The Cooking Rabbit series, also known as Cooking Rabbit Games, Rabbit Flash Games or Percy Games is a independant YouTube webseries created by animator Mononiiz. It started on 12th May 2023 and is currently ongoing. It was originally made as vent art for Mononiiz before being turned into a real series, being based off of her real life experiances surrounding depression. It currently has 6 episodes with the 7th being worked on. Due to the 7th episode being nearly 2 hours long it was decided to seperate it into 2 seperate episodes so now it is unknown how many episodes in total are planned.

The series follows main protagonist Percy, a rabbit-like flash game character who lives in a website developed by his creator Doliso Games, alongside his brothers Zalo and Taffy. After a lot of unexplained happenings and a strange dream threatening to befall on he and his brothers, Percy and his brothers discover a whole other hidden world beneath the website and set out on a journey alongside a new rabbit, ovo777 and his cat Margo, to put a stop to the threat looming over them and uncover what exactly happened to their creator in 2013.

Cooking Rabbit begins an overarcing narrative hinting at the rest of Xiitopia, in Xiitopia the Niyoya's are considered missing by the emperor who is determined to track them down at any cost. How they ended up in the website or how they're considered created by Emma yet also Xiitopian is a mystery that may not be expanded on in the series anytime soon.

Development

Mononiiz came up with the idea for Cooking Rabbit back in April 2023 when watching a hour long iceberg video from a YouTuber regarding old internet things and due to growing up playing flash games she got the setting of a flash game that's now lost media with something deeper going on. Before Cooking Rabbit, Percy, Zalo and Taffy were old characters dating back to around 2016 and were originally used for a different story. Mononiiz's main inspirations for Cooking Rabbit are Bojack Horseman and Genshin Impact. With Genshin Impact inspiring alot of the visuals and fantasy elements and Bojack Horseman inspiring things like the more realistic dialogue and exploration of themes regarding mental health.

Cooking Rabbit was originally going to be a temporary fad that would've lasted 5 episodes, didn't have much of a plan and wouldn't take itself too seriously, hence the kindof joking tone the first few episodes had. It was originally just a webseries that gradually turned into a way to vent while still not taking itself too seriously. It was never intended to be horror in anyway. When Cooking Rabbit was originally being created Mononiiz had no idea that the idea of a lost flash game with something deeper going on was a idea that had been done already. Once Cooking Rabbit would've been finished the intent would've been to return to the original idea for the characters. Mononiiz initially made Part 1, feeling proud of it and enjoyed the process of making it. During a bad day she revisited the Cooking Rabbit idea and made Part 2 as vent art instead. She then made Part 3 and a additional nameless video to go along with it, also a vent art on a bad day. Things turned out differently than expected due to the series suddenly getting alot of attention after Part 3's release.

Mononiiz was on a different channel of her's when she looked at her switch accounts tab for a second and noticed her Mononiiz channel had suddenly gained 200 subscribers from it's original 7 subscribers and had to do a double take. Mononiiz, seeing this and seeing people's opinions then quickly made Dressing Rabbit however due to mixed reception it ended up being unlisted, then eventually deleted entirely. Dressing Rabbit was originally an idea where scientists were using the games as a way to experiment on Percy and he desired to leave the games. This is what the scrapped version of Part 5 would also touch on.

Due to the reception, Mononiiz scrapped the idea and decided to carry on with no real plan and created Part 5, later renamed to Part 4. She stated the original intent with this episode was a vent about how she grew to hate her own creation and grew frustrated at not being able to make it appealing in anyway, hence the whole making Percy pretty thing and then sedating him and pulling his teeth out. While she was working on Part 4, Mononiiz took a break from the channel finding the attention extremely overwhelming. She returned and uploaded it. Finding the mixed reception, Mononiiz felt the part with his teeth being pulled out may have been too gorey and eventually removed it. She stated she was originally proud of how it came out, however due to the reception she began to hate her own art and stated that looking at Percy even a little made her scared and reminded her of all the pressure.

