Bunny Hop 2026

We had some family coming up for Easter this year, and my kids were really excited to see their cousins. In the days leading up to it, they kept asking me to 3D print something to put in the baskets for our guests. They decided they wanted this bunny printed in each cousin’s favorite colors.

That sounded sweet enough, but we all know where little plastic toys usually end up—tossed into a box with all the other trinkets, like old Happy Meal toys. With my current obsession with NFC chips, and my growing interest in seeing what I can build in a single evening with an AI coding buddy, I figured I’d try to make it a little more meaningful.

Similar to the NFC duck project, I added a 1-inch cylindrical cavity in the bottom of each bunny (though I skipped the puzzle-piece style design I used for the ducks I wrote about here). Then I printed one for every kid—both my own and their cousins.

From there, I started building out a simple idea.

I decided to create a mobile-friendly web game that, when opened with specific query parameters, would recognize which child was playing, greet them by name, and wish them a Happy Easter.

The result was a simple endless “bunny hop” game: a bunny continuously moves to the right collecting carrots, while the player’s only task is to jump over holes, hop onto platforms, and avoid or leap over attacking birds.

The game was fun enough on its own, but I thought it would be even more interesting (and a lot more meaningful) if I tied everything together with a Node.js backend to track high scores for each child. That way, they could have a little friendly competition to see who could collect the most carrots.

Admittedly, it’s still not the kind of game anyone is going to play for hours on end, but I’m hoping it’s fun enough to give them a small sense of connection and togetherness, even though they live pretty far apart.

Once the game was finished and the rabbits were printed, I attached an NFC tag to each one that linked to a personalized version of the game using custom identifiers in the URL. This lets each child load into their own version of the game with a bunny that matches the colors of their printed rabbit.

To play, they can simply use a parent’s phone to scan the chip or save the URL for later. Afterward, I realized it also made sense to include a small QR code, since most tablets don’t have NFC capabilities. In this case, a QR code alone probably would have been enough, but the NFC tags feel more fun and a little more magical.

All in all, it wasn’t a huge project, but I got really excited about the idea. It felt much more special than simply giving them another 3D-printed toy destined for a drawer.

Here’s a link to the game in guest mode if you want to try it out: https://easter2026.jklinscreations.com/