Our next yuri visual novel, A Tithe in Blood, is out now on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2989270/A_Tithe_in_Blood/

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.

• Original story of approximately 70,000 words

• Concept and writing by Suriko

• Character designs and art by Kobuta

• Fully original soundtrack by Claire DeLuca

• Fully voice acted in Japanese

• Story written in English with Japanese and Simplified Chinese translations

Get the physical copy of the VN[vnstudioelan.com] or the artbook[vnstudioelan.com]

• 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.

• Fixed an issue where the font path validator could potentially cause a crash when reading values from some users' persistent save data.

• Merged all changes below.
• Made the UI more clearly indicate when a scrollbar or slider is in a selected state.
• Fixed an issue introduced in 2.1.1.1 where the "Welcome to the music room." string would not be localised.
• Heart of the Woods now officially supports Ren'Py SDK version targets 8.1.3.23091805 〜 7.3.5.606.

• The Studio Élan bootlogo has been completely recreated from the ground up using new internal tools, but this time with brand new high-resolution assets!
• Apple Silicon (arm64 / AArch64) is now natively supported on macOS, without any need for Apple's Rosetta 2 x86_64 translation layer!
• Updated names in the credits screen and attribution in the guest art screen.
• Further clarified and improved wording in the README.
• Heart of the Woods now officially supports Ren'Py SDK version targets 8.1.0.23051307 〜 7.3.5.606.

• Improved wording in the music room.
• Made non-user-facing minor internal changes.

• Added a brand new controller UI! It can be enabled and configured from within the game's preference pane.
  • Our new controller buttons (which will be used in all mainline Élan games going forward) are slightly modified versions of Nicolae (Xelu) Berbece's controller buttons, which are CC0-licensed (※ public domain).
  • You can obtain a fresh copy of the original unmodified assets here: https://thoseawesomeguys.com/prompts/
  • ※ If you'd like to use the exact files and/or naming scheme found in our games, feel free to do so.
• Controller support has been completely reworked, making the game fully controller (and keyboard) navigable for both normal gameplay and UI navigation! More keyboard controls have also been added!
  • Please check the help screen for a full list of controls.
• The controller UI is now enabled by default on Steam Deck and Steam Big Picture.
• The large text size option is now enabled by default on the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch.
• A new version of the Studio Élan bootlogo has been created, using new internal tools that allow for both higher quality and framerates.
• The game now supports arbitrarily high framerates for super smooth animations!
• Fully reworked various view layouts in the preference pane for easier UI navigation.
• Added a patch API and content compatibility validator that runs at boot for certain user-installed patches and mods.
• Added a loose file validator that runs at boot to check for certain leftover user-installed loose files that are known to cause issues.
• Added the "changeTaraCustomShirt()" console command, which lets users change Tara custom shirts easily.
  • Example: changeTaraCustomShirt("minute") will change Tara's custom shirt to the specified "minute" custom shirt.
  • changeTaraCustomShirt("off") or simply changeTaraCustomShirt() will remove the custom shirt and restore the usual default behaviour of Tara's shirts that change according to the current in-game moon phase.
• Added a proper bundle identifier: com.vnstudioelan.heartofthewoods
  • ※ This will be our standardised bundle identifier format going forward for all of our games.
• Added all missing Info.plist keys to the macOS app bundle.
• Added compatibility with older Ren'Py SDK runtime versions, tested all the way down to 7.3.5.606! (※ Older versions than this may work, but are untested.)
  • Ren'Py SDKs patched with the modern Steamworks API are compatible, too! (※ With this Python 3 script provided by Ren'Py: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/renpy/steam-deck-guide/main/update_renpy_steam.py and Steamworks SDK 1.55)

