A Heart of Butterblue

A well-balanced short game that is equal parts horror and mystery, farming and management, romance and social sim. There’s a painterly style to all of the art, from the character portraits and backgrounds to the CGs. The designs of the characters are very nice as well, being believably simple how they would look given the setting and circumstances while still being interesting. Later on as you find out certain things about a character you start to actually see how that reflects in their design making them even better. The music sets the atmosphere quite well and fits the setting especially. It is quite fun to listen to as well. A somewhat big but not too bad issue I have with the game is that fullscreen or just maximized windowed mode does not really work. It cuts off the character portraits and options that show up on the top of the screen. This is easily mitigated by leaving the game in its standard windowed mode, but it is a bit of a shame the art can’t be enjoyed properly in a bigger format. There are some other moments where the game felt a bit unresponsive for a moment, but I haven’t encountered any outright game breaking bugs. The foraging, farming and fishing aspect of the gameplay is kept very simple and quickly becomes monotonous, which does serve the narrative. As Phebe is seeking a routine, you inadvertently fall into that routine while making money at the start. However it is not required to be done for long enough to where it would become tedious. Much of the game serves the narrative in subtle and not so subtle ways. That story is quite good, so I don’t want to spoil any of it. I do suggest leaving Peyton’s ending for last as it seems to be the true ending with how much it reveals. Being primarily a visual novel with some additional gameplay elements to spice things up this game can easily fill a few hours of an afternoon or evening. It might require some patience with its less than perfect performance, but it is well worth it for the story and art.

Didn't get very far because the characters weren't very interesting or likeable and the gameplay gave me so little to do I didn't have to worry about running out of time for the day.

A Heart of Butterblue is an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. This Choose-Your-Own-Adventure e-book is themed on the exciting concept of agriculture as you take on the role of the authors imaginary girlfriend in this mildly horror themed farming based dating sim... and I think it would be unfair not to mention just how incredibly cringey this whole dumpster fire is. There are some pointless minigame elements and a bit of clicking around to get to the next bit of garbage e-book writing/cringe, and none of it is worthwhile. Visual novels/e-books are tedious at best... imagine the best novel you ever read, be that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Twilight (if you have terrible taste in literature), but then translate that to a format where the words dribble out and you have to click your mouse every time you wanted to read the next sentence, instead of just turning the pages. You'd think it was garbage. Now imagine that experience, but with much worse writing (because if these guys could write professionally, they'd be published authors and this would be on shelves in bookstores, and they wouldn't have to pay Valve $100 to self-publish this on Steam), and you have your average Steam e-book. One of the chief problems with failed authors polluting Steam with non-game E-books is that E-books can easily just be presented in a web browser... there's no justification for charging money on Steam for what might as well be a webpage. We don't spend thousands on buying a gaming rig to spend money on Steam for something Chrome or Firefox could do. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the e-book peaked at only 2 concurrent readers... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. The funny thing is, if you wanted to print this book, you'd only need to print 2 copies to satsify the entire world's demand for it. While this E-book is "free", you can get better quality, professionally written books and comics for free online (from places like Project Gutenberg) or from public libraries. Steam isn't a comic book store, neither is it Netflix, it's for games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.

☀️

Игра 'A Heart of Butterblue' – это трогательное и визуально очаровательное приключение, которое западет в душу. История о маленькой девочке, исследующей волшебный мир в компании разговорчивой бабочки, полна тепла и доброты. Графика выполнена в приятном, слегка наивном стиле, что добавляет игре особого шарма. Сюжет, хотя и не блещет сложностью, подкупает своей искренностью и акцентом на дружбе. Головоломки, в основном, не представляют особой сложности, но они хорошо вплетены в повествование и не отвлекают от погружения в мир игры. Главным достоинством игры является её атмосфера. Спокойная музыка, яркие краски и милые персонажи создают ощущение уюта и волшебства. Это идеальная игра для тех, кто ищет что-то доброе и расслабляющее. Несмотря на короткую продолжительность, 'A Heart of Butterblue' оставляет после себя приятное послевкусие и напоминает о важности маленьких радостей в жизни. Рекомендую всем, кто ценит красивые визуальные новеллы и игры с добрым посылом.

I enjoyed the story--Peyton is great.