Paquerette Down the Bunburrows Guide to Down the Rabbit Hole
Paquerette is a bit of an airhead and sometimes she may need a small nudge in the right direction to start figuring things out on her own. That’s basically what this guide aims to do: give you the keys to solve the puzzles in the game without spoiling the fun of getting to the actual solutions.
Contents
Down the Rabbit Hole
Intro
Paquerette down the Bunburrows is a very simple game about running after bunnies and eventually catching them.
As you go down the various burrows you will come across various tools and mechanics, which will affect how you approach the puzzles in the game.
Gameplay Basics (No Spoilers)
You will soon find that bunnies flee from Paquerette in a deterministic manner:
If Paquerette is in a straight line, less than 3 squares away, and with no obstacle between them, they will run away. If they can’t run in the direction opposite of Paquerette, they will try going to their left, and if it’s not possible, they will attempt to turn right instead. Forward > Left > Right
Bunnies will use their field of vision to avoid dead ends unless it’s the only way they can go.
If a bunny is fleeing to a corridor cell, only able to go forward, it will run further to the next turn or intersection.
Paquerette will patiently wait until the bunnies stop moving before she takes her next steps.
Don’t forget two very important keybinds during your stay inside the burrows: Reset and Undo.
- Reset will restart the level from where you last entered it.
- Undo will undo your last move, including moving from a room to another. If you slipped and went down a hole by mistake use Undo instead of going back up the hole so you don’t lose your progress in the previous room.
Undoing over and over will eventually return you to when you last entered the burrows, and the undo stack resets when you quit the game.
Important: Don’t worry about undoing or resetting a capture, it will stay recorded in your game progress.
Another important reminder: if you’re struggling on a level you can just walk away and come back another time, the progression is not linear and outside of the burrow entrance restrictions at the start of the game, you can do the puzzles in any order you want. Seeing newer puzzles can help you get a better perspective of older levels, and sometimes just starting the level from a different entrance can make it dramatically easier.
Game Mechanics and Tools (Very Light Spoilers)
As you delve down the initial levels of the game you will encounter different mechanics.
The first you encounter are the tunnels. Bunnies enter tunnels the same way they enter other cells and once inside will follow the same pathfinding as their regular movement priority (forward>left>right) with the exception that they will keep moving until they’re out of the tunnels.
On occasion the tunnels may contain dead ends where the bunnies can get stuck, although they will try to avoid that like they normally do.
Their field of vision also works the same way: bunnies are aware of the turns, junctions, dead ends and obstacles in and right outside tunnels as long as they’re in a straight line from their current position.
When you enter the Northern Burrow, Paquerette will show you the first tool of the game: Traps. Traps act as additional obstacles and bunnies will attempt to avoid them.
In the Center Burrow, you’ll gain access to the Pickaxe, use it to bring down walls or tunnels and open new paths, or to make room for new angles to push bunnies around (gently!!!). Some walls with a different texture than normal are unbreakable, and you’ll find out that tunnels can also have unbreakable sections.
In the Southern Burrow, you will find Treats that are suspiciously similar to real world carrots. You can use them to attract bunnies to places where you wouldn’t be able to lead them normally. You will also find some of these treats just lying around in hard to access places where you definitely don’t want bunnies to go.
Finally in the Eastern Burrow you’ll soon find yourself in a room without a hole to go down. After catching the level’s bunny Paquerette will whip out her ultimate weapon: the Shovel.
Using the shovel will dig a hole in your current position, giving you the means to control exactly where you start in the level below.
Similarly to the pickaxe, some ground tiles are undiggable and will have a different texture to signify that.
Game Completion and Endgame (Light Spoilers)
Now this is the part where I have to confess something: I lied in the intro and the goal of the game isn’t just to catch bunnies.
Completing the game actually consists of three different things:
- Capturing every bunny in the game.
- Capturing every bunny in their own level (also called home captures).
- Discovering all the baby bunnies.
Wait? Baby bunnies?