• Fixed a crash that would occur if the user performed specific actions on older versions of the game that could result in the incorrect font path being written to persistent save data.
• Fixed an issue where certain users would end up with incorrect font size values written to their persistent save data.
• The current version of the game is now shown in the top left corner of the preference pane.
• Clarified and improved wording in the README.
• Re-centred and re-aligned certain UI elements that were previously incorrectly aligned.
• Adjusted and improved padding on UI elements.
• Fixed an issue where the dynamically changing UI tint colour (based on the current character PoV) would sometimes be inconsistently updated, leaving certain elements in the wrong colour. All UI elements are now correctly updated. No more carrots! This is now a carrot-free household!! (🌸•̀ω•́)୨✨🥕❌
• Fixed an issue where the fairy sitting on the ledge of the main menu buttons would sometimes be incorrectly aligned, especially in non-English languages.
• Sped up some UI transitions.
• Recreated many rasterised UI assets at a factor of @4x for a better experience on high-resolution and HiDPI / Retina displays.
• Fixed an issue where the auto mode delay value can sometimes default to an incorrect value of 0 (instead of 15), leading to auto mode effectively not working.
• Made many internal improvements to how trophies are handled.
• Made the state of UI elements in the first boot accessibility onboarding flow more clear to the user.
• Improved text legibility of many UI elements.
• Fixed an issue where the menu UI focus would constantly be lost every time the user navigates to another extras page.
• Restored missing snowflake UI indicators.
• Restored missing UI element alpha dimming in menus, improving legibility in many cases.
• Improved appearance of the "Now Playing" view.
• Allow keyboard / gamepad cancel button to work as expected in all applicable areas.
• Made many improvements to the save screen / load screen UI layout.
• Save screen / load screen pages now properly end at the correct maximum page value bounds, instead of continuing on forever.
• The save screen / load screen pages now wrap around when you hit each end.
• Disabled the autosave pages in the save screen to prevent players from accidentally overwriting their autosaves.
• Fixed the date formats used in save data.
• Fixed an issue where the quick menu would be visible during chapter cards.
• Made all scroll views no longer draggable, as this was somehow causing gamepad navigation to break(!?)
• Made it easier to tell when sliders, scrollbars, and certain buttons are being hovered over or selected.
• Made the game more resilient against crashes if given broken save data.
• Fixed incorrect UI element alignment for the individual character voice volume sliders.
• Improved wording to better communicate the on/off status of the "SUSTAIN VOICE PLAYBACK" and "WAIT FOR VOICE" preferences.
• Fast-skipping will now always show a confirmation prompt.
• Help text has been improved, with many more controls now correctly documented.
• Improved developer console layout.
• Fixed an issue where the bold version of Source Han Sans / 源ノ角ゴシック would erroneously be used instead of the regular version.
• Fixed an issue where the bootlogo audio could possibly end up being muted in certain cases.
• Fixed an issue where the font size selector in the preference pane would sometimes not work correctly.
• Fixed an issue where certain UI elements in certain states would be more translucent than intended.
• Improved the appearance of the accessibility self-voicing overlay.
• Improved wording of the CG gallery help text.
• Improved wording of the camera overlay help text.
• Fixed Abby's UI colours being incorrect. (… Granted, due to the Carrot Bug™, the broken colours were never actually visible to begin with.)
• Fixed an issue where some scroll views in the preference pane would sometimes be cut off prematurely.
• Fixed an issue that would occur when calculating the amount of pages to generate for the CG and guest art galleries.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the extras screen navbar to behave incorrectly when returning from the CG viewer.
• Removed an extraneous newline in the credits screen.
• Updated credits.

• MelanieKit warning screens are now fully localisable.
• Toast notifications are now fully localisable.
• Removed quick menu layout behaviour that was once added to work around an issue that used to be needed for the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文) localisations.
• Fixed an issue where the "SUSTAIN VOICE PLAYBACK" and "WAIT FOR VOICE" preferences would not correctly show the on/off status in the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文), Simplified Chinese (简体中文), and German (Deutsch) localisations.
• Fixed an issue where chapter names would not be localised in certain cases where they should have been.
• Fixed an issue where the fairy in the main menu would sometimes be misaligned when using a non-English language.
• Fixed an issue where certain strings may not have been fully localisable.

• Added a missing transition in Scene 1-3.
• Added a missing transition in Scene 1-7.

