A Butterfly

A short experimental interactive poem by Nathalie "alienmelon" Lawhead, blending psychological horror and butterfly flight/walking sim. Part of the new Blue Suburbia project (a reconstruction of the web-based work created with her mother Milena between 1999 and 2005), it continues the artist's fascination with '90s internet aesthetics, computer graphics and net art. Lawhead is best known for Everything is going to be OK (now in MoMA's permanent collection) and Tetrageddon Games. Unlike their humour and playfulness, A Butterfly is almost entirely pain. It becomes more powerful after Everything is going to Be OK and BlueSuburbia, alongside the blog entry "Abusing you was by the book", which makes its abstract themes more legible. The experience alternates between a 3D alien desert around a ruined lighthouse and 2D pieces built with Decker, Bitsy and Pocket Platformer. Flying freely among colossal stone giants in eternal agony and collecting ghostly butterflies reveal fragments of an interactive poem, narrated by a static-laced, sputtering voice, while browser-like games advance the days trapped in this limbo, growing increasingly desperate and focused on transformation and surrende…

this is what computers were meant to be used for. thank you for creating this.

If you are looking at playing this game: Do not play this game as a completionist. Do not try to find the secrets or hidden endings. Do not try to consume this game. There are no hidden references to other games. There is no secret meta story. There are no achievements. This is a game that simply asks you to play, to touch, to experience and to consider. Play the game. Read it. Listen to it. It is not very long; you can finish it in one sitting. Complete it, and sit with it. Let it percolate through your mind, let the feelings set in. How do you feel? How would you feel? How will you feel? We will all be trapped there, someday.

We'll begin when the bird flies. Don't you remember that?

Incredibly beautiful. Amidst the shadows of giants frozen in eternal agony, the poem that makes up the narrative of the game takes a story about a butterfly learning to fly as a starting point to explore themes concerning growth, decay, grief and death. Something in particular that I enjoyed is how this game takes cues from various clashing digital aesthetics (mostly different eras of computer graphics) to create an experience that feels ultimately very organic and analog.

A poem told in the medium of a game. A thought-provoking piece. Recommended.