Butterfly Soup

Not everyone has hours and hours to invest in a 400 chapter visual novel, but still want that feeling of getting lost in a great story. Butterfly Soup is a wonderful yuri novel about four queer friends who begin high school together in the year 2008. While it’s not quite as fast as One Night, Hot Springs, if you’ve played this game you can expect it to flow as quickly.

The story mainly revolves around the gentle and quiet Diya, and the delinquent Min-Seo. They had a strong bond as childhood friends before a move separated them, and are now getting to know each other once again as they come back together for high school.

Restricted game play

This visual novel is a bit different in how game play is performed. In most visual novels, it’s normal for you to shape the personality of the characters through the choices that you make. In Butterfly Soup, while you have choices to make they never help determine the personality of the character. That is set in stone, and the choices you make are relatively trivial. As an example, you can’t choose whether to ignore a sick person or to ask if they are okay. Instead your choices are to ask if they are okay, or feel their forehead and share that same feeling in a different way. Although this might seem like it would ruin the game and devolve it into nothing more than turning pages in a story, the developers use these choices in a clever way, to reveal more about the character.

Diya for example, is a kind person—but doesn’t always read into a decision well. The developers use the player to prod her into making helpful decisions, showing that she needs that prod. If it weren’t for the exceptional writing in the game, these decisions would feel meaningless, but thanks to careful script it provides a nice accent to the game.

Some plot threads left

Its hard to talk more about the plot without revealing spoilers, but in short the visual novel focuses on Diya and Min-Seo to the expense of the other characters in the game. The other two characters are just as well thought out and deep as Diya and Min-Seo, yet their own personal storyline is neglected. This is likely in part to keep the novel short, and because of the limits on actions you can take, but it would still augment the game to have their storyline tied up once and for all.

Abrupt ending

At the end of the story, the four characters talk directly to the player, with their own thoughts on the story. This feels redundant, since their feelings come across very well in the story line. It’s not necessary to repeat it.

Pros

• Very cute story line
• Quick read
• Heartwarming queer romance

Cons

• Abrupt ending
• Plot threads not tied up

I was so impressed by what I experienced with Butterfly Soup I felt that I had to throw the developer a few bucks! I played this again recently for the first time in a few years and it is still one of the best gay visual novels that I have had the pleasure to play. The writing, the characters, and the way it blends humor, deep emotional stuff, and teenagers discovering who they are makes this such a great coming of age style story that I cannot speak highly enough of.

High School Never Ends

The setting of Butterfly Soup is California in 2008 and we have four close friends who decide to join the baseball team. We have Diya, Min Akarsha, and Noelle. These girls grew up together, but Min eventually moved away to Florida. Well, it is high school now and Min has moved back. We have just such a great story of friendship, learning who you are, and discovering your sexuality in this game. I honestly cannot do it justice! The writing is witty, and funny and it grabs you by the feels on many occasions too. It is the kind of story where the less you read about it before you start the more impactful it is going to be.

Differing Perspectives

One thing that I loved about the way that Butterfly Soup told its story was the way it would show the girls while they were in grade school and also the stuff that is going down in the present in high school. It helps you feel like you know the girls so much more and as a group, it makes them so much stronger. I know I have already used the phrase and it is cliché as hell, but calling this a coming of age story truly is the best way to look at it. Each character has their own personality and while we do have a love story brewing, finding out about their homelives, hopes, and dreams and just them as individuals in general was what made this click with me as much as it did.

Cute And Real

I am a huge fan of the character designs in Butterfly Soup. The anime style characters look fantastic and are very expressive. Diya is my favorite character, she has this kind of deadpan look on her face that I just love. Each of the girls is cute, but despite the clear nod to anime in their design, the girls, and the other few characters the story has all have a more realistic look to them which I think helped a great deal with making you connect with the characters. The game does use real images for the backgrounds which I am not sure if I am a fan of, to be honest with you, but at the same time I do not hate it and the characters are and should be your focus anyway.

Not Quite A Straight Line!

The gameplay of Butterfly Soup is rather interesting. The story goes in the direction that the fantastically talented writer and developer intends so in that regard you would have to say that the game is linear. However, you do get various choices to make in terms of what characters say and also in regard to different parts of a screen you can click on. So what is the point of having choices if the story is going in one direction no matter what? Well, character dialogues can change depending on what you say and do. This is such a great and clever way to give the player a bit of control without having to compromise the story that the writer wanted to tell.

Pros:

• The four main girls are all great
• I loved the way that the story was in the present and also when they were kids
• The characters are drawn very well
• This is a story that is funny, but it also has a ton of emotion too

Cons:

• Not enough people have thrown the developer a few bucks for this! They deserve it!
• I am not a huge fan of using real images for the backgrounds