• Heart of the Woods (as well as all mainline Élan Ren'Py games going forward) no longer excludes plaintext scripts from the build archives! (There was never much of a point in doing so anyway, considering that unrpyc exists ;P)
• Made various internal improvements to the codebase, including large-scale refactoring… again.
• Added the ability to open the README, game data root directory, and game root directory from within the game itself. Look inside MelanieKit for the relevant URL schemes.
• Tara custom shirts use a completely new naming scheme now ("tara_shirt_custom_NAME_left/right"), so if your mod adds new Tara custom shirts, you will need to adapt accordingly.
• changeActiveCharacterPoVAndUpdateUITintColour(characterName) is the new method of triggering a PoV switch. The old method as well as its associated dependencies have been completely removed.
• The leftover/unused translation buttons from early UI prototypes (… and the demo) have been removed, as well as their underlying UI assets.
• Unused raster image UI assets have been removed.

• Fixed a crash that would occur when attempting to enter the Extras menu on non-PC builds.
• Fixed textbox layout issues on non-PC builds.
• Fixed NVL box layout issues on non-PC builds.
• Fixed quick menu layout issues on non-PC builds.
• Fixed font size issues on non-PC builds.
• Fixed preference pane layout issues on non-PC builds.
• Fixed UI element rendering issues on non-PC builds.
• Fixed an issue where the extras menu would not be localised correctly on non-PC builds.
• Disabled self-voicing on all non-PC builds due to the AX TTS backend not working correctly on non-PC builds.
• Integrated all other changes and improvements made in Heart of the Woods 2.1.1, 2.1, 2.0.4, and 2.0.3.

• Added a detailed README found in the game directory — please give it a read!
• Added a macOS DMG background. It is also available as bonus content in the game directory.
• Added native support for ARM Linux (arm64 / AArch64, armv7) — notably including Asahi Linux (arm64e / Apple Silicon)!
  • ※ Note for ARM Linux users: You will not be able to earn Steam achievements/trophies while running native ARM Linux builds of the game, as Valve currently only provides an x86_64 version of the Steamworks dynamic library for Linux (libsteam_api.so).
    • ※ If you run the x86_64 build of the game via a translation layer such as Box64 or FEX, Steam achievements/trophies should work as expected.
• Vastly improved controller support as well as general keybinds for both controller and keyboard. The list below is incomplete and only lists what's changed — a full list of all bindings can be found in the Help menu.
  • Controller: Added a new configurable preference that allows you to set your preferred confirmation button. Available options are:
    • A / Cross / Bottom Button (※ Default)
    • B / Circle / Right Button
  • Controller: Submenus can now be exited by pressing your configured cancel button (which is whatever the opposite of your configured confirm button is).
  • Controller: Scrollable views can now be scrolled using the right stick.
  • Controller: Pressing L1 / Left Shoulder and R1 / Right Shoulder buttons now changes pages in the save screen, load screen, gallery, and CG viewer.
  • Controller: In the gallery CG viewer, pressing X / Square / Left Button now toggles the zoom.
  • Controller: In normal gameplay, pressing X / Square / Left Button now toggles auto mode.
  • Controller: Pressing R1 / Right Shoulder button now toggles the skip functionality.
  • Controller: Pressing R2 / Right Trigger button now rolls forward the dialogue, instead of acting as a second confirm button.
  • Controller, Keyboard: The gallery CG viewer can now be moved using the right stick on the controller, and the arrow keys on the keyboard.
  • Controller, Keyboard: Fixed an issue where some keyboard and controller bindings were erroneously left active in the ED video player, which could result in it severely breaking if accidentally pressed.
  • Keyboard: Pressing Escape now exits the gallery CG viewer, as well as the Extras submenus.
  • Keyboard: Pressing the [ ] keys now changes pages in the save screen, load screen, gallery, and CG viewer.
  • Keyboard: Pressing Z now toggles the zoom in the gallery CG viewer.
  • Keyboard: Pressing H now also hides the UI in the gallery CG viewer, just as it does in normal gameplay.
  • Keyboard: Pressing L now opens the history/log screen.
  • Keyboard: Pressing K now toggles auto mode.
  • Keyboard: Pressing F6 now opens the save screen.
  • Keyboard: Pressing F7 now opens the load screen.
  • Keyboard: Pressing ` now opens the developer console.
• Updated the Help screen to be more complete.
  • Controller bindings are now always displayed for easier reference.
  • Clarified and localised all controller button names.
  • Completely reworded many of the binding descriptions.
  • Added all new bindings introduced in 2.1, in addition to documenting existing ones that were previously not included.
• Updated credits screen.
• Re-encoded all videos using the VP9 (libvpx-vp9) codec, muxed into MKV containers. Audio quality in videos have also been improved, as we now use lossless FLAC audio tracks for your listening pleasure.
• Made improvements to the Studio Élan bootlogo.
• Made changes to how Unified builds are generated to facilitate for easier conversion between Unified and macOS Standalone builds.
• Improved the UX for the first boot accessibility onboarding flow.
• Updated the developer console UI.
• Added proper padding for the zoom button in the gallery CG viewer.
• Added proper padding for the "Skip Credits" button in the ED video player.
• Added missing transitions to some scenes.
• Updated the text shown in the gallery CG viewer to reflect the new keybinds.
• Modified the behaviour of all scrollable views to also allow dragging.
• Updated all outdated Twitter usernames in the Guest Art gallery, and corrected all capitalisation.
• Completely re-rendered most name plates.
• Updated some UI assets.
• Updated all fonts to the latest versions.
• Restored a train whistle that plays when players step off of the train to Eysenfeld.
• Restored menu item hover and click sounds.

