One of the best visual novels now has a free sequel
Picking up where Butterfly Soup 1 left off
The sequel to 2017 visual novel smash hit Butterfly Soup is out now. It's set a few months after the original game and continues to tell the story of "gay Asian-American teens playing baseball and falling in love". It's also, just like the first game, free to download and play - although you can also name your price and pay $5 for a digital artbook over on Itch.
"The game is free, but you can support me by buying the digital artbook for $5! It's 15 pages of me rambling + extra sketches, some of which have never been posted anywhere else," writes developer Brianna Lei on the Itch page.
Butterfly Soup 2 stars the same protagonists as the original: Diya, Noelle, Akarsha, and Min-seo. Lei told us back in 2018 that she "originally planned for Butterfly Soup to be much longer, but it got cut in half for scope reasons." Instead of incorporating a whole school year, the first game ended in winter. The sequel aims to "round out the whole cast" and finish the story.
Lei also said in that interview that she "figured some people on Tumblr might like [Butterfly Soup 1], but I didn’t expect its reach to be so wide." That it did blow up is mainly down to its funny, likeable characters. We include Butterfly Soup on our lists of both the best free PC games and of the best visual novels.
Butterfly Soup 2 is available now from Itch. Lei describes it as free, but it's pay-what-you-want and you get the art book if you pay over $5. The game itself 2-4 hours long, too.