Edmonton-based video game studio Caldera Interactive announces debut game

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Edmonton-based video game studio Caldera Interactive has unveiled its debut game, which is set to release in 2026.

The fledgling three-man studio posted the first trailer for its game, The Rabbit Haul, on Wednesday. The game is being developed for the Nintendo Switch and PC.

The game puts players in control of a cottontail rabbit trying to rebuild its hometown after being ravaged by greedy raccoons called the Trash Panda Posse. During the day, players tend to their farm, water crops, and harvest produce, all while growing defensive tower plants to thwart invaders.

For CEO Isael Huard, the game combines elements from other games he and his fellow developers, Mickael Zerihoun and Titus Lo, love to play.

“We love cute games, and our artist makes really cute art,” Huard said. “We all love farming games, and we really love tower defence games, so we all wanted to make a game that we knew we would want to play, and we think others will want to play it too.”

As an exceedingly small studio of three, Huard says each member “wears many hats.” Huard is the lead sound designer and fulfills administrative and marketing roles. Zerihoun “handles everything programming-wise” and Lo acts as artist, animator, and designer.

Outside of game development, Huard said there was a whole other set of challenges that came with opening their own studio.

“People sometimes don’t realize that we’re also running a business,” Huard said. ‘We’re also having all these meetings about marketing and strategy and having to talk with lawyers for trademarks and copyrights and having to deal with accounting and how we get funding.”

While the team is now working full time on The Rabbit Haul, it wasn’t always so. In 2018, when this trio of University of Alberta graduates first decided to form a studio, they worked on the game part time, burning candles at both ends while holding onto the dream of making a game people enjoy. It wasn’t until 2022 that the team made Caldera Interactive their full-time job thanks to a $1.5-million grant from the Canada Media Fund.

That funding helped the team tremendously, according to Huard, and allowed the studio the opportunity to take their game to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March 2024, where they won the GDC Pitch competition.

“My initial reaction was scared, honestly,” Huard said. “But it was also confirmation that we were onto something. It opened doors for us. It didn’t provide funding, but it gave us notoriety, which got us meetings with people who wouldn’t have met with us otherwise, and eventually, it helped us get more funding.”

Head to The Rabbit Haul Steam page to wishlist the game on PC.

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