Rabbits in Culture, and the Origin of "Rabbit Hole" — Where Three Burrows Came From
Rabbits have long been regulars in our stories.
The same animal shows up wearing a different costume from culture to culture.
In East Asia, people looked up at the moon and saw a rabbit.
In the patterns on the moon's surface, they pictured a rabbit pounding rice in a mortar.
Korea, China, and Japan each tell slightly different versions of the tale, but the idea that a rabbit lives on the moon is widely shared.
The rabbit even claims a spot among the twelve zodiac animals.
In the West, the rabbit became a symbol of spring.
The bunny that shows up every Easter stands for new life and abundance — an image born from how many babies rabbits tend to have.
And then there's the phrase that gave this game its name: the "rabbit hole." In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the whole adventure begins when Alice chases a waistcoated rabbit and dives into its burrow.
Ever since, "falling down the rabbit hole" has come to mean getting drawn into a deep, strange world that's hard to climb back out of once you're in.
Three images became three burrows
The game has three burrows.
They aren't recolors of one another — each started from a different rabbit image.
The Dirt Burrow is the real rabbit's burrow from earlier.
Warm milk-chocolate soil, tree roots, mushrooms, fireflies.
It's the closest thing to a European rabbit's warren, which is why it became the default.
No modifiers at all; it's the baseline the others are measured against.
The Moonlit Burrow came from the moon rabbit.
Stars are embedded in the walls, glinting, and now and then a crescent drifts past.
A night sky inside a burrow makes no sense, but then imagining a rabbit living on the moon was already that kind of leap.
What's fun is that this is the only burrow with weak gravity.
Jumps float and come down slowly.
The common knowledge that the moon's gravity is weak got carried straight into a game rule, which makes this burrow not just look different but handle differently.
It's a rare case of a rule falling out of the setting.
The Crystal Cave leans toward Alice.
Not a real rabbit's burrow, but the strange place you find after diving into one.
Crystals rise from purple walls and gems roll underfoot.
It also runs faster with obstacles packed tighter, matching the impression that this is somewhere a bit wrong.
A burrow with no bottom
The story came from Alice's side too.
Mocha finds two things in her grandfather's old bag: a treasure map with no end drawn on it, and a stopped pocket watch.
The map has no end because the game has no end, and the stopped watch is a nod back to Alice's waistcoated rabbit, forever consulting his.
The in-game pocket watch slowing time came out of that.
If a rabbit carries a stopped watch, it seemed reasonable she could hold time back a little.
Deciding an item's effect by asking what fits the story before asking what's convenient tends to produce rules that need no explanation.
This burrow you descend with Mocha is exactly like that.
Take one step in, and you'll want to see just how far down it goes.