Butterflies is an asynchronous MMO* that uses the gm48.net leaderboards in a unique way to manage player interactions!
Compete against other players in finding the most new species of butterflies. You may choose to chase and capture butterflies yourself... Or you can just pickpocket other people's findings! Stealing butterflies from other players will bring their score down and increase your score.

ONLINE SCORES AND STATISTICS:
🌍butterflies.riuku.net🌎
(The website was made after the jam. You can see everyone's scores within the game itself too.
It's an alternative way to view them and it shows additional interesting statistics.)


How to play


⏲️  You have one day (2 minutes in real time) to find as many butterflies as you can. Results of subsequent games will stack and be saved to the server.
⌨️  [WASD] to move around.
🖱️  [LEFT CLICK] to capture flying butterflies by hitting them with your pincers.
⌨️  [E] to pickpocket other people when you're close enough to them.
 You can only pickpocket people in the top 10 on leaderboards! You can also only pickpocket the same target only once per game day.






Pickpocketing

🖱️  [LEFT CLICK] and DRAG butterflies into your pouch to steal them.
😾❗  You'll get caught if the target looks at you while you're moving or if you're currently holding one of their butterflies in your pincers!






⌨️  [TAB] to view the score book.
 In the score book you'll see how many and what kinds of butterflies others have gathered (or stolen!).
 You can also find the score book and some additional statistics at butterflies.riuku.net.





Credits

Riuku  ⚙️ Programming
dosto  🎨 Art
henrimikael  🎵 Music, sound effects


Fonts: Bird Seed and Lantern by Chevy Ray.


*"massiveness" is subjective

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  • Happysquared
    Lv. 15

    Super creative use of the leaderboards. Art blew me away as well. Think I've mainly played your more action and shooting orientated games so seeing this flexibility in style and tone was really cool. Beautiful butterflies and the cat's expressions were great. I love the UI and the notebook.... visually just very beautiful with an awesome palette. Loved the idea of using the leaderboard in this way. Stealing will never not be fun. Only complaint is that I would have liked to see more in regards to the notebook and discovering butterflies. I liked finding new butterflies a lot so wouldn't mind more "discovery" mechancis geared towards the collection. But I think the "discvoery" portion already felt nailed with the cat 'discovering' the stealing. And that is already a creative use of theme imo.

  • Hokori
    Lv. 12

    Really enjoyed this one. The idea of using the leaderboard in this way is really creative and awesome choice for a jam game. Seeing the familiar names and allowing me to steal points from them is brilliant. I thought the stealing mini game was the best part - I tried to get more and more efficient with my stealing techniques and I got to the point that I could take 2 butterflies per head turn. The presentation and music were all top notch and I really liked the journal that showed all the butterfly types. The idea behind this one really brings it to life. The 'mmo' aspect definitely worked for me, even if the players aren't online at the same time. With normal leaderboards I do find myself being competitive but in this one you can directly steal from anyone ahead of you or people trying to catch up to you. This game is very unique and clean, excellent work!

  • Megan
    Lv. 12

    So cute, the art was great and the concept was fun!

  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    Incredible game! Not only is the idea very good, but the actual game itself is sooo clean!
    I had a small idea for a while for a game that would use the leaderboards as a mechanic, and I was eagerly waiting for someone to do something like that, so I'm even more happy to see this :)
    And I'm really sorry to everyone I've stolen, but I had to, the music for the stealing screen is too good 😳

    My only complaint (and warning, it's a big one!) is that I wish the game didn't show the windows cursor 😬
    Okay no, there's another thing: the game told me a couple times that I ran out of time for stealing even though I had time left when I stole the last butterfly (I checked with the nvidia replay thing to be sure). Happened at least twice, with different people, one time with 5 seconds left and one time with 8 :(

    But yeah, that's all I've got. Great game.

    Ok I lied, there's another thing: imo the theme is pretty weak here, but a loooot of games this jam have turned discovery as a "collect different things", so I think it'll be fine in the end. (and here you can get discovered by stealing but it's passive and... ok yeah ok fine I'll stop nitpicking)

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Thanks for the feedback! Good to hear that you enjoyed the leaderboard thing because I've been thinking of doing something like this for a while now! Basically ever since I tried the leaderboard library and noticed that you can throw arbitrary data with the scores, haha. Definitely want to play around with the leaderboard system (read: exploit it) in another jam later.

      If I remember correctly we came up with the idea of "discovering new species" before we decided it was going to be a collecting game, and I think the species discovery idea in itself was a pretty nice interpretation of the theme. But fair enough, having the main mechanic ending up being just "collecting things" feels like a bit of a cheap interpretation of the theme.

  • Tydecon Games
    Patron

    In playing this game I have learned two things - one is that you are incredibly skilled at using the GM48 leaderboard in a unique way and in general using a multitude of skills to make a phenomenal game – the other is that I’d be a terrible thief! This is a brilliant game and I am very impressed! Great job!

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Just watched your video. Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

      We entertained the idea of making stealing progressively harder the longer you play. But of course time was running out so we just made stealing pretty difficult just so that it doesn't immediately get boring for the people who wish to grind a bit and climb the leaderboards.

      I was looking forward to your video, and I'm sure others too are always excited to see someone play and commentate their games, so keep doing those videos!

  • arthurgps2
    Lv. 12

    This has to be one of my favorites. Not only the pixel art is pretty good, the idea of interaction between players through the leaderboard is simply too awesome! I think this is one of this jam's games I've spent the most time on! Once you start getting the hang of this game, you start developing strategies to place higher in the leaderboard, like targetting specific people (sorry Hokori) and other stuff. Evil... but effective lol. Now I'm top 2. Great game!

