The Watchful Butterflies

This is a game where slowness and temperance are virtues.

When you start the game (key S ) it sets up ten "butterflies" randomly on the screen. You hunt and catch them with the cursor. You will find that they react differently depending on how fast you move the cursor. They are watchful and easily scared. In order to catch a butterfly you must approach it in a restrained manner, "as slowly as possible".

You may choose between just playing "cat and mouse" with the butterflies, or set yourself the goal to catch all ten within a certain given time (about 2 minutes).  There are three levels of difficulty.

The program SLOW864.EXE (108 kB) is for PC. Click here to download it:

Note that this is a prototype version, intended for testing the psychological experience of playing this kind of game, where slow movements are in some situations crucial. 

It is a simple DOS-game that may or may not run on your PC. (Just try!)   

Anyway, I suggest that you run it with DOSBox0.74 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox/)  If you are not familiar with this emulator and want an instruction on how to use it, see below.

Complete procedure:

download dosbox and install it.

make a directory on your HD  in volume c:  Call it for instance  dosgames

download slow864.exe and put it in dosgames

start dosbox

at the prompt Z:\>  write  mount c: c:\dosgames  and push Enter

then write c:  and push Enter

then write slow864  and push Enter,  the program is loaded

click with the mouse in the blue window area, to make dosbox recognize the mouse driver

if you want full screen  take Alt + Enter

hit key s  to start the program

hit key 1, 2 or 3  to select the level of difficulty

the process starts and you can begin hunting the butterflies

if you want to make a pause, push the spacebar, push it again to go on

if you don't want the time restriction, push x

if you want to restart with a new set of butterflies, push s

if you want to close the program, push Esc

pehr@pscolour.eu  2012-05-12