Freeware Game Pick: White Butterfly (Linley)
White Butterfly is a vertical shooter created by Linley Henzell, developer of the excellent Dungeon Crawl and Garden of Coloured Lights. Players begin the game by choosing one of the four available ships to pilot, with a fifth one only unlocked after you've completed the final stage.
Use the cursor keys to move, press the Z key to shoot, and hold the X key to fire your secondary weapon. A third attack can be executed by pressing the Z and X key together. Hold the left shift key to move your ship around at a lower speed. Use the escape key to access the pause and quit menu.
You would need to level up all three attacks for automatic weapon upgrades. Using just one type of shot throughout the game does not upgrade the weapon, even though it continues to gain a new level after repeated usage.
There are three long stages to play in total. (source: Shmup-Dev)
Name: White Butterfly
Developer: Linley Henzell
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 5MB
Comments
A few seconds into the game, everything becomes extremely slow, and I've got no system where that's plausible.
Posted by: Sciere | January 25, 2009 12:42 PM
No problems here.
This is brilliant as I've been expecting. Love the visual style too. It would be really great if a "Total Loser" difficulty setting could be added for people like me though, 'cause I died not too long after the first level; it's hard! Still really fun though.
Posted by: Knite | January 25, 2009 5:32 PM
Runs fine here. Looking good as always. Feels a lot like a sequel to Garden.
Posted by: cactus | January 25, 2009 5:49 PM
Very nice. I like the graphical style a lot. If only I were better at video games so I could see more.
Posted by: c5 | January 26, 2009 3:40 AM
This is like an improved version of Garden of Colored lights. I really like how all the ships have completely different weapons and playing styles, too.
Posted by: Zmann | January 26, 2009 6:23 AM
Of the three weapons each ship has, two are good and one is horrible, so the linked upgrades mean your own ship and its stinky 3rd weapon becomes the greatest enemy.
That is an interesting design, but not particularly delightful, IMHO.
Posted by: Nezz | January 26, 2009 8:02 AM
Linely has amazing skills in shmup creation -- I really enjoy the graphical style, as well as the ability to play multiple ships with multiple abilities.
The one thing I do find lacking about his games is the fact that it doesn't feel like quite enough progression in the game -- with the use of procedural generation, the bullet patterns are not so much patterns as a spray of bullets dashed across the screen.
Also, with the particle effect of weapons, it's sometimes difficult to tell bullets apart from explosions, but that's a more minor thing.
Posted by: RoboCicero | January 26, 2009 9:44 AM
I see from the screenshots that you've already unlocked the Chaos Squid. Nice work! And thanks for the write-up.
Posted by: linley | January 27, 2009 9:19 AM
Cool game - pity I'm useless at it! The anemone ship seems to be the best for beginners
Posted by: Grog | January 29, 2009 7:49 AM