- Fall in Love Visual Novel Steam Festival is live! - 1 September 2026
Fall in love with visual novels from September 1-9 in the Fall in Love Visual Novel Festival!Heart of the Woods is currently taking part in the Fall in Love Visual Novel Festival, a Steam festival dedicated to romance visual novels from around the world, hosted by yours truly! From September 1-9 you can find over 200 visual novels in the festival, ranging from discounted games, new demos, and more~Several of our visual novels are on sale for the event!And you can try out the demos for our upcoming games as well~
- Valentine's Sale! - 6 February 2026
Heart of the Woods is currently on sale on Steam alongside its DLC! The base game and all of its DLC, such as the soundtracks and the artbook, are 40% off.You can also pick up our comfy slice of life yuri visual novel Please Be Happy on sale right now~
- Our magical girl yuri visual novel is now released! - 30 September 2025
Fight crime, be gay—do things the magical girl way!Lock & Key: A Magical Girl Mystery is out now! After several years of development, you can finally follow the married pair of magical girls Sherri and Kealey on one last adventure before their powers fade away for good.Sherri and Kealey Cohen, now a married couple in their late 20s, left the title of magical girls behind them over a decade ago. Now on the verge of losing their powers and entering a life of true normalcy, a string of unexplainable murders forces them to come out of retirement for one last adventure. Together with Nina, their old friend, and Ruby, a new protégé, Sherri and Kealey will have to face a mystery connected both to their past and future. How will you guide your new protégé? Will you be able to save the city from a killer, or will you lose it all?Lock & Key: A Magical Girl Mystery features multiple ways the story…
- Fall in Love Visual Novel Festival has started! - 24 September 2025
The first Fall in Love Visual Novel festival has started! Enjoy 200+ romance-themed visual novels from over 100 visual novel developers, hosted by us!Heart of the Woods and its DLC are on sale for the festival~Our other yuri games are also in the festival, with some being on sale! Lock & Key: A Magical Girl Mystery, our very next yuri visual novel, releases on September 30th and has a demo you can try now!
- Heart of the Woods 2.1.7 and 2.1.6 - 10 August 2025
Hello, everyone!Heart of the Woods 2.1.7 and 2.1.6 have just been released, which fix a few minor issues that were either reported by the community, or were found in testing.We’ve also optimised and reduced the game’s install size by 102 MB (8%) with no quality loss!As always, thank you all for continuing to support Studio Élan…!〜 Karen/あけみ (akemin_dayo)Changelog for 2.1.7:On PC, it targets Ren’Py SDK versions 8.1.3.23091805 〜 7.3.5.606.In an effort to further bring all our titles in line with each other, the keyboard key "A" can now be used to toggle Auto Mode on and off. ※ The legacy Ren'Py accessibility (AX) menu can still be accessed by pressing "Shift-A" instead.Deleting save files from the savescreen is now possible again using the "Delete" key on your keyboard, or Square / X (Left Button) on your controller.Made improvements to localisation system.When available, audio cues are n…
- Our next dark fantasy yuri visual novel is out now! - 16 June 2025
Find unexpected love in the depths of grief...Our next yuri visual novel, A Tithe in Blood, is out now on Steam!As a reserved and unassuming university student in snow-bitten Hokkaido, the personal tragedy which visited Honoka Asakawa leads her to experimenting in a magical art thought long-lost — blood magic. Unexpectedly able to visit the sealed world of Meiji-era Sapporo, Honoka's quickly taken under the wing of the cheerful and bright Lady Yasue, a powerful mage who's remained in this gilded cage for a century.As their feelings for each other develop, the true repercussions of Honoka's first steps into the secret world of magic and mages are only just starting to play out, eventually leading to catastrophic consequences.Features:Original story of approximately 70,000 wordsConcept and writing by SurikoCharacter designs and art by KobutaFully original soundtrack by Claire DeLucaFully…
- Our next yuri game is releasing June 16th! - 21 April 2025
Our next yuri visual novel, A Tithe in Blood, releases in just 2 months on June 16th! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2989270/A_Tithe_in_Blood/ A Tithe in Blood is a dark fantasy yuri visual novel about a woman discovering magic and finding herself in the middle of a sinister plot—can her love prevail? As a reserved and unassuming university student in snow-bitten Hokkaido, the personal tragedy which visited Honoka Asakawa would lead to her experimentation in a magical art thought long-lost — blood magic. Unexpectedly able to visit the sealed world of Meiji-era Sapporo, Honoka's quickly taken under the wing of the cheerful and bright Lady Yasue, a powerful mage who's remained in this gilded cage for a century. As their feelings for each other develop, the true repercussions of Honoka's first steps into the secret world of magic and mages are only just starting to play out, eventually…
- Pride Month Tara Plushies! - 30 May 2024
