If you’ve ever been to a butterfly habitat, like the Cockrell Butterfly Center next to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, you know how magical it can be to watch the beautiful living colors flitter from bloom to bloom and across the paths you’re walking on. Butterfly Garden puts the butterflies on the paths so you can guide them to your own perfect garden.
Butterflies start in different locations of a large hex grid. You and the other players take turns placing path tiles. Some tiles are fairly straightforward, but others include multiple twists and turns that can loop over and under each other.
The butterflies themselves start at seven fountains, six placed along the edges of the garden and one in the center. At the start of the game, every player draws two path tiles blindly from a bag, then hides them behind their screen so the other players can’t see them. The players then take turns placing one of their two path tiles on the board before drawing a replacement.
The butterflies follow very specific rules: if a tile path is placed to connect to a path a butterfly is on, it will follow that new path to its end. If the new path connects to other paths, the butterfly will follow all the way to the end of all of the connected paths.
You and the other players will have gardens all along the edge of the board, and you’ll be trying to draw as many butterflies to your board edges as possible. Which board-edge gardens belong to which players is set by the number of players in the game. So you’ll be aiming to guide as many butterflies as possible to your garden while guiding butterflies away from the gardens of the other players.
But not all butterflies are equal. The six blue butterflies are worth one point each and start at the outer edges of the board. These are the easiest to draw to your garden. The five pink butterflies (worth two points each) and the single, three-point purple butterfly start at the middle of the board. Do you focus on the relatively easy blue butterflies, or try for the higher-scoring butterflies from the center of the board? While acquiring many blue butterflies makes a lot of sense, you can also find yourself in a position where your paths for the blue butterflies block the pink and purple butterflies from getting to your gardens. You’ll have to think ahead about how to set up the paths to keep from blocking yourself in.
Butterfly Garden is an adorable game with its translucent plastic butterflies and brightly colored, garden-themed components. It’s suitable for kids as young as 8, ready to graduate from games like Chutes and Ladders. It can entertain between two and four players and a game takes about a half-hour to play. While it will delight younger gamers, the puzzle-strategy is meaty enough to challenge adults as well. Talk to the butterfly-lovers at your local Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® today about adding the beautiful Butterfly Garden to your collection.
All Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® locations are independently owned and operated by local folks. Not all stores will carry all games but will be willing to attempt to special order any that they do not carry. (And they’ll carry most.)
