Did you ever have a butterfly net as a child?

You could wander through fields swinging it around trying to catch butterflies.

Or if you didn’t have one yourself, I bet you can still picture kids having fun in such an activity.

But can you imagine adults doing that same thing?

And I’m not talking about lepidopterists. I’m talking about average adults.

For some reason, it’s hard to imagine adults wandering around a field swinging butterfly nets to catch the flying insects.

So when we received the game Butterfly by Rio Grande Games, we just assumed it would be a game only kids would enjoy.

But we were wrong!

Butterfly can be enjoyed by players of all ages.

 

How to play Butterfly

Butterfly is a very straightforward game to learn and play. The goal is to score the most points by collecting different types of insects from the game board. The player who collects the best set of species wins.

Players collect the little insects by moving the hedgehog, Hudson, around the board. Doing so in a thoughtful way will make a big difference.

To begin, players place all 100 tiles in the draw bag. Then they draw and place tiles face up on the game board. The game board is double-sided and has areas marked for 2, 3, 4, and 5-player games. So players will fill out the spaces on the board depending on their player count. The rest of the tiles will remain in the bag.

Each player also gets a player board where they’ll place the tiles they collect. The player boards also show how each type of tile will score.

The player to the right of the start player places Hudson the hedgehog on any tile on the board, facing in any direction they choose.

On a player’s turn, they must first move Hudson. They may leave Hudson facing the same direction or turn to the left or right. Then they move Hudson forward as far as they like, landing on any tile. They may skip over empty spaces but cannot stop on an empty space.

The player then collects the tile where they place Hudson.

Any time a player moves Hudson over a previously uncovered butterfly net, that player may draw a random time from the bag and add it to their growing collection.

The game ends as soon as a player cannot make a legal move on their turn.

Then each player totals up their score from the tiles they’ve collected:

• Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow butterflies are worth their printed value. If a player has a color “x2” all of that player’s tiles of that color are doubled.
• Dragonflies only score the highest value Dragonfly that player collected.
• Lightning Bugs only score the lowest value Lighting Bug that player collected.
• Flower tiles are each worth the number of Flower tiles that player collected.
• Grasshopper tiles are worth the printed value. When a player collects a Grasshopper, the Grasshopper they collected previously jumps away. So players can only have one Grasshopper tile to score — the last one they collected.
• Bees and Honeycombs score positively in pairs and negatively if alone. For each pair, the player scores the higher value printed on the Honeycomb tile. Bees alone are worth -3 and Honeycombs alone are worth 0.
• Wasps are worth their negative printed value.

The player with the most points wins!

 

Can the whole family enjoy Butterfly?

Absolutely!

Like we mentioned in the beginning, we were pleasantly surprised that we didn’t have to be kids to enjoy playing Butterfly.

The game theme and artwork are clearly targeted towards a young audience. And young kids will definitely enjoy moving the cute hedgehog around the board collecting colorful tiles — gradually learning strategies in how they choose to move.

But teens and adults can enjoy the game as well.

Just like we discovered, older players will recognize the competitive options in their choices as they move Hudson around the board.

Yes, you want to get the most valuable tiles — but which those are will change from game to game. Because only a portion of the 100 tiles will be in play during a game. Plus, you’ll look for ways to thwart the other players from picking up valuable tiles on their turns.

Though that can be tricky when you’re playing with players at different skill levels. Going next in turn order after a strategic player is tougher than going after a player that doesn’t pay attention to such things as which directions they’ll leave you open to playing next.

When you get a group of players that all like looking ahead at not only what they can choose, but how that impacts the players after them, then you’ve got a cutthroat game of Butterfly collecting on your hands.

Of course, even though we say “cutthroat”, Butterfly still resides in the category of a light game. It isn’t vicious. It’s just that it can be played on many levels.

Yet at the same time there’s a good element of luck in the game.

First of all, there’s the initial set up of tiles on the game board. You won’t be able to score the same every time because of the variable set up.

Some games will have more Wasps, some will have more x2 colors, and some games the options for picking up Bee/Honeycomb tiles will be limited. The fun is in trying to make the most of what’s in play.

Then there are the butterfly nets on the board — that throw in the element of chance.

When you cross over a revealed net, do you take your chances on what you’ll draw randomly from the bag?

It could be very beneficial if you draw another flower or a high-valued dragonfly. But it could also just as easily be a Wasp or Bee that will drop you points.

And it’s that mix of luck and strategy that make Butterfly a great family board game.

 

How does Butterfly score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Butterfly scores high on our “let’s play again” meter even though we don’t have young kids at home currently. Because it’s such a light and easy-to-play game, the game flows by really quickly. Players don’t take long on their turns at all — move Hudson and then collect a tile. So before you know it, the game is over.

And with how easy it is to set up, it’s always tempting to play games back to back. Simply throw all the tiles in the bag and randomly place them back on the board to play again.

It’s nice to have a game such as Butterfly in our game closet — a light, family board game with simple rules that’s easy to pull out and play for some quick fun.

We’d like to thank Rio Grande Games for a review copy of Butterfly.