    PS: Now I've realized a lot of the people I targetted the most were people which I already played their games! Now I feel even more evil!

    Dantoma
    Submitted

    Dantoma

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Thank you very much! Happy to hear you had a good time with it.

      I'm planning on updating the leaderboard website (butterflies.riuku.net) with some additional statistics towards the end of the rating period... Maybe show who has stolen the most from whom. Alliances and rivalries will be uncovered...

  • Mark L 🌲
    Lv. 5

    Really nice!

    It was so much fun to see all the names of the people of this community. I was thinking for a few seconds that it was an online game haha. The pickpocketing mechanic was hilarious and nice. Although some more feedback (visually or with audio) would have been nice when stealing. I sometimes didn't know I was still holding the butterfly instead of having already stolen it.

    But that didn't make the game less fun and I loved the vibe of the whole thing because of the slightly moody music. Really nice work!

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Ahh we really didn't mean to trick anyone to think it's a real time online game! It is online but only synchronizes the moment you finish a day, and the characters you see are NPC representations of other players. Maybe we should've made that more clear!

      There are definitely a few things we could've done to make the stealing scene more intuitive. Thanks for the feedback!

      This time, for this game, we really focused on the community aspect so I'm happy to hear you enjoyed that part of it!

  • Luke Peña
    Lv. 4

    I liked the audio and whole vibe of the gam! Unfortunately, the journal never showed any of my collection and I didn't really get to experience the social aspect. But I thought it felt very complete otherwise, which is rare for a gamejam game.

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Thanks for the feedback! There was unfortunately an issue with the server that lasted a day or so, but it's now fixed. During that time if you played, you couldn't see any other players and it didn't work correctly in other ways too. You may have caught it at a bad time!

      Thanks for playing, I'm happy to hear you liked the working parts of it anyway :)

  • singleshot
    Lv. 43

    Sad that the server broke when I played the game. but here a link to the vod if you want to rewatch it. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1181819117?t=00h17m28s

    Hell Diver
    Submitted

    Hell Diver

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Bad timing to have the game break just before the stream... Thanks for trying it out anyway and streaming!

      I showed the problem to Peter and he found the issue and deployed a fix on the server. The game is now working again, woo!

  • Seltzy
    Patron

    This is a neat project. Only visible issue is the leaderboards going off the page at the end. The whole thing just feels good quality.

  • switecom
    Lv. 1

    Great idea! To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a similar game. Nice, smooth animations, good colour scheme. When starting the game, for whatever reason, Internet Explorer and Edge kept popping up and I had a hard time getting access to the game, might be because I have a linked account so there's a compability issue. BGM seemed pretty ominous for a game about catching butterflies :D Cats are always a plus.

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Thanks! I don't remember having seen games like this on gm48 yet so it was fun figuring out a novel way to use the online leaderboards. I think there's much more you could do with the system, and I definitely want to mess with it again on another jam!

      Thanks for the bug report. I haven't heard that happening to anyone else yet. Event though we won't update the game, I'll still try to reproduce that bug to find if it's a problem with the game itself or the leaderboard system on gm48's end.

  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    2yrs ago

    Lovely style and idea! i really enjoyed it. My 2 issues are that in the beginning of the game all of the butterflies are cornered in one small space and then they start spreading into the larger area which makes it easy to capture in the beginning. my second issue is the stealing, sometimes the cat is too fast when turning around which makes it impossible to predict and sometimes I get caught without even grabbing anything or moving my mouse. but overall I love cats and would love anything with cats and this game is amazing, good job!

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Thanks for the feedback! The butterfly spawn area didn't turn out to be the best, that's for sure. The cat turning around super fast sometimes may be a bug. Haven't seen it happen myself yet but many people seem to be having that issue unfortunately.

      Thanks for playing! Glad to hear you appreciate the cat theme as much as we do.

  • ProfessorFunk
    Lv. 3

    Really impressive creation for the time limit. The art was gorgeous and the butterfly chasing was my favourite part. I hope I stay on the leaderboard!

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Thank you! I believe we may have some perseverant competitors, so you may have to go back and get your score back up before soon...

  • Reaktori
    Lv. 17

    What a clever use of the GM48 leaderboards! I like the stylized colors and graphics. Especially the score book thing looks great.

    Sometimes the fake-players detected my stealing attempts even when I wasn't doing anything.

    Shipwreck
    Submitted

    Shipwreck

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      I had someone else run into that bug during development but I couldn't find the reason for it. Hopefully it's rare. Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

  • Hessery
    Lv. 10

    Ayy, this is really cool. I would never have thought to make a game like this.

    I had a bug where i couldn't rejoin the game after looking at scores during the night.

    Good Job

  • Eric Blackburn
    Lv. 3

    Very creative pseduo MMO! Managed to steal a few butterflies, and chase a few more. Excellent work of art, and sharp programming.

  • 2102
    Patron

    This is a very neat game. Cool use of the leaderboards and online capabilites. That stuff is out of my wheelhouse, so I'm always impressed when I see it.

  • Banana Drone Gaming
    Lv. 2

    I'm very sorry about that. I thought it was a virus. You do not suck, and neither does the game. I love the graphics of the game and that you can steal from other players. It really fits the theme! I also love the music.

    • Riuku
      Lv. 19
      Riuku Developer of Butterflies

      2yrs ago

      Hi! The game only asks you to authorize the game limited access to your gm48.net account so that it can submit your score to the server. We don't get access to your account for anything more than that. The game is using the leaderboard system integrated into gm48.net. It's safe to authorize!