Butterfly

Butterflies really are fascinating creatures.

The way they begin as hairy, writhing little tubes and then turn into delicate, many-patterned aeronauts that flicker through the air is remarkable.

A butterfly at the centre of a game tends to suggest there’ll be some sort of nod to this metamorphosis. Alas, Butterfly never really takes flight, instead remaining a simple creature for the entirety of its life.

The aim of Butterfly is to get your titular creature to make all the flowers on a level bloom by touching them. Once every petal is open, a mysterious big flower materialises out of thin air to take you away to the next garden.

Control is handled on a 1:1 basis with the touchscreen, so while it’s possible to touch and drag your butterfly around, tapping on a far-away location will also send it hurtling towards that spot.

Making things a little more difficult is the presence of a timer and a host of nasty creatures intent on eating you. Because you're a magical, flower-growing butterfly, the predators in the game – which range from Koi Carp to carnivorous plants – don’t eat you, but rather just delay your progress.

The timer ticking down in the corner of the screen, however, is consistent across all eight levels in a stage, meaning that too many delays results in failure.

I’m going to stick my neck out and predict that you will never fail to complete a stage, mainly because the timer is so generous that you have to actually go out of your way to lose.

The gameplay – running over a series of flowers – is so simple that even the youngest of players will struggle to make a mistake. It’s the digital equivalent of ‘join the dots’, only the dots can be joined in any order you like.

When time does become an issue is when the game unfairly tries to increase the difficulty by hiding one or two flowers underneath foreground images without giving a clue as to where they are.

It doesn’t help that the designers also felt that unseen enemies next to said flowers would somehow brighten up things, and yet these cheap tactics still don't extend the game past the hour mark.

The presentation is admittedly bright and colourful, with the movement of the Carp underneath the surface of the water in particular adding a depth to the visuals that the gameplay lacks.

Much like a fully grown adult of the same name, Butterfly looks the part with its bright colours and attractive presentation. However, like its wild brethren, these colours also act as warning signs, telling others to stay the hell away.