The time is here - you can now get your very own Tara plushie via Makeship! Pre-orders have started and will be up for the whole month of June. Tara is part of their Pride Month campaigns, which means every plushie will have a plushie-sized pride cape come with it! These plushies won't be for sale online after this pre-order period - so if you want a Tara plushie, don't wait! order the Tara plushie here
- Happy 5th Anniversary! ❄️ - 15 February 2024
❄️ Happy 5th anniversary Heart of the Woods!! ❄️ 5 years ago today, a pair of paranormal vloggers ventured into the woods (via Steam and itch.io)... Thank you to those who've been with us since then and to those who've ventured into the woods afterwards! Here's a brand new illustration of Morgan and Abby by adirosa 💕 Our Heart of the Woods merch including keychains, a tshirt, and physical copies are currently on sale on our merch store! We also have a new wallpaper featuring Morgan illustrated by caps, as well as an exclusive sneak peek for Patrons posted in our Discord server~ Last but not least, here's a new set of bloopers from our voice acting patch! follow us on... Discord - Tumblr - Newsletter
- Heart of the Woods 2.1.5 — Steam Deck compatibility fixes and more! - 5 January 2024
Hello, everyone! Heart of the Woods 2.1.5 has just been released, which fixes all known compatibility issues with the Steam Deck! It also fixes a few minor issues that were either reported, or were found in testing. As always, thank you for continuing to support Studio Élan! 〜 Karen/あけみ (akemin_dayo) and adirosa Changelog for 2.1.5: On PC, it targets Ren'Py SDK versions 8.1.3.23091805 〜 7.3.5.606. Fixed all known UI layout issues that were affecting the Steam Deck when the game was run from the Steam client in SteamOS 3 / Holo.Fixed an issue that could potentially cause videos to not play in certain very specific circumstances.Made various other internal refactors and improvements.
- Heart of the Woods 2.1.4, 2.1.3, 2.1.2, 2.1.1.1, and 2.1.1 - 28 October 2023
Hello, everyone! We've just released a fairly big update for Heart of the Woods! … In fact, we released five whole versions in rapid succession just now — 2.1.4, 2.1.3, 2.1.2, 2.1.1.1, and 2.1.1! (※ More on this below.) Our apologies for the large delay in getting these versions out — various external factors beyond our control prevented us from properly releasing these updates, despite them being feature-complete for the longest time. The main highlights of this release mostly have to do with our brand new controller UI and navigation support, which can be enabled and configured from within the game's preference pane, as well as native Apple Silicon (arm64 / AArch64) support on macOS! All that being said, we thank you all for remaining patient, and as always, for supporting Studio Élan across these many years! ※ If for some reason you want to downgrade the game to an earlier version, y…
- Kickstarter Campaign for Physical Copies of our Visual Novels! - 12 March 2023
We just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund disc-based physical copies of our first three visual novels, "Highway Blossoms," "Heart of the Woods," and "Please Be Happy." We're also printing the artbook and soundtrack too! The game copies are disc-based and compatible with PC/Mac/Linux. The games are available in two versions: the Webstore Editions and Classic Editions. The Classic editions come in a DVD-sized case, and the Webstore editions come in a CD-sized case and have a reversible cover with a new illustration. There's also a special postcard and sticker sheet exclusive to the campaign, illustrated by some special guest artists. The campaign will run for 4 weeks starting from today, meaning you have until April 9th to order! After the campaign ends, the games, books, and soundtracks will be available on our webstore and at IRL events. The sticker sheet and postcard will be sent…
- Heart of the Woods 2.1 — Celebrating our 4th anniversary! - 20 February 2023
Hello, everyone! Right on the heels of Heart of the Woods' 4th anniversary, we've just released a major update to Heart of the Woods! Heart of the Woods 2.1 fixes many long-standing issues of varying severity, vastly improves controller support, and even adds native support for ARM Linux (arm64 / AArch64, armv7) — notably including Asahi Linux (arm64e / Apple Silicon)! To go along with the 4th anniversary, we also have a new short story and artwork featuring Tara and Morgan! You can see them in our Patreon post here: https://patreon.com/posts/78737674 As always, thank you all for supporting Studio Élan across these many years! 〜 Karen/あけみ (akemin_dayo) and adirosa Changelog for 2.1: ※ Note regarding native Apple Silicon (arm64 / AArch64) Mach-O slices on macOS: Ren'Py unfortunately does not support this configuration upstream yet, and attempts at building it manually have failed due to…
- Heart of the Woods 2.0.4 - 20 January 2023
