Flutter Away Is a Pleasant Walk in the Woods

Games can be great at helping you decompress. Ones that fit into the “cozy” category are especially adept at this. Flutter Away is one of the latest such experiences. It’s a pleasant means of getting away to the wilderness. It’s a light photography game that sends you off to the woods for an afternoon, and it’s a good way to calm down after a long day.

In Flutter Away, players step into the shoes of a person who’s headed off to the rainforest to camp for five days. Your goal is to fill up a journal with details about the different butterflies you’ll see there. Though you will also catch other features, such as a personable capybara, frogs, and flowers, the focus is on taking photos of the insects as you walk through a small area around you.

However, you’re not going to go into it and find everything right away. Flutter Away paces things out. On your first day, for example, you’ll find three. Two of them will appear during the day, and one at night. You’ll get a to-do list of objectives for each day that will advance the “story,” keeping you from really missing anything.

The bulk of the game involves walking on the designated path and checking for points of interest, occasionally interacting with plants to move them out of the way or shake them to reveal critters. If it’s a butterfly, you’ll need to take one photo of it either flying or resting in its habitat. After that, you’ll need to extend a stick to get a butterfly to land on it. You’ll then need to take another picture of it there to complete its entry. The notes “you” take don’t get too detailed, but they do offer insight into history about them and their scientific names.

There are some downsides to it, however. The big one is that Flutter Away is quite short. When I went through it, I was done in an hour. Which is pleasant enough! It was a good excursion. However, I didn’t feel like I really had a chance to explore the woods. You’re only allowed down very specific paths, and you’re really guided through specific experiences. It’s restrictive in a way I didn’t really appreciated. I’d hoped for more of an excuse to just… get lost in the woods. Especially since it does feel so soothing.

This also means there’s really no excuse to return to Flutter Away when you’re done. It’s enjoyable for that first afternoon, I assure you. However there’s really no reason to take multiple pictures of certain butterflies or things once you’ve gotten the ones you need to fill your journal or complete objectives. This isn’t like Pokemon Snap, where you might get to see fantastic situations that make you want to go through multiple runs. It is a one-and-done camping trip.

Basically, Flutter Away is a short, guided trip through the rainforest to spend a little time chasing after and photographing butterflies. It’s good at what it does. It’s brief, letting you enjoy the moment, then head off to go into the more stressful real world. I do wish it offered a little more freedom or excuse to return to it, but it’s good at what it does.

Flutter Away is available for the Nintendo Switch and PC.

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