Mononiiz on a whim in September decided to create "one thing i remember", later renamed to Part 5. It took her 4 days and she was surprised by the more positive reception. It was only when Rabbit Care was being made that a more serious idea began to form and then Part 6 was the start of a desire to make a serious story. Around this time Mononiiz changed the series name from Cooking Rabbit to Rabbit Flash Games.

Mononiiz then went on to work on Part 6 immedietly after. She didn't have a plan originally and only had a vague plan that Part 6 would touch on self harm. She came up with the character ovo777 during Part 6, originally intended to be the embodiment of Percy's negative thoughts with The Code Within being inside his mind. She then worked on colouring and finished Part 6 up until the end of Ovo's part. While doing the colouring on Part 6 she watched Bojack Horseman, and feeling that the original Taffy conversation wasn't written very well and seeing that she didn't start on it yet she decided to rewrite it entirely instead, making Part 6's total time go from 8 minutes to 11 minutes. She admitted Part 6 only took so long due to procrastination, especially on storyboarding, and if she could redo it again she'd plan it out more and focus better. The total amount of frames and layers reaching 1000 also made Medibang, her choice of art program, lag to the point of nearly crashing her computer and by the end Part 6 had 8 differently folders with 800 images each in all of them. It took 2 hours for Sony Vegas, her choice of video editing program, to render once the video was done. When she uploaded Part 6 she felt down about it and worried that it wasn't going to be received well, and was surprised by the positive reception, especially towards the Taffy conversation as she was the most worried about it feeling too different. After Part 6's release the name of the series was changed from Rabbit Flash Games back to Cooking Rabbit. Mononiiz also removed any parts she wasn't proud of from older videos aswell as removed any copyrighted audio.

It has now been nearly 2 years since Part 6. Part 7 originally, just like Part 6 didn't have a real plan. However, as Mononiiz thought more about a plan, Part 7 and also the rest of the series gradually came together. She rewrit Zalo a bit as she heard Part 7 may end up being boring if there isn't someone who causes conflict and noticed people wondering who the nasty voices in Part 2 were. So Zalo ended up being nasty towards Percy. Mononiiz at some point noticed what she was writing with Zalo related to her in some way. While she's a bit more comfortable posting now due to the attention lessening she still feels alot of pressure and holds herself to high standards. And whenever she gets a little more attention then usual she usually ends up deleting it out of fear. She realised she writ Zalo based off of this and after realising this Part 7 became a commentary of her experiances with the channel and how all the attention aswell as comparisons has effected her mentally. Older characters and referances to older videos of hers also make an appearance. Scripting for Part 7 took a year. With voiceacting taking 2 months to finish. Mononiiz stated Part 7 has become so long that it reached 2 hours long and it is now split in half into 2 seperate videos. Part 7 and Part 8. Both being an hour long. She stated both videos have scripting and voiceacting worked on together, but starting from storyboards the videos will be worked on seperately. Mononiiz has admitted to procrastinating alot on scripting but also due to health issues has not been able to work on things as much. And that now scripting and voiceacting are finished things should speed up a bit. Mononiiz has stated working on this has made her love these characters far more and they feel much more fleshed out now, however she is worried that both episodes may be less relatable to people or that Zalo may be too unlikable, or that because of the long wait it may be held to a higher standard and may end up being disappointing or boring.

Mononiiz has gradually started moving away from the lost flash game videos and has expressed a desire to make a indie animated show instead. Mononiiz stated going forward she would like the series to have more substance, more interesting characters and be able to stand on it's own. She would like to lean more into indie animation.

Trivia

• In some episodes, there were originally gorey parts that have now been removed. Mononiiz states these were for a lore reason and due to updates to Youtube can no longer add them back.
• Mononiiz states no desire to redo the first few episodes. Believing it'd complicate the series more and that it'd take too much time.
• Each episode used to be called "cooking rabbit - lost old flash game" or something akin to that. At some point Mononiiz changed the titles to just "Cooking Rabbit | [number]". This is most likely an effort to move away from the lost flash game videos.