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.