Fluttering Souls is a beautiful two-player abstract card game from Good Games Publishing.

In the game, players compete to collect sets of butterflies in order to score the most points to win the round.

Win 3 rounds and that player becomes the master Lepidopterist!

 

How to play Fluttering Souls

Setup:

To set up Fluttering Souls, players remove the Great Eggfly from the Butterfly deck, then shuffle it and the Layout deck separately. They then draw the top card from the Layout deck and place it face up next to the deck. This will be the layout for the current round.

Players then, one at a time, draw a card from the top of the Butterfly deck and place it in the center of play in the same orientation and face up or face down as the Layout card indicates. They continue this until 18 cards have been placed. The remaining 2 cards are set aside for the rest of the round. 

Once the Butterfly cards are laid out, the players will place the 5 white Butterfly tokens within reach of all players. The player wearing the most colorful clothes goes first. The second player will take the Great Eggfly card and play is ready to begin.

Gameplay:

Fluttering Souls is played over a number of rounds until one player has won 3 of the white Butterfly tokens.

The round begins by the first player taking one of the cards in play. Only cards that do not have another card overlaid on it may be taken. Once the first player has taken a card, the second player may take a card following the same rules. As more cards are taken, more are uncovered and available.

After the player with the Great Eggfly card has taken a card from the layout, they may replace the collected card with the Great Eggfly. This could force the other player to collect it instead of another Butterfly card. But be careful as the other player may be able to use it too before the round ends.

Players continue to take cards until all 18 cards have been collected. Once the cards are collected, players add up the points for cards they have as follows:

• 3 Blue Morphos score 4 points
• 2 Eighty Eights score 3 points
• 4 Monarchs score 8 points
• 3 Monarchs score 5 points
• 2 Monarchs score 2 points
• 2 Swallowtails score 0 points but can be used as a wild for any other butterflies
• 1 Swallowtail scores 2 points
• The Great Eggfly scores 0 points
• Ties go in favor of the player with the Great Eggfly

The player with the most points wins the round and takes one of the white Butterfly tokens. Once one player has 3 tokens, they win the game!

If no one has 3 tokens yet, the game continues by starting a new round. The player who didn’t win the previous round chooses to be the first player or take the Great Eggfly. A new Layout card is chosen, the Butterfly deck is shuffled, and cards are set out as before.

As mentioned above, once one player has collected 3 white Butterfly tokens, the game ends and that player wins.

 

What we like about Fluttering Souls

I love that Fluttering Souls is a quick and easy 2-player game that’s appealing to my whole family. If we’re looking at doing something to burn 20 minutes, it’s perfect.

The theme, although not needed, is fun and fits the set collecting mechanics well. The artwork is minimal but beautiful and adds to the game play.

The different Layout cards really change things up between rounds. Making one round tight and another wide open.

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

Fluttering Souls definitely ranks high on my “Let’s play again” game meter due to the ease of setup, simple learning curve and quick play.

If games can come off the shelf, be set up and we can start playing in under 5 minutes that’s a huge factor in determining what we are going to play.

 

About the Author.

Dane is an Advertising and Layout Manager for a national magazine by day and a husband, father of four, and board gamer by night (and mornings). He has a passion for board games and believes board games help bring families closer together while providing kids a unique way to learn many diverse skills. And he thinks they are downright fun!!!

We’d like to thank Good Games Publishing for a review copy of Fluttering Souls.