Indeed! Something “very special” happens when two bunnies end up on the same cell. The first occurence is in the level called “Lovers” in the Western Burrow, it can be easy to miss if you just went for the bunnies one by one like I did on my first playthrough.
The two bunnies will stack on each other and make a cute baby bunny (don’t look for it, it’s completely invisible outside of your UI in the top right corner) (maybe it’s actually a lie and Pâquerette is just imagining things?).
More than two bunnies can stack and every bunny joining the polycule stack will increase the baby counter for each mate in the stack.
You don’t need to capture the bunstack to register all the babies, you only have to watch them stack.
Bunny stacks can still move, although at reduced mobility: they are unable to enter tunnels and will shake whenever they alter their pathing. A bunny that is captured in its home room, but inside a stack will only count as a home capture if the stack doesn’t shake.
This baby bunny counter is actually the game’s main progression system, and you will unlock more dialogues between Ophéline and Pâquerette as you get more unique babies, as well as upgrades such as a computer to help you keep track of your captures and babies.
As you get deeper down the burrows and find yourself more experienced, you will want to release bunnies from the pens to try and make more babies, or just to figure out their home capture. There’s no downside to this except leaving Ophéline alone next to the now empty bunny pen.
Advanced Mechanics (Spoilers)
The pickaxe is the best tool in the game, on top of wrecking chaos inside the existing levels of the game, you can also use it to break down the walls between realities burrows, going from a level to another.
But that’s not the only thing! Bunnies can also move from level to level. With clever inventive tool usage and pathing you can guide them to other rooms, or even down holes!
Paquerette using her trusty tool to access and release SCP-W7
When Pâquerette or a bunny enters a room, they will automatically clear obstacles in the cell they appear in (although single bunnies will not destroy tunnels and just run through).
This works for both same-depth travel with the pickaxe, and vertical travel with the shovel.
When digging down, every shoveled cell in the room below will be clear of obstacles, and can be used to go back up. When going up, any obstacle that should be in that cell will be removed to make room for Pâquerette.
Also do you know what happens when two bunnies meet inside a tunnel? It bursts open. Why do you even need a pickaxe when you can just bnyburst walls now?
Another quirk about tunnels is that they can get really tiring for bunnies. If one gets stuck in a repeating movement between tunnels, they will eventually fall asleep and won’t wake up even if Paquerette tries to pick them up.
Secrets (Spoilers)
C-13
At the bottom of the Center Burrow lies the C-13 level. Bask in the light at the center of the room to unlock the Return to Surface function in the Pause menu.
There are several exits to this level which serves as the entry point to the second part of the game: the Forgotten Burrows. Get your pickaxe ready to find all the bunnies waiting for you below level 12!
Or maybe you just got there by accident when you found yourself in a room that you shouldn’t be in this early and the game teleported you there so you don’t get accidentally softlocked
Solitude
In the depths of the Eastern Burrow lies a large, almost empty room ominously called Solitude.
You’re equipped with a shovel yet the ground is fully covered with unbreakable tiles.
Walking around certain parts of the room makes a familiar noise and you can’t help but feel like you’re being watched.
Maybe you should try bringing a bunny here to see what happens?
Void/Glitch Buns
If you attempt to leave the known world of the main vertical Burrows you will end up in the Void. This is a glitchy space full of strange happenings, according to the rumor there are even bunnies living in some of these levels. Maybe you can even have them meet other buns?
E-13
If you wander to the East of C-13, you’ll end in a strange hourglass shaped room with an inaccessible hole to what is probably E-14.
This is actually the entrance to Hell, An uncharted part of the Bunburrows, with the hardest puzzles in the game. Some say the ground there is in some places too hot to setup traps, I don’t even know how bunnies can survive there, but they do.
Pilgrimage
After catching a lot of bunnies and finding even more babies, Ophéline will tell you about a secret room and show it on your computer’s screen: C-27.
This place is accessible by a variety of means including your best (ab)use of pickaxe, shovel and other mechanics. Will you be able to reach the deepest floors of hell and find its treasure?
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