We’ve just submitted our latest update to Apple which means that in around a week you guys get to benefit from the latest refinements to Flutter. Heres what to expect:

• Attraction Flower Refinement. Each butterfly now has a unique recipe, and generalized region flowers have been replaced with all set specific flowers. This is in response to a lot of player’s voicing frustration about butterflies sharing the same recipe, and constantly not getting what you want. It’s now much clearer what you need to do to get those special species, but be warned, to balance this out we have made flowers for the later sets very valuable and hard to find
• Social! You can now link your account with Facebook and invite your friends along to play with you! All your Facebook friends who play the game will be listed in a leader-board based on their Flutterpedia Score, and you’ll be able to gift each other Flutterbucks on a daily basis (up to 5 can be gifted per player per day). Note that we have big plans to refine this feature in the future, and the Flutterbucks gift is a placeholder for an even cooler free gift idea we have in the works.
• New limited butterflies. Our first event was such a hit, we’re following up with a special new event set next weekend.
• iOS 6 required. This is to take advantage of the latest iOS refinements and optimisations, and focus our support on a more narrow band of devices / software to make sure our players get the best experience possible. This now means the game will not be playable on iPad 1, as it has been struggling to provide an acceptable experience to players. If you’re not already on iOS6, update in Settings > General > Software Update

We’re already hard at work on the next update which will introduce two very cool new characters into the forest. Also you can look forward to a mini-event this weekend where we’ll put a big item on sale and give all our players an exciting boost for the weekend.

Yesterday we wrapped up our first ever in game event, giving the community 10 days to collect the limited Leafwing set of butterflies. We’re absolutely thrilled with the response and wanted to thank all those who took part. Based on the event’s success we’ll be running many more of them, so you can look forward to all sorts of awesome new species and challenges coming to the game over the next few months. We have so many great ideas about how to make the game better, and are excited to be receiving the level of support for the game where we can continue to invest time and energy in making it the best game it can possibly be.

There was a little confusion around exactly how the end of the event would work, with any collected or purchased Leafwing flowers turning into Honeydew at the event’s end. For future events we’ll do a post here, and link it from the game, with all the specific rules of the game to make sure everyone is clear.

We’re working to submit our next version of the game to Apple today, so aiming to release around this time next week. It includes some great refinements to the core game, including more special abilities, flower system refinements, and a new super rare set of butterflies for players towards the end of the game to strive for.

Thanks for playing!

Hey Flutter players, before we set our first event live we wanted to address some fan concern about an adjustment we made to the system for scoring Flutterpedia points. We changed the system so that points are scored now exclusively for discovering and leveling up new species. So leveling up the same species over and over will no longer produce points. However! You now get way more points for leveling up new species, so the game is balanced out, but the focus is on expanding your Flutterpedia as opposed to just grinding away on the same old species. It was always our intention for this to be the focus of the gameplay, and this refinement was required after we saw how the game was being played out in the wild.

We appreciate our messaging was sloppy on this and sincerely sorry if this change has upset you. We’ll do better in the future to keep you better informed of upcoming game refinements so you feel more in the loop.

For those of you that have maxed out all the species, there’s a new set coming this afternoon! And then after the event finishes not only do we have more special sets coming, we have an awesome new feature in the works for you to unlock the mysterious “Unknown Sets”. Please be patient with us we’re working hard to get these done to quality as fast as we can

Thanks for playing!

This weekend we released a new update for Flutter with a ton of new features. The star of the show is our first premium “forest helper”, who you can purchase for Flutterbucks and adds a cute new face to your forest. The Bumble Bee is also a great help for your flowers, doubling the production of a flower shift once every 12 hours. We’ve got a bunch of ideas for more cool characters so if you like him then visit the Shop from the main menu and we’ll be sure to add more in the coming updates.

The other really big change is our new inventory system. This is a way tidier view to see all your butterflies, storage, and flowers. You’ll also notice the Shop uses this layout. You can now sell flowers, and fuse them faster than ever. Last week we added the ability to sell butterflies, which was a big request. Unfortunately we didn’t realize how much of an effect this would have on players progression through the game, so it threw things out of balance. In response we had to reduce the number of base storage slots to 4 instead of 10. If you’d like to speed through the game quicker or have more species to call on at any time, you have the option to expand your storage with Flutterbucks.