• Completely rewrote Steam achievement/trophy functionality. Issues fixed by this change are listed below.
  • Fixed all known issues related to difficulties earning achievements/trophies.
  • Fixed an issue where achievement/trophy state could desynchronise between local persistent save data and Steam.
• Completely rewrote procedural forest generation functionality. Issues fixed by this change are listed below.
  • Rendering errors no longer occur when characters move through the forest.
  • Fixed an issue where it would be possible to spawn into a completely empty forest if a very specific chain of actions were made by the player.
  • Fixed an issue where some trees would erroneously render multiple times.
  • Fixed an issue where some procedural forests may spawn with less trees than intended.
  • Fixed an issue where a race condition could occur while generating a procedural forest.
  • Improved performance by removing unnecessary draw calls.
• Completely changed how fonts work. This fully fixes the rendering of bold, italics, and bold italics which were all previously rendered incorrectly.
• Use the correct name for Source Han Sans / 源ノ角ゴシック.
• Use the correct name for OpenDyslexic.
• Fixed an issue where the animated snowflakes shown in menus would sometimes erroneously appear in the incorrect position for a few frames.
• Fixed an issue where some character facial expressions would not display correctly.
• Fixed an issue where the outdoors train whistle would play when players are actually indoors.
• Fixed an issue where the second train CG variant would not be unlocked in the gallery. (※ Start a new game to unlock it.)
• Fixed a rendering issue that would occur for a few frames while transitioning away from the ED videos.
• Fixed a rendering issue that would occur where some UI elements would incorrectly render behind the NVL UI.
• Fixed a rendering issue that would occur where the PoV switching animation would incorrectly render behind the NVL UI.
• Fixed all known issues with missing voice lines.
• Fixed all text formatting tags that were erroneously left open.
• Fixed some text formatting issues.
• Fixed some minor typos.
• Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur while entering the guest art gallery.
• Fixed an issue where the images in the gallery CG viewer could not be dragged when zoomed in.
• Fixed an issue where an empty page would be shown in the guest art gallery.
• Fixed an issue in the Help screen where an incorrect font would sometimes be used after changing languages.
• Fixed an issue where the wrong font would sometimes show in some of the Extras submenus.
• Fixed an issue where the text scrolling animation would render incorrectly when using the OpenDyslexic font.
• Fixed an issue where the line spacing would incorrectly render too tightly when using the OpenDyslexic font.
• Fixed an inconsistency where menu elements for the Extras screen were not centered.
• Fixed an issue where the Help menu would always open scrolled all the way at the bottom.
• Fixed a text rendering issue with the CG "You, Me, and the Snowflakes" in the gallery.
• Fixed an issue where the developer console would not be able to be opened using the standard ` key.
• Fixed an issue where the gentle screenshake effect used in the train CG would sometimes not work.
• Fixed an issue where the graphical buttons in the extras menu were not consistently aligned correctly.
• Fixed an issue where some background images would not correctly fill the screen due to using the wrong dAR.
• Fixed the alignment of the right and left buttons shown in the gallery CG viewer.
• Fixed all incorrect image paths.
• Fixed an issue where the history/log screen would open scrolled all the way to the top.
• Fixed an issue where the first boot accessibility onboarding flow would render slightly incorrectly when choosing to enable or disable image descriptions.

