I Wanna Be the Butterfly

Creators: クライン, れぃ

Average Rating
8.0 / 10
Average Difficulty
73.3 / 100
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Tags:

Adventure (8) Needle (6) Avoidance (7) Trap (4) Gimmick (9) Boss (6) Long (8) Minigame (2)

Screenshots

  • by Wolsk
  • by Wolsk
  • by Kilp41
  • by Wolsk
  • by Kilp41
  • by Wolsk
  • by Wolsk
  • by Kilp41
  • by Wolsk
  • by Wolsk
  • by Wolsk
  • by Wolsk
  • by Wolsk
  • by Kilp41
  • by Wolsk

32 Reviews:

Sheldons_Pet_Rock
Minor spoilers below:



This game is similar to but ultimately better than I Wanna Be the Flower, which I believe was made by the same makers. There is a huge variety of "stages" in this game, which helps to make it feel fresh throughout. Most minigames and stages were very well done - the puzzle stage warp caught me pleasantly by surprise, and most of the minigames were fun, too. However, I must put out there that the bottom-left (yellow) warp is almost entirely bad, and in the final shoot-the-target minigame, the small hitboxes on the targets made it very frustrating to pass. Overall, though, this is a real adventure of a game that rarely becomes boring or excessively grindy.

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Tagged as: Gimmick Long Minigame
[1] Like
Rating: 8.7 87       Difficulty: 72 72
Nov 14, 2022
Cthaere
One of the biggest adventure games out there, with 3 hubs as well as short transition stages between all of them, each of which featuring at least 4 stages full of different gimmicks, platforming and the occasional boss. While this means there's inevitably going to be stronger and weaker areas, this game has also aged somewhat, and so even the better sections show a bit of wear and tear. Nearly every area had something that irked me a tiny bit, although most of them were overall fairly enjoyable. Still, due to the amount of content involved, I am inclined to only really mention the areas that stood out, for better or for worse:


Hub 1 top right portal is a great stage full of cycles which takes a turn into gimmicks and triggers near the end, and it's no surprise it's the one featured in nearly every medley. In contrast, the bottom left one is one of the worst experiences I've had in a fangame, featuring the most claustrophobic needle that exist in fangames while being assaulted by cherries. The stage before the hub choice was quite nice, featuring lowgrav and some tight platforming designed around it. Mario stage on the left hub was a poor experience, featuring extremely long saves with the difficult segments being a good distance into the save and always ending with a trap, but at least it ended with a pretty good boss. To contrast it, the Break the Targets stage was a nice break which required a bit of thinking ahead. On the right hub, the final screen of the grasslands area was a huge pain, although the area as a whole was still enjoyable.


I feel like you can't talk about butterfly without talking about the avoidance, which features a few interesting patterns as well as a healthy amount of rng thrown in. Before I do, though, I would like to mention a repeated problem throughout multiple stages: A 10+ seconds long unskippable cutscene that you are required to watch before every attempt. It is present in the chase at the final stage of the left hub, it is present in the target practice "boss", and it is most certainly present in the avoidance, which made that incredible fight a chore to grind at the beginning, and even though it remains one of my favorites I feel like that intro has diminished the experience somewhat.


Overall I would recommend this game, as long as you can slog through the bottom left portal of the first hub, as it does contain a multitude of great stages and one of the best vocaloid avoidances I've played.

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Tagged as: Adventure Gimmick Long
[1] Like
Rating: 7.8 78       Difficulty: 73 73
Jul 31, 2020
usawo
A very unique fangame. It's an old adventure game, but it has various gimmicks and I found it extremely fun.
Some stages and bosses are a bit tedious, but I think it's worth recommending to those with patience.

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[0] Likes
Rating: 6.2 62       Difficulty: 67 67
Sep 6, 2025
xva
an absolutely fantastic game by two great makers, collaborating to make something truly extraordinary. Klein and Rei outdid themselves, as per usual. Butterfly is nothing quite to the lengths of Emperor, but it's certainly close to it. it's far more varied than Emperor, which makes it more interesting to play for the average fangamer. importantly, the game is cleanly divided into two halves: the first half, which is made by Klein and the second half, which is made by Rei. both halves of the game have their own highlights and are about equally as good. Klein's area displays extremely fun needle design with some fun and simple gimmicks; while Rei's area displays a ton of minigames, more complex and gimmick-heavy platforming. Rei also made far more bosses than Klein, who only made one. to add to this further, this game isn't boss/avoidance heavy at all, so expect to play a lot of different platforming

