Death of a Butterfly

 ゴキゲンな蝶になってきらめく風に乗って

今すぐ キミに会いに行こう

「Butter-Fly」（和田光司）

 

I'll become a happy butterfly, and glide on the glittering wind

To come see you right away

"Butter-Fly" (Wada Kouji)

Oh man, I have a backlog of more than ten unwritten review posts now. I really should get started on them and not play videogames...

Buddy Collection is an ongoing episodic otome-lite mystery videogame developed by Narutrick, which can be played for free on browsers and smartphones. The overarching story is about Nagisa, a student of a detective high school with the curriculum not only including theory classes on various topics of use for detectives, but also practice classes where the students get to work on real cases for study credits. The school also utilizes a 'buddy' system, with two students always working together. Nagisa and her buddy belonged in the top A Class of the school, but during one of their investigations, Nagisa's buddy went missing and she lost her memory. During her recovery, she's put in the lowest E Class, which consists of three students who have trouble finding a right buddy due to personal problems. Each episode in this series has Nagisa working with three possible E Class buddies on different cases, while she also slowly uncovers more about why she lost her memories and where her own buddy has gone to.

In 2018, an enhanced version of the first episode was released on Switch with the title Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito- ("Buddy Collection If -The Red String of Fate-") and while it was a short and simple game, I did find it entertaining and was looking forward to more of this series be released. As I am writing this post, three episodes are already playable for free on PC/smartphone, but it seems developer Narutrick has some problems getting these regular episodes out on Switch. That's why they created a completely original Buddy Collection entry exclusively for the Switch, as a side-story occurring somewhere during the events of the main episodes. Buddy Collection Extra - Kochousou no Kimyou na Gonin ("Buddy Collection Extra - The Curious Five Persons at the Butterfly House") starts with Nagisa being sent off on a case with a buddy of her choice, but to the duo's surprise the case is solved almost immediately. They make their way back to the train station, but all trains have stopped running due to the storm, and it's impossible for the two to find a hotel. Luckily for them, their client contacts them: with the storm going on, it's too dangerous to ask them to come back to their place to stay for the night because it's too far, but she arranges for Nagisa and her buddy to stay at the place of someone she knows who lives near the station. The two high school detectives are picked up by Outarou, a somewhat shifty man who lives in the Butterfly House, indeed not far from the train station by car, but still located right in the middle of a lonely forest. He tells his two new guests that he has three other guests staying at his house that evening too: friends of his sister Ageha who died exactly one year ago. She committed suicide one year ago by setting fire to her room, but while her brother arrived before the fire really got going on, she had already passed away due to the smoke. During the evening, Nagisa and her buddy notice that there's some tension in the room and that there's more to this gathering of Outarou and Ageha's three friends, but the two detectives couldn't have known that the following morning, they'd find one of them would be murdered. Due to the storm and the very sturdy exterior lock, it's unlikely the murderer is an outsider, so who of the remaining people in the Butterfly House is the murderer and why?

The Buddy Collection games are a combination between novel games (digital Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games) and otome games (story-driven videogames targeted towards women that usually focus on a protagonist developing a romantic relationship with one of the eligible characters): in the first episode, picking a certain buddy meant you'd spend more time with them, learn more about their backstory and even slightly alter the mystery plot because each of the buddies had different talents. Buddy Collection Extra builds on this idea in an even more entertaining manner: at the start of the game, you get to pick who your buddy will be, and each buddy actually leads to a completely different murder mystery set at the Butterfly House: all the scenarios feature different murder victims, they're killed in very different circumstances and the clues leading up to the confrontation are also all different. So you're basically getting three different stories that happen to be using the same basic setting. I started the game with Haruka as my buddy for example, and the victim in that scenario was someone who lived in the two other scenarios. The different scenarios also make good use of the various talents/characteristics of the various buddies: Shingo for example has an instinct to just make correct guesses and while that puts him on the trail of the murderer of his scenario very soon, he has trouble finding actual evidence to support what his gut feeling is telling him, while Haruka has trouble getting things done because he can't physically stand seeing blood.

Also: you know something is going to happen in the Butterfly House because for some reason all the rooms lock automatically. Why would anyone have autolock in their own home?!

