Butterfly Soup

Butterfly Soup is an indie visual novel by American developer Brianna Lei, released in 2017.

Butterfly Soup
Part of the title screen of Butterfly Soup
Developer(s)Brianna Lei 
EngineRen'Py 
Platform(s)Linux
macOS
Microsoft Windows 
ReleaseSeptember 16, 2017
Genre(s)LGBTI+ related video game
indie game
romantic comedy
visual novel 
Mode(s)Single-player 

Setting and themes

The game is set in 2008 and follows four young, queer Asian-American girls as they attend their first year of high school and bond as members of a baseball club. The narrative focuses on the relationship between two of them, Diya and Min-seo.[1] It addresses topics such as child abuse and homophobia, but its tone is generally upbeat.[2] For the story, which takes place in Oakland, California, Lei drew on her own experience growing up in a similar neighborhood among many other Asian-Americans.[3] While the player may make choices in the narrative, these do not influence the outcome of the story.[1]

Gameplay
A point and click section in Butterfly Soup.

Butterfly Soup is a visual novel, and, as such, its gameplay has a low level of interactivity and consists of scenes with static two-dimensional images of characters in a first-person perspective. The game's plot alternates its focus between four major protagonists; any decisions made by the player are followed through from the point of view of whichever character is in the spotlight.[1] Occasionally there are gameplay sections that consist of clicking through different locations or on various objects.

Development

Lei was inspired by various sports anime such as Haikyu!! and Free!. Through this she came up with an idea for a "baseball yuri" game. The game was built over two and half years in Ren'Py, with the art made in Photoshop and Illustrator and the audio edited with Audacity. The characters were designed to be polar opposites of one another so they would create interesting scenarios. The game was intended to be much larger, spanning the entirety of the characters' freshman year, but the length was cut in half due to the scope being too large to reasonably accomplish. [3][4]

Reception

Butterfly Soup was among the visual novels of 2017 most popular among players and critics.[3] Rock, Paper, Shotgun described it as "an insta-hit, and (...) a contemporary classic".[2] It was named the "best visual novel" of 2017 by PC Gamer[5] and was the subject of an exhibition at the Game Developers Conference.[2]

Distribution

The game is available in English, Polish, Tamil, Czech, Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and Korean for the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.[6] It is distributed via itch.io, which allows the buyer to name their own price. As of 2018, Lei intended to make a sequel.[3]

gollark: Again: can you actually use it the way round you did (timeout then protocol)?
gollark: It says there sProtocolFilter (protocol) *then* nTimeout (timeout).
gollark: Wait, does that not make your examples backwards?
gollark: Is the new wiki also for documenting plethora?
gollark: <@278889690596376576> Please whatever my wiki account.

References
  1. Moore, Michael (21 January 2018). "Butterfly Soup is a game about queer Asian-American teens, love, and baseball". The Verge. Retrieved 1 September 2018.
  2. "Priceless Play – September 1st 2018". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. 1 September 2018. Retrieved 1 September 2018.
  3. Stanley, Alyse (28 February 2018). "Developer of indie hit Butterfly Soup talks sequel plans". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 1 September 2018.
  4. Couture, Joel. "Road to the IGF: Brianna Lei's Butterfly Soup". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
  5. "Best Visual Novel 2017: Butterfly Soup". PC Gamer. 29 December 2017. Retrieved 1 September 2018.
  6. https://brianna-lei.itch.io/butterfly-soup
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