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Berta And Butterflies
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About the game
Berta is a small elephant with a butterfly net, standing in a meadow. Butterflies flutter in from both edges of the screen along four paths, two high and two low, and each one heads for the spot right in front of her. Point the net at the right corner just as a butterfly arrives and it is caught, worth one point. Arrive too late and it escapes up into the sky.
You have three lives, shown as squares under the meadow, and every butterfly that gets away costs one. At first only one butterfly is in the air at a time, but as the score climbs more of them come at once and they move faster, so the game turns into a matter of reading which path will finish first. After each hundred points the pace eases off a little before building up again.
The author made it as a remake of the simple, addictive LCD handheld games of the early 1980s, with his own character in the lead: Berta is based on his wife's favorite stuffed toy from her childhood. It won the Polish 100 Commits programming competition in 2024.
Playing it here
This is a homebrew game made for the Atari 2600: a new game by independent developers for the 1977 console, not a commercial release. It runs here in Stellerator, an Atari 2600 emulator written in JavaScript. Click Play now and press Space or Enter on the title screen.
There are no save states on this platform: like on the real console, a game lasts as long as you keep playing, and P pauses it. A gamepad works too.
Controls
| Key | Atari 2600 | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Arrow keys / WASD | Joystick | move the net: up/down for the high or low path, left/right for the side |
| Space or V | Joystick button | start a game; after a game over, back to the title |
| Enter | Game Reset | same as the button |
| F1 | Left difficulty switch | on the title screen, beginner (B) or advanced (A) |
| P | — | pause |
A few things worth knowing
Four spots, one net. Berta never walks: the joystick only chooses which of the four corners the net covers. A single push is enough to switch, so keep your moves short and crisp.
Mind the far side. With several butterflies on screen, the one about to arrive matters more than the one you are watching. Glance at both sides before you commit.
Beginner and advanced. The left difficulty switch picks the mode on the title screen, and here it is F1: the game starts in beginner (B), which is slower and keeps one of the four paths quiet; press F1 to switch to advanced (A), where butterflies can come down any path. You can tell by the net, yellow in beginner and red in advanced, and by the cloud sitting over the B or the A on the title screen. Each mode keeps its own high score.
High score. The best score is shown on the title screen and lasts until you close the page.
Credits and licence
Berta And Butterflies was designed and programmed by vandalton in batari Basic and released under the MIT licence. The licence text is linked from this page.