Butterfly Gathering by UniOwl
Important! Web version on itch is postjam only with additional QoL features. For rating play v1.0.4 (Windows) instead, and for better experience use v1.0.5 (Windows/Web).
Grow the flowers, catch some cool butterflies! Some of them are very special. Can you find them all? Can you break the world record?
Manual
| Flower | Element|
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Made By
The Spinning Sofa Team
- @uniowl
- @hideyzzz
- @pado
- @pacelin
- @tryam
- @eklbirifine
- @matimay
- @k-metz
Changelog
Important!
Latest jam version is 1.0.1. Use latest version for better experience, and jam version for rating.
1.0.2-1.0.4
Fixed: - Fixed material and sprite atlas property to correctly show butterfly effects - Heavily optimized journal opening - Fixed performance degradation that causes game to crash - Fixed music and graphics being out of sync - Fixed client receiving server message error - Fixed interactive butterfly effects being static
1.0.5
New: - Added size variation for giant butterflies. - The cursor now changes to a net when hovering over butterflies. - Added a post-jam version notice to the main menu.
QoL: - Added a counter for discovered butterflies. - Page numbers have been added to the Journal. - Journal navigation arrows are now disabled when you can't go further. - Purchased flowers now become the active tool automatically.
Fixed: - Improved the display of butterfly traits. - Fixed a bug causing the day/night cycle and music to become desynchronized. - Fixed an issue with butterfly collision boxes being too large.
Screenshots
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/ld-58-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 247th | 3.694⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 587th | 3.018⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 348th | 3.318⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 49th | 4.3⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 116th | 4.318⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 291th | 3.422⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 664th | 2.064⭐ | 49🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 209th | 3.833⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 39🗳️ | 61🗨️ |
1) After unlocking all the flowers and planting them all over the field, I started getting new butterflies and just pressing one button to collect them. I didn't need to plant flowers or use a shovel anymore; I just sat and caught them. It gets boring. I would recommend working on your flower planting mechanics. For example, make it so that some butterflies only appear after you plant flowers in the right pattern(Draw a circle of flowers, for example). You could also add random events, like rodent attacks that need to be spent from the field.
2) The economy is draining too quickly. I get a lot of money from butterflies, often and in large quantities, but the field is already completely planted. I have nowhere to spend it. Perhaps you could add a way to expand the sowing area for money, or something similar.
3) I encountered a bug where the buttons didn't work at the very beginning. (I couldn't confirm the name). By the way, why is this mechanic necessary?
I also encountered a bug where after a long period of Alt-Tabbing, I returned to the game and the pause buttons stopped working, preventing me from continuing.
In any case, you did a great job, well done!
The character designs for all the butterflies are beautiful. I tried collecting them all, but it starts feeling a bit repetitive and RNG-heavy, even when experimenting with flower mixes to spot patterns. The money system feels like it’s missing a stronger purpose, though.
The world record concept is funny in a good way, it actually reminded me of the size mechanic in Monster Hunter. It's a nice detail of the game.
I loved it, very cool, very clean, very inspirational, and surprisingly relaxing, even though this isn’t usually my type of game.
First of all, wow, thanks for detailed feedback! I'll try my best to answer on some important parts
I mostly agree with your points. Although or game is about collecting in the first place, economy and short-term goal planning here is pretty mediocre
The shovel and flowers are still useful (kind of?), but their goal may either not be entirely clear or just enough. Players are still need to remove old plants and try different combinations (if they want to collect all butterfly species in a reasonable amount of time)
Yes, combinations. When game decides what butterfly to spawn, it picks random flower and looks at its neighbors, so there are some kind of combinations present (but simple enough for a jam)
Maybe I, as a GD, need to be more precise/strict when designing game systems like that and not leave all of their problems on balance/level design itself. Still don't have enough competence there, but I am definitely planning on improving my skills there, and your feedback is very useful, so hopefully on next LD I will be prepared better 😎
Thanks again!
Actually, world record idea came to mind accidentally, and the size was perfect fit for it! (actually, I personally was inspired by WEB FISHING)
I talked about economy-related issues in a huge message above, but your point about too much rng and repetitiveness is useful too. That is not the first time I face similar problem, still don't know the best way to solve it in a jam game 😪
1. Shadowmask (I asked our artist to draw a texture, where white=light, black=no light), which I overlayed over the game field, so butterflies and flowers are "lit by sun"
2. Post-processing. Our artist made four lookup-texture (LUTs), that we then used in color grading effect (essentially it is like photoshoping game image every frame), then we blended LUTs based on time of day
Glad that you liked the names, it was actually harder than lighting lmao. The thing about "combine flowers to get some species" is kinda hidden from the player, but that was the point - to make him/her experiment. Maybe, however, that is a little bit too much to ask for a game jam players 🧐
A nice game to play for relaxing with very beatiful art and chill music. The flowers bobbing when hovering over them gave me almost the same feeling as drawing rectangles with the mouse on the desktop or in paint when i was a child - just very satisfying to watch.
Unfortunately the game crashed several times at random actions. Once after trying to open the journal after all flowers were unlocked and once after selecting a flower after closing the journal.
Hope you got that fixed in a later version.
It reminded me of Dredge :ship: in some ways
Thank you for your comment! You're right, we are well aware of the issue with the in-game money.
Our original goal was to prevent money from being a barrier for players, but as a result, it has become essentially useless :)
We are considering a few options:
The simplest solution: Remove money from the game entirely so players can focus solely on collecting.
A popular suggestion: Make flowers more expensive and add a progression system. However, in this case, the initial butterflies would lose their value over time.
My personal preference (as a programmer): Introduce an alternative way to spend money. For example, a "pollination" feature for flowers that increases the butterfly spawn rate or the chance of finding large or special specimens.
I would really like to refine the game a bit later (most likely after the jam ends), so I would love to hear any other ideas you might have :)
Here's the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2588456381
The economy inflates rather quickly though, so you as a player soon won't have much to spend your money on - so it would resolve to you waiting for the new butterflies to appear and hope they'd be big.
Still, nice game!