A sequel to 2017’sButterfly Soup,Butterfly Soup 2aims at continuing a story that had to be cut short despite the creator, Brianna Lei, having actually written over 140 pages worth of content at the time.Butterfly Soup’s story is about a small group of Asian-American teenage girls navigating school and relationships, dealing with flaws and positive traits that become even more predominant in the sequel.Butterfly Soup 2picks up where the first iteration of thevisual novelleft off, at winter during the school year, and this time gives a sense of closure to the protagonists' character arcs.
Butterfly Soup 2retains the first game’s LGBTQIA+ themes and doubles down by exploring Akarsha and Noelle’s crushes on each other, and the beginning of their relationship. Game Rant spoke to Lei about the experience of writing and creatingButterfly Soup 2, with Lei explaining her peculiar methods for coming up with the crush confession scene. The developer also talked about LGBTQIA+ representation in the video game industry at large, specifically mentioning how important it was forGuilty Gear Striveto let Bridget come out as a trans woman.
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How Butterfly Soup 2 Showcases Hyper-Realistic School Romances
WhileButterfly Soupfocused more on the relationship between Diya and Min, which Lei described as “pretty straightforward,” the sequel does a great job exploring the highs and lows of how teenagers handle school crushes. Akarsha and Noelle’s romance has players on the edge of their seats at all times because it builds on the moments of silence, the awkwardness, and the embarrassment of confessing one’s feelings online. This emotional exploration is somethingindie gamesdo well by their smaller-scale nature, andButterfly Soup 2is no exception.
“I wanted to write a romance that made people want to scream and rip their hair out while reading it. I feel like so much messiness in romance comes down to timing. It’s rare enough for two people to crush on each other - how unfair is it that they also have to crush on each other at the exact same time for anything to come out of it?”
Lei talked about how she used her own online chat logs to write a realistic version of Akarsha’s confession to Noelle, which ends up with the former trying to pass it off as a prank her brother set up. This scene is based on one of Lei’s experiences with a failed confession when she was around Akarsha’s age. Akarsha wondering if Noelle knows the truth is made excruciatingly authentic, and it shows howButterfly Soup 2cantackle school crusheswith the maturity and self-awareness that come from adult hindsight.
Butterfly Soup 2 Creator Praises Guilty Gear Strive For Bridget’s Coming Out
Despite the newfound increase in valuable LGBTQIA+ representation for modern games, it’s still not common for AAA titles to make their characters canonically queer, often leaving it up to indie games. There are notable exceptions likeThe Last of Uswith Ellie, orApex Legendswith Catalystand other characters, which is an invaluable source of visibility for the queer community. That’s why Lei mentionedGuilty Gear Strive’s Bridget, whose trans identity was a positive beacon that shone a light on the journey of self-discovery.
“I’d like to see more game creators say with their whole chests that their characters are trans or nonbinary! It meant a lot to many of my friends when the latest Guilty Gear finally had Bridget question her identity as a boy and come out as a trans woman. The games industry has made a lot of progress on this front over the last few years, but it’s still a rarity in AAA games, especially for playable characters.”
WhileButterfly Soup 2(and by extension its predecessor) exceeded her expectations in terms of reception and reach, established franchises can do this even more effectively. As such, it makes sense for Lei to be willing to try out even more ideas based on queer characters in the future. Many queer gamers hopeLGBTQIA+ representationbecomes more common across the board, but the industry already is on the right track to make this happen.
Butterfly Soup 2is available now on PC.
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