), affecting the crops above, below, and to the left and right.
  
• Stage 2: waters all the plants around the sprinkler, including those diagonal to it; similar to the effects of the Beehive.
  
• Stage 3: waters two circles surrounding the sprinkler, for a total of 24 plants watered daily!
  In addition to its impressive daily properties, it will also assist you at night by spraying water at the enemies nearby and pushing them back, allowing you more time to fight and prevent them from hitting your haul.
  

Isael has been working hard at translating The Rabbit Haul into French. It is a slow process to find every line of text and translate it accurately, so we are unsure if it will be fully implemented by the time the playtest comes out - but stay tuned!

Courtney’s Fun Fact: je ne parle pas français, mais je parle un peu japonais et coréen.


We are very excited to update our Steam page to ten languages, allowing you to learn about The Rabbit Haul in whichever language you prefer.

These languages include: English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean.

Currently, these languages are just for the Steam page itself, with plans for in-game localization coming much later in our development process.

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These are our updates from August! We hope that are able to playtest The Rabbit Haul in-person or online, and have a wonderful remainder of your summer.

Welcome to our June update of The Rabbit Haul! This month, we focused on preparing for our in-person events, such as Game Con Canada and Gamescom Germany, as well as out-of-run updates that will improve replayability.


We created a new, in-person demo version of The Rabbit Haul. This version is 6 waves long, with a tutorial quest line to introduce the various mechanics of the game to new players. During Game Con, this version of the game played around 20 minutes, with the fastest time being under 8 minutes! While parts of this demo version will make it into the final version, this iteration is meant for in-person tests only, to ensure that as many people can try the game as possible over the weekends.



This month, we have added in a new offensive tower, the Sniper Violet, and a wild crop, the Blueberry Bush!

[h2]Sniper Violet[/h2]
The Sniper Violet is a new offensive tower which shoots fast, hard, and at far ranges. This works perfectly in tandem with the Touch-Me-Nots which shoot bursts at short range, meaning the Trash Panda Posse won’t stand a chance! There will also be symbiotic relationships built in with this tower, working alongside other Sniper Violets to best protect your garden.

[h2]Blueberry Bush[/h2]
Foraging has become a big hobby in the last few years, and one of the best parts of exploring in games such as Stardew Valley and Story of Seasons. So we wanted to incorporate wild crops in addition to the ones you grow in your garden. The first of these crops is the Blueberry Bush, which will grow randomly in the wild, and replenish similarly to the strawberries. It has a low sell value, but will improve your haul strength and provide you much needed nourishment after a hard-fought night battle!


The first of our combo attacks is being implemented into the game, empowering your personal attack power with a bit of speed. By timing your swings just right, you’ll be able to swing, backswing, and then finish them off with an overhead slash. These combos will be locked behind the skill tree, which we will show you below.




We have been working the hardest on our out-of-run upgrades, which include our skill tree and unlockable items at this time. This is to give our gamers more reason to play again, with rewards being given for your hard work building up your haul and survival skills through the waves. You’ll be able to strengthen your defenses with unlockable towers and new skills, and build a bigger and better farm with new crops. As this system is complicated and time-consuming, we aren’t able to show you everything - but maybe that’s good, so we have more to show you next month!




Caldera Interactive is a bilingual studio, with fluency in both French and English. As such, we are making the first steps at translating The Rabbit Haul into French. This is the first of many languages we hope to add into the game, but those will be coming later in our development process. This translation work should be done by the end of August, so if you’ve been waiting, on y est presque.

Hello everyone, Courtney from Caldera here with our May Playtest patch notes.

We have had a crazy few months between events and grant writing, but we are excited to finally be launching the latest version of The Rabbit Haul, exclusively for our Discord members to try.
Below are all the updates we have made since our previous playtest in March 2024.

• Towers now instantly heal after the night phase ends.
  
• New inventory bar UI.
  
• Updates to the start screen artwork.
  
• New health bar UI.
  

• You no longer instantly lose when your haul reaches 0 crops.
  
• You lose when your haul is depleted AND raccoons have escaped with the stolen crops.
  
• You will also lose when your health bar reaches 0hp - remember to keep some crops on hand, just in case!
  
• When an enemy carrying a crop dies, it will drop what they were holding on the ground, and magnet back to your haul when you get close to the crops.
  
• Raccoons stealing a crop are given a large speed boost as they try to escape. (The higher the wave, the faster they run away)
  

• The Wild Rose tower slows down enemies that walk through it and has a chance of causing a damage-over-time (DoT) effect called "Thorn"
  
• Thorn at level 1 will deal 1 damage and stun the enemy for 0.1 seconds every 1.5 seconds, for 3 total seconds.
  
• By placing a Wild Rose beside another Wild Rose, both towers will get a buff to their slow and Thorn effects. This does not work with diagonal placement.
  
• Wild Rose towers have 4 main stages - stage 4 requires purchasing it in addition to the regular watering.
  
  1. Stage 1: No Abilities.
     
  2. Stage 2: 30% chance to apply Thorn and 100% chance to slow passing enemies.
     
  3. Stage 3: 40% chance to apply Thorn and 100% chance to slow passing enemies.
     
  4. Stage 4: 100% chance to apply Thorn and 100% chance to slow passing enemies.
     

• Touch-me-Not Attack
  
• Racoons attack
  
• Rabbit taking damage
  
• Rabbit eating
  
• Rabbit heal
  
• Tower Upgrade
  

• Fixed the Touch-me-Not panel descriptions
  
• Player can no longer attack faster than the attack animation
  
• Fixed the stickering of sprites in inventory
  
• Fixed an issue where sometimes, carrots would fall through the ground
  
• Fixed the Raccoon Boss hitbox
  

• Added a 13th wave
  
• Removed slow effect from Touch-me-Not towers
  
• Buffed the Ice Wand (20 >>> 30 damage per attack)
  

This playtest included a lot of major and minor updates to the game, and as this weekend's playtest continues, we look forward to hearing more feedback and suggestions on how to make The Rabbit Haul the best it can be!

If you would like to join our playtests, you can head on over to our Discord, linked on the Steam page.

Until next time,

Courtney