There’s lots more in the works from here, in particular we have an exciting update coming very soon where you’ll be introduced to some new butterflies, and perhaps even some neat little magical powers Thanks for playing and supporting the game!

Our lead artist Emma is the star of our second video blog where she talks about her process and the art for the game. Have any questions for Emma or the team about how the game is made? Post them in the comments! And of course download the game here to create your very own butterfly sanctuary

In this first of our video blogs we talk about Flutter’s direction and the overall feeling we’re trying to give our players. We’ll be releasing one of these a week for the next 5 weeks to give you a behind the scenes look at what goes into making the game. If you have any questions about the development process or suggestions for future features we’d love to hear them!

Download from the App Store

We’re excited and proud to finally share our latest game with you, an entirely new way to experience the rainforest and raise butterflies through their incredible lifecycle. Flutter for iOS focuses on building your own little Butterfly Sanctuary, where you can bring to life dozens of real life species rendered as cute little caterpillars through to beautifully colourful, fluttering butterflies.

A special thank you has to go out to the incredible 3rd party team at DeNA, our publisher in San Francisco who we’ve worked with closely to bring you the game. They’ve been an enormous support along with the NHNZ team who we work alongside here in New Zealand.

So get playing! We hope you’ll enjoy the game and give us feedback. Remember this is just the beginning. The experience will grow and expand with time and our audience play a vital role in steering the direction of its evolution.

Join us on Facebook here

Support for Flutter iOS here

From all the team at Runaway, we hope you’ve had a fantastic holiday period with friends and family, and are ready for a big 2013.

We’re back! In the office and rearing to go, theres lots to do and some exciting times ahead. As we mentioned at the end of last year, the game is all done, with submission to come in a couple of days. From there we wait for approval and co-ordinate with our partners to lock down a specific launch date. iOS is coming first, so once that’s submitted we’ll be looking to polish up the Android version and make sure its ready for release not too long afterwards. We also need to be ready for maintaining the live product, so that means preparing servers, analytics, community pages, etc so that everyone has the best possible experience and we can respond quickly to live game activity. You can also look forward to trailers and behind the scenes videos coming up with the game’s release.

Can’t wait to get the game into your hands, and thanks for all your patience as we’ve worked hard to get the whole package together.

After months and months of very hard work we are now preparing to submit v1.0 of Flutter Mobile to the App Store! This is a super exciting time for us and we can’t wait to see what you think of the game.

A quick heads up to let you know we’ll be doing a test launch where for a couple of weeks it will be available in a few select territories. This allows us to check a lot of the statistics in the game’s progression, make sure all the servers and working the way they should, etc.

So if you’re in Australia, New Zealand, or Canada you’ll get to try the game a couple of weeks ahead of everyone else. Stay tuned for final live date, but no matter where in the world you are, everyone will be playing before Christmas

[UPDATE] Good news: The game is done! Bad news: We’ve been held up a little with the release process so we’re now looking to launch in the new year, late January. So sorry for the delay, but the wait will be worth it!

That there is one of the brand new brazil nut storage barns (or ‘Payols’) that you guys made possible. You heard right, the project that you funded through the purchase of special WWF items in Flutter is well underway and already helping to support the Amazon communities of Lourdes and Tumbito.

Two of the total eight Payol’s are already in use with the further six under construction. These barns shield the local farmer’s sustainable crops from the elements, dramatically reducing spoilage, increasing revenue to the community, and helping them be a shining example of how sustainable farming is the future of the rainforest.

Think about that for a second. Because you guys cared about a sustainable future enough to actually put your money where your month is, now we can show you physical things that you’ve built in the real world Amazon Rainforest by playing in the virtual rainforest. Pretty special.

So a huge thanks to those that took part, and to the amazing people at WWF New Zealand and WWF Bolivia who helped us make this happen.

More where this came from, we’re just getting started!