the platforming is some classic Klein/Rei stuff. I actually think a lot of areas are quite original, even compared to Klein an Rei's various other works. it feels like they poured in more time than usual to think of ideas for this game, further designing things in a more proper and sophisticated fashion. the game has something like 4 hubs filled with stages. it's quite the long play, I wouldn't expect to finish it in one sitting. expect three to four quite long sittings if I had to guess. of course, this depends on your skill but I think if you're even considering playing this game you would be of a fairly high skill level already. the general feel of this game's platforming is quite nice. it's a rare feeling that is really hard to emulate nowadays without it feeling disingenuous. there just aren't many hard and old, classic-style adventure games to go around. this game is just at the lowest echelon of difficulty of what I'd consider the "very difficult old adventure games" group. games like LoveTrap, Emperor, Make it Breaking Out, Destination, Charr, Crimson, Kamilia 3, Noesis all have this same 'old adventure' feeling. it's quite magical and rare, and I really love it. the game is the most varied out of all of these, possessing the largest amount of ideas - perhaps only rivalled by the likes of Make it Breaking Out. fortunately, Butterfly is leagues upon leagues better than Make it Breaking Out, so this comparison is pretty much entirely impossible to make


the bosses aren't plentiful when it comes to Klein's section of the game. he made one boss which uniquely uses one gimmick which I quite enjoyed. it's not Klein's best work, but it's still quite memorable. this boss's stage is also one of my favorites in the entire game. the idea of going all around this large stage that loops into itself from nearly all directions is quite fun. I noticed I had a strangely fun time just exploring, not necessarily even trying to progress. the real bosses are located in the 2nd half of the game - the one designed by Rei. there are bosses sprinkled throughout Rei's section, but the most notable one is of course, the one and only vocaloid we all forget about - Meiko. or, as a wise man once said: "Have some fun with Meiko!". Meiko is the most notable, as it's a super fun and essentially serves as the flagship or hallmark boss of Butterfly. it's a few pattern-ish attacks early on followed by a ton of fun RNG stuff that mainly focuses on density and not speed all too often. you have infinite jump which gives the fight a whole lot more depth. don't think I'll forget to mention the long and boring intro. I can't defend it, honestly. I have no idea why it's in the game and it should be absolutely removed. I'm thankful PDPlayer removed it pretty much entirely in this boss's Last Z variant. it's fairly easy to learn after figuring out the atom pattern at the beginning. now, if Butterfly had a real final boss, it should've been Meiko. it would've made for a much nicer ending, to be fair. however, I won't argue the ending of the game isn't bad per se. I find it super iconic - the way the white fades in as you walk right to the end of the game. it's one of my favorite endings of any fangame yet. the credits are also very beautiful, with the true clear screen being quite nice, but rather unknown. it's a simple logo design but I quite enjoy it, it isn't often talked about


this game has a glaring, massive issue to many people. Butterfly has a ton of ideas in it. some are good, some are not so good. to me, it's more so about the greater picture. I have a massive soft spot for Klein's games and I will often give them the benefit of the doubt any time I can. any time any section of the game feels unfair, bad or too difficult, I always try to think about how it fits in to the entire game. isolating the bad areas will only make them feel worse, but fitting them into the entire game will make them feel a lot better. Rei's section of Butterfly contains a lot of unfair and difficult minigames that aren't easy to master and often require luck. on it's own, this may seem like poor design. but if you look at it differently, the minigames were clearly meant to reach a target difficulty of 70+ which was hardly achievable without making them this difficult/luck-based. to be clear, they're not all so bullshit and luck-based, there are genuinely good, skill-based and fun ones. Butterfly in general is very diverse and has a lot of different gimmicks, minigames, puzzles and general gameplay ideas. you will have to expect some wild, wacky and insane stuff you wouldn't quite expect. you will have to also expect some of these aforementioned sections/ideas not to be fun. going into this game as open-minded as possible will greatly improve your experience with it. no matter how stupid something you encounter may seem, try to give the game the benefit of the doubt. you may begin to see that this game is quite the masterpiece. of course, I could be completely wrong and your mileage may greatly vary. I can see why so many people dislike this game, but there's one key idea that you have to grasp when you're evaluating your overall enjoyment of a game: the slope effect, as I like to call it. this 'slope effect' is, to put it in Layman terms: once something goes particularly wrong in a game, everything may begin to seem horrible about it. let's say you're stuck on a save or area for upwards of several hours. if you begin hating this save, it will make the rest of the game arbitrarily look a lot worse even if it isn't. this effect rarely works the other way around, where bad areas are outshined by better areas. or rather, it takes a marginally whole lot better area to outshine an even somewhat bad area. this might depend on a lot of things, but I've observed this happen several times throughout my fangame career. in my opinion, it's important not to let this influence how you think about a game, as it may cloud your judgement

Butterfly has one of the most egregious cases of this effect, where a bad area can absolutely ruin the rest of the game for you. I've seen this happen a few times and it's honestly quite sad, as those people who experienced this have little to no fond memories of Butterfly

I personally will have fond memories of this game, simply because I love it so much. it's the closest we'll ever get to a second Emperor. Klein isn't making any games anymore, nor is Rei. their influence on the world of fangames will forever be felt and that's the most we can ask for

highly recommended

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Tagged as: Adventure Needle Avoidance Boss Long
[0] Likes
Rating: 10.0 100       Difficulty: 74 74
Mar 28, 2025
gourdladle
The difficulty is just for the 大輪の花 avoidance

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[0] Likes
Rating: 8.1 81       Difficulty: 64 64
Nov 27, 2020