• Fixed an issue where some strings and dialogue in the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文), Simplified Chinese (简体中文), German (Deutsch), and Spanish (Español) would erroneously display completely empty.
  • This also fixes an issue where some preference categories would appear to be missing from the preference pane.
• Fixed all known lines that would erroneously still appear in English despite having another localisation enabled.
• Fixed all known issues regarding missing text in the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文) localisations.
• Fixed all known issues regarding text rendering errors in the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文) localisations.
• Added missing localised name plates for Traditional Chinese (繁體中文), Simplified Chinese (简体中文), and German (Deutsch).
• Fixed an issue where the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文) localisations would always display entirely with a bold font weight.
• Fixed an issue where the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文) localisations was erroneously missing all bold text tags.
• Fixed an issue where the names shown in the PoV switcher would not be translated when using the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) or Simplified Chinese (简体中文) localisations.
• Fixed an issue where the font picker would erroneously remain enabled when using the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) localisation, which does not support changing the font.
• Fixed an issue where the name of some CGs in the gallery would not display correctly when using the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) or Simplified Chinese (简体中文) localisations.
• Fixed an issue where the error handler would not render correctly when using the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) or Simplified Chinese (简体中文) localisations.
• Fixed an issue where the "Calibrate" button would display in English when using the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) or Simplified Chinese (简体中文) localisations.
• Fixed an issue where changing the font to Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) or Simplified Chinese (简体中文) and then back to English, German (Deutsch), or Spanish (Español) would result in the incorrect font being used until either PT Sans or OpenDyslexic was chosen again from the font preference pane.
• Fixed an issue in one location where the Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文) would attempt to reference an old font that no longer ships with the game.
• Fixed an issue where the names shown in the translated name plates for Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) and Simplified Chinese (简体中文) would be inconsistent with how they were translated in the actual game text.
• Fixed an issue where some instances of italicised text would not render correctly when using the Spanish (Español) localisation.
• Fixed an issue where menu elements for the Extras screen would draw over the menu header when using the Spanish (Español) localisation.
• Fixed an issue where some preference pane tooltip strings in the Spanish (Español) localisation were missing newlines, resulting in the line being too long and cutting into other UI elements.
• Fixed a UI layout issue in the Help screen when using some localisations that have longer strings for the bindings.

• Improved the presentation of the title logo scene across the aerial shot of Eysenfeld shown at the end of Scene 1-1.
• Fixed an issue where the title logo scene would persist for longer than intended.
• Fixed some rendering issues that would occur while transitioning between Scene 1-1 and 1-2.
• Fixed an issue in Scene 1-4 that would erroneously alter the behaviour of all procedural forests generated afterwards while the game is still open.
• Fixed an issue in Scene 1-8 where the incorrect transition would play.
• Fixed missing fade transitions in Scene 3-1.
• Fixed an issue where a certain character would be wearing the wrong clothing in a scene.

• Wondering where some defines went? They've probably been moved inside MorganKit.
• Rearranged many assets internally and removed all erroneously duplicated assets.
• Removed unused font assets.
• Changed the way how unused, non-canonical cut content content is stored. This means that you can no longer view cut content the old way.
  • ※ To get around this, you can set the console variable showNonCanonicalCutContent = 1 while ingame. Please note that this is an unsupported configuration!
• Made various internal improvements to the codebase, including large-scale refactoring.

• 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 8.0.3.22090809.