Butterfly Soup Creator Unveils New Indie Mystery Game

From Brianna Lei, the creator of some of the best free indie games of the past decade—the Butterfly Soup duology—comes The Crane Rider’s Tale: a brand new murder mystery visual novel/adventure game hybrid featuring stats, dice rolls, humor, and even a little romance. The description cites many inspirations, such as Disco Elysium, AI: The Somnium Files, Paranormasight, Raging Loop, Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, and the Zero Escape series. All this, wrapped up in an art style inspired by medieval Chinese painting and woodblock prints. The team is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the game, with the goal of 80 thousand dollars.

Described as her dream project, the game is set to draw from its creator’s complicated relationship with her culture. She writes: “Growing up, I could rarely relate to the romance in Chinese video games and TV shows because the Chinese government prohibits explicitly gay characters from being shown in them. And my parents’ Confucian ideals of filial piety and womanhood were my prison. A daughter’s role was to be chaste, obey men, and bear children.” The game aims to evoke the “feeling of reading a slightly dated English translation of a classical Chinese text” and will feature cultural notes, available when mousing over the in-game text.

The trailer shows the protagonist, Mourn-No-More, flying various passengers across the land on her giant crane by the name of Snowfall. His skills feature traits with unconventional names, such as “Hope” and “Hare Twitch,” and some may be used outside conversations. The game will feature five main endings, including a “True Ending.” Not just that, but the game features a trackable Zero Escape-like event Flowchart, with some choices leading directly to the protagonist’s death, extending the ending count. From the menu, the player will be able to jump to an earlier point in the story, with EXP and Skill Levels carrying over.

Throughout the day, Mourn-No-More will have to unravel the mystery of his friend’s death, who is described to have been killed “under baffling circumstances.” To achieve this goal, he will have to pick his passengers wisely, with only four trips available each day. “Everyone’s got a story to tell, and a secret to hide.” Upon delivering a passenger, Mourn-No-More can explore the location in side-scrolling sections. The game seems to cast a wide net with its mystery game inspirations, but given the fact that it’s certainly not lacking in interesting mechanics, it seems ready to back them all up.

Brianna Lei is the new director, writer, designer, and artist at Psychic Kiss—a team of independent developers created for this game. Alongside her, melessthanthree of Lucah: Born of a Dream and Death of a Wish fame—two cult classic action games with an incredible art style—is doing programming for the game, and Starling Tan—member of BC Chinese Orchestra in Vancouver—is composing the soundtrack, having previously composed for Pinball Spire and contributed additional music for Dumb Ways To Die 4. Other contributors include Hari Edwin (artist on Antonblast), Mosu (developer of The Dark Queen of Mortholme), Johannah Chung (composer on Closure), and Dora Breckinridge (producer at Strange Scaffold).

The Crane Rider’s Tale is Brianna Lei’s first game since Butterfly Soup 2 in 2022, and is planned to release in late 2028 on Steam and itch.io. It will be playable on PC and Mac, with Steam Deck and controller support. The Kickstarter description features a disclaimer—the team swears to never use AI technology for any part of the game’s development. The team also invites anyone knowledgeable on the topics of Chinese and Arabic culture and folklore to provide constructive criticism, showing their dedication to faithful representation. It’s going to be a while until we see more news, but if you are looking for more info on your favorite indie creators, be sure to let us know in the comments, and stay tuned to GameObserver!