“Make a recreation somebody would kill a person to play” An interview with Brianna Lei of Butterfly Soup

We love Butterfly Soup over right here. We held it up as considered one of our favourite free video games of final yr, and I actually have not cooled on the sport over time. I bought the chance to fulfill the sport’s creator, Brianna at GDC this yr after she was nominated for the Greatest Narrative award. Fortunately for us, she was prepared to be interviewed, and we spent the intervening weeks speaking. The next is the results of that dialog.

Let’s begin with an introduction: Who’re you and what’s Butterfly Soup?

I am Brianna, a recreation author and designer who likes making area of interest video games. Butterfly Soup is a visible novel I made a few group of Asian American youngsters falling in love with baseball and one another. You play by the angle of 4 excessive schoolers, every of whom battle with not being what their mother and father/society need them to be.

How has the reception been to Butterfly Soup?

I knew some folks would really like it and make fanart of it, however I used to be fully blown away by the press consideration and help it bought within the video games neighborhood. The message of the sport resonated with gamers extra deeply than I anticipated. I often see folks say they’ve replayed the sport a number of occasions even although it is solely been out for a couple of months, and it is each flattering and unhappy. I am joyful that they prefer it sufficient to replay it instantly, however I want there have been different video games they may play that will scratch the identical itch. It makes me really feel like I’ve bought to rush up and make extra video games prefer it to fill the void in its style.
 

Additionally, each every so often I do see some backlash from losers calling it an SJW recreation, and it fills me with pleasure. I take pleasure in making folks I dislike depressing.

Which of the baseball youngsters is your favourite? Are you allowed to select a favourite child?

I like all of them, but it surely’s positively Diya. I relate rather a lot to her social nervousness and he or she’s enjoyable to attract.  

What made you wish to make Butterfly Soup?

Rising up, there weren’t loads of teen dramas or coming-of-age tales that handled the issues I confronted as an Asian-American. The few issues that did star Asian-Individuals had been normally actually…I do not know how you can put it, however one-noted? For instance, if the writer was Chinese language-American, all of the essential characters would both be Chinese language or white. I grew up surrounded by different East Asian and South Asian youngsters who had been struggling simply as a lot as I used to be, and we discovered solace in that. So I actually wished to make a recreation that mirrored that in a manner my teenage self would’ve wish to see.
 

How was Butterfly Soup influenced by different works, and what do you hope different devs be taught out of your success?

I am a giant fan of sports activities anime like Oofuri, Free!, and Haikyuu, and I tried to design the character dynamics in Butterfly Soup to be simply as fascinating as those in these sequence.
The unique Ace Legal professional trilogy is my favourite visible novel sequence, so I principally modeled the sport’s feel and appear off of it. For instance, the format I used for ideas in dialogue is similar, and I imitated Ace Legal professional’s screenshake at dramatic moments. One other massive affect was the UK teen drama Skins. Every episode was from a special excessive schooler’s viewpoint, and I used to be impressed to make use of the same format for Butterfly Soup.