Take a gander at the image above. No, it's not a shot from the Discovery Channel, it's a new game -- Butterfly Garden -- coming to Xbox Live Arcade. We've certainly seen a jump in the visual fidelity of Arcade titles as of late, but this is just downright pretty. Sure, RoboBlitz has all the right curves in all the right places, but it distinctly lacks flora and fauna of any kind. Mike from the Xbox Domain had a chance to sit down with the developers of Butterfly Garden, Autonomous Productions. The object of Butterfly Garden is not dissimilar to Viva Piñata, in that you want to breed and discover new species of butterfly. The beautiful environments -- much like RoboBlitz -- are all procedurally generated. Autonomous Productions hopes to separate Butterfly Garden from the XBLA crowd by introducing social, non-competitive gameplay to the service. Players will be able to visit each others' islands, trade genes (we're guessing you use these to create new species), or just fly around, enjoying the scenery. Granted, being a butterfly doesn't rate as high on our list as, say, being a badass soldier with a chainsaw on his gun, but we have admit we're intrigued. Unfortunately, all the butterfly dreamers out there will have to wait: the game isn't expected before late 2007.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-12-2006 @ 11:52AM
Jonah Falcon said...
Viva Pinatabutterfly? Got to love procedural generation. You know, not fill up tons of space with set, static objects, FMV etc, etc.
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12-12-2006 @ 11:54AM
J.Goodwin said...
Hadn't heard anything out of this camp in quite a while.
Interesting that they're involved in such an extensive development cycle. I think this was one of the first XBLA titles that I heard about.
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12-12-2006 @ 12:06PM
hoozyerdade said...
This does look nearly photo-realistic, and would probably be interesting to play. @ Jonah Falcon - I like the Viva Pinata variant - here's some more...
Take-Two's version: Vulva Pinata (18 or older!)
Automotive version: Volvo Pinata (can't break it)
Sci-Fi version: Vorlon Pinata (be the First!)
Indian(dot) version:Vishnu Pinata (U.S. Tech support!)
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12-12-2006 @ 12:36PM
sagexsdx said...
I saw the title and the screenshot and immediately had nostalgia moments of "Mansion of Hidden Souls" for SEGA CD. man i really loved that game back in the day. anyways i'm sure i'll try this out when it hits.
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12-12-2006 @ 1:35PM
Oro said...
No one ever suspects the butterfly... Muahahaha!
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12-12-2006 @ 2:07PM
Richard Mitchell said...
"I saw the title and the screenshot and immediately had nostalgia moments of 'Mansion of Hidden Souls'"
That game was awesome. Way too short though. I always thought it deserved a proper sequel. And the crappy sequel for the Saturn doesn't count.
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12-12-2006 @ 2:09PM
Long said...
Wow! That sounds like a cool idea! If they can do more than half what they said, then I'm all over it.
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