So basically, you're presented three different murder mysteries in this game. None of them are really long (an hour or so), and the plots and gameplay are therefore not that complex (a few story-changing choices that either lead to the next chapter or a game over, but you can redo them immediately), but they are fun enough and while the three stories do use the same basic setting and characters (the personalities/backstories of all the characters remain the same throughout the three different story variations), the mysteries are different enough to not make it feel like you're just playing through color variations of the same idea. The Butterfly House is named so because both Outarou and Ageha loved butterflies, and there are also butterflies and butterfly models kept throughout the house and the three scenarios all utilize this theme of butterflies in different ways. What's also interesting is that each scenario will reveal bits and pieces of the common back story regarding Ageha's death, but not everything. For example, my first playthrough with Haruka eventually revealed how certain members of the cast really though of each other, but that relationship is not explained in the other routes and left vague. It's only by playing all the scenarios that you'll truly get a good idea of what really played between Outarou, Ageha and her three friends. This is also seen in the manner in which the game collects clues for you: some clues are put in a route-specific menu, other information is put in commonly shared data pool, as those clues pertain to the backstory all routes share. 

When you have played all three seperate routes, you'll unlock one final route where you visit the Butterfly House not with one buddy, but all three of them! It's the grand finale to the game, finally revealing what really happened a year ago with Ageha, but I like how the game works on a meta-level too: a lot of information pertinent to the case is known to the player, because they have played the game with three seperate buddies and uncovered a lot of information through those routes. The final route expects of the player of course that they have that knowledge now, but that wouldn't make sense for the in-game characters who visit the Butterfly House for the first time. However, the story does a good job at changing the events just ever so slightly due to the presence of three buddies, explaining how the characters learn the information the player had already learned through previous playthroughs. The final story is a good ending that brings the three seperate routes together in a nice way.

So in all in all,  Buddy Collection Extra - Kochousou no Kimyou na Gonin was fun to play. It's not a long game by any means, but it tells a nice story by making clever use of the concept of having three distinct buddies/scenarios to tell three different murder mystery stories, and also rewarding the player for playing through all three scenarios, as you learn more about the underlying story as you go through them one after another. I certainly hope that the main episodes of Buddy Collection will also be released on Switch in the future, as a side-story, this one did not disappoint at all.

Original Japanese title(s): 『Buddy Collection Extra －胡蝶荘の奇妙な五人－』

Go Your Own Way

運命のルーレット廻して

アレコレ深く考えるのはMystery

「 運命のルーレット廻して」（Zard）

Turn the roulette of destiny

It's a mystery why I think so deeply about everything

"Turn the Roulette of Destiny" (Zard)

In my review of the very amusing 3DS mystery game Detective Pikachu, I talked about the trend of episodic videogames: a videogame that is like a single episode of a longer series. An episodic game is considerably shorter than the usual videogame (and also cheaper, of course), but also a part of a larger, contineous series. These games are therefore released in a more frequent schedule than conventional videogames. This format is somewhat similar to the serialization of novels as an ongoing service with a limited schedule, but with key differences: episodic videogames can stand on their own for the most part, while installments in serializations are usually not standalone and simply excerpts from a longer story. An episodic videogame is ideally both vital part to the whole series, but should also feature its own storyline that is mostly resolved within that particular episode.

Buddy Collection is an episodic mystery videogame developed by Narutrick At the time of writing this review, the first two episodes of five have been released on PC, iOS and Android (for free!), but last month, an enhanced version of the first episode was also released on the Nintendo Switch (not free!), with the new extended title Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito- ("Buddy Collection If -The Red String of Fate-", 2018). The game starts with the female protagonist awakening in the hospital, suffering from amnesia. The girl, Nagisa, is told she's a student at a special high school for detectives, with the curriculum not only including theory classes on various topics of use for detectives, but also practice classes where the students get to work on real cases (you need to earn credits to be able to take on real cases). Nagisa lost her memory while investigating a case, but that was not the only thing she lost, as she also lost her "buddy": the school works with a buddy system, where two students have to work together on cases, but her buddy has disappeared now. While Nagisa belongs in the Special A Class, she is now moved to the E Class so she can recover from her ordeal. Her first school assignment is a three-day "camp" to practice on closed circle murders: she and three other E Class students are locked up in a special underground complex made for these classes, and they are to role-play a closed circle murder situation, with their teacher playing the victim in what appears to be an impossible murder. The students are assigned roles and have to deduce who the murderer is and how it was done, while the teacher plays the game master when not playing dead. However, the next morning the students find their teacher has really been murdered, hanging high up in the sky from red threads from the ceiling of the underground complex, precisely like the scenario in their role-playing game. With the doors to the surface being locked, the player has to take up the role of Nagisa, wisely pick out a new buddy and find out who the murderer is.

Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito- is marketed as a lite-otome & mystery novel game, which probably needs some explaining for some readers here. First of all: a novel game (also known as sound novel or visual novel) is basically a digital Choose-Your-Own-Adventure: you are mostly reading a linear story, but once in a while, you'll be presented with choices, which lead to branching storylines. In order to reach the end of the game, you need to find the correct route (combination of choices), as a wrong choice/branch storyline usually leads to a game over screen. The novel game genre has a long history with mystery games and I have reviewed a few of them here on the blog (for example Kamaitachi no Yoru, 428, Machi and Rei-Jin-G-Lu-P). In Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito-, you'll be solving the case through these CYOA-esque choices, with some choices/branching storylines leading to vital clues or evidence (or you missing them by making the wrong choice) and sometimes you have to decide on your next step. While it sometimes can feel a bit like random guessing, as you never really know where a certain choice will lead you until you actually select one, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito- actually does a good job of giving the player a good chance of making it through the game alive in one go if they pay attention. The correct choices are quite logical, and it never feels like you need to make a random choice that surprisingly turns out to be the good one.

I also said this game is a lite-otome game: otome games are story-driven videogames targeted towards women, that usually focus on a protagonist developing a romantic relationship with one of the eligible characters (within the context of the story). These games usually take hints from various game genres, like simulation games (gotta level up those parameters to impress the guy you want!) or novel games (making certain choices to develop the relationship). Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito- is very lite-otome, as early on in the story, Nagisa has to choose a new buddy from one of the three other E Class students. This leads to three Buddy Routes, where you mostly interact with your chosen buddy and where you learn a bit more about their personalities and background stories. These three buddies also each have their own working styles, so the mystery plot also changes slightly depending on which buddy you choose, though all three routes will eventually bring you to the same conclusion. Basically think of it of having to choose between Watson, Hastings or Goodwin at the start of the story, with the ending being the same, but the way towards the conclusion being slightly different because of the different personalities. It bring some replayability to the game, as once you have chosen a particular Buddy Route, you won't learn much about the others, inviting you to try the other routes too.

As a mystery game, Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito- is a short, but ultimately fairly satisfying experience. The mystery plot is a bit simple perhaps, especially as some of the choices you have to make to proceed in the story are bit obvious (Choice 1: Expected. Choice 2: Not Surprising. Choice 3: OBVIOUSLY SIGNIFICANT CHOICE), but the story is adequately clewed and due to some of the characters' personalities, things become far more exciting that you'd first expect. But as this is an episodic game, there are also quite some issues that aren't resolved within this episode, as they'll be addressed in subsequent episodes (for example, the mystery of how Nagisa lost her memories in the first place is left unanswered, and even the motive for the culprit in this first episode is still rather ambiguous, suggesting it will be explained later).

This enhanced version on the Switch added the word If to the title, indicating it was more than a simple port from the original (free) version on PC/iOS/Android. Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito- adds a new short storyline, with two new buddies. This storyline titled Detectives VS Culprits is a parallel world to the main storyline (it happens instead of the main storyline) and has the students participate in a variation of the Werewolf/Mafia party game, with two students playing the "Culprits" who have to kill a detective each night, and each day, the Detectives, including the Culprits who pretend to be Detectives too, have to execute someone they suspect is a Culprit. The Culprits win when they outnumber the Detectives, and the Detectives win if they execute all the Culprits. It's a short and entertaining story that shows some of the characters from the main storyline in new ways, but it's also a really mean storyline, in the sense that unlike the main storyline, it is intentionally designed to trip the player up at every corner. The game actually warns you before you begin, but it's basically throwing many, many choices at you that almost all lead to a game over screen, so it's quite difficult to find the correct route here (especially as I encountered a recurring game bug that either froze the game or booted me back to the title screen at a certain point in the story).

While those bugs late in the game were quite annoying, I did have fun Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito- though, even if it was a very short-lived experience (two, three hours?). The mystery plot, while simple, betrays the love of the creators for the mystery fiction genre, and this first episode hits just the right notes of both providing a story that can stand on its own, but that also invites you to play the other episodes to find out more about the overall storyline. I for one hope the other episodes will be released soon too.

Original Japanese titles(s): 『Buddy Collection if -宿命の赤い糸-』