Hello, everyone! Heart of the Woods 2.0.4 has just been released, which fixes quite a number of issues. Thank you for your support across these many years! 〜 Karen/あけみ (akemin_dayo) and adirosa Changelog for 2.0.4:Fixed broken (※ incorrectly encoded) strings in the German (Deutsch) translation.Restored missing lines in the German (Deutsch) translation.Restored missing localised game name in the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) translation.Fixed an issue where the default text size used during the accessibility onboarding would be too large.Created proper iconsets and updated the game icon across all locations.Corrected previously-incorrect DPI values.Removed persistent save data that was previously erroneously included — gallery items should now no longer be all unlocked from the beginning.Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur while entering the gallery screen.Updated Ren'Py SDK version to…
- Achievements! - 8 April 2021
Two years later...! Thank you all so, so much for your support over the last two years. We really couldn't ask for more! Some of you have already noticed, but now that it's official and actually available to all players... We've added achievements! We've added 12 achievements to the game! Thank you all so much for playing: we hope the addition of achievements will motivate you to play through the game, recommend it to a friend, or just rack up some more numbers on your profile. New merch! Our store has added a lot of new merchandise over the last couple years. If you've ever wanted a cool tote, shirt, or stickers, why not get one that represents gay ghosts and wintery wonderlands? Fixes! Sorry. It's really fixed now. Thank you everyone who's submitted VA issues to us: we think we've FINALLY nailed them all down! And that's it for this update. Thank you, everyone, for all the love, suppo…
- Heart of the Woods Artbook Available - 5 September 2020
Yes, it should've been called "Art of the Woods." Regardless, we're happy to announce that the Heart of the Woods Official Artbook is now available for purchase. It collects all of the beautiful art from the game, as well as commentary from us and some recollections. It also includes three short stories that were originally written for our Patreon, and that come with illustrations by minute and adirosa. I'm biased, but it's a really pretty book, and I hope you'll check it out. Grab it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1412330
- Voice Acting Patch Now Available! - 13 July 2020
Hey gamers, We're super excited to say that we pushed the button, and the voice acting update for Heart of the Woods is now live! Super big thanks to our amazing cast and crew, as well as our Kickstarter backers who made this all possible! Maddie Raines - Allie Goodell Abigal - Heidi Tabing Tara Bryck - Stephanie "Teffi" Arata Morgan Fischer - Kira Bucklan Evelyn Fischer - Tara Langella Fairy Queen - Emaline Tuck Fairies - Anairis Quinones, Lisa Reimold, Tina Kim Casting - Studio Coattails Direction - Wyatt Abernathie Engineering - Lisa Reimold, Nikki Kaelar We hope you guys enjoy this update as much as we do. It's been a dream come true being able to do this.
- Simplified Chinese Translation Now Available - 16 May 2020
《森灵之心》已更新官方中文版本，感谢 Hakui Project 提供的汉化支持！ Hey everyone, We're excited to announce that, courtesy of our friends at Hakui Project, Heart of the Woods is now available in Simplified Chinese! They're the same folks who translated our other game, Highway Blossoms. This is a text-only translation, and doesn't/won't affect the voice acting. You can enable it from the Options menu anytime! If you notice any issues or typos, please feel free to post 'em in the Discussion section and we'll fix them in a patch sometime. Also, for anyone wondering about the voice acting update: it's currently in beta testing, and rather close to the end. The actual timing of the release will depend on some other stuff, but we're crossing our fingers that it'll happen sometime next month. We'll post our next update when that happens. Until then, take care!
- For the second year running, the Glaad awards look like they're missing the mark on celebrating queer representation - 9 January 2020
Glaad (formerly known as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) have brought their media awards back for the 31st year, and for the second year in a row they’re recognising video games “for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community and the issues that affect their lives”. Last year, Jay Castello wrote about how these video game awards highlight difficulties in celebrating queer representation , and this year it’s slighty better, but it still feels a bit like it’s missing the point. (more…)
- The best of Unknown Pleasures 2019 - 20 December 2019
It’s been a weird, weird year for games. My perspective has been particularly odd and hard to square, as I’ve now been full time staff here at RPS for nearly six months. Six months! That’s … oh my god, I still haven’t extended my rent. It’s quite strange suddenly being able to talk about games in real life without having to apologise, but other than that it’s nice. In that time I’ve played somewhere around 1,200 to 1,300 games (an exact count is impossible for boring reasons), almost all of them little known. There have been many, many excellent games. There’s a refrain you see around the internet sometimes that “this was a bad year for games”, and I’ve honestly never understood it. I lived through the 2000s, people, I remember that wasteland. But this year, even after a solid 2018 , has been so replete with interes…
