Heart of the Woods News

Hey everyone,

We're super excited to premiere our new voice acting trailer, introducing the English voice cast of Heart of the Woods! Check it out:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]










Maddie Raines - Allie Goodell
Abigail - Heidi Tabing
Tara Bryck - Stephanie Arata
Morgan - Kira Buckland
Evelyn - Tara Langella
Fairy Queen - Emaline Tuck
Fairies - Lisa Reimold; Pickle131; Anairis Quinones

We're currently holding a crowdfunding campaign to fund the voice acting, as well as offer a bunch of merchandise for the game (most of it exclusive to the campaign). If it's successful, we'll be delivering the VA as a free update to the game, most likely early next year. Details and more can be found in the description for the Youtube video! We're also hoping to add a couple touch-ups to the game at the same time, like some minor art fixes and other stuff. We hope you like what you hear - we couldn't be happier with our cast!

A full changelog is at the bottom of this post.



Happy Friday! Technically. It's Friday somewhere.

As always, thank you everyone so much for your support. Big news!! We have, almost definitely, fingers crossed very tightly, fixed the rather big issue of the "Sad Story" patch. As such, we removed the Anti-Patch files from the build, and hope the game will run smoothly~. A big thank you goes to Kevin Turner for helping us debug and fix this issue! If you're still experiencing a bit of a problem, it's most likely the system requirements of the animations and transitions, so we recommend disabling transitions in the options for the duration of the segment.

In addition to that, we've touched up some bits and pieces of dialogue. A scene in Chapter 5 erroneously didn't check for some flags, so there was some repeated information/dialogue, another scene in Chapter 3 saved as Chapter 4, ho-hum-drum!

Now, the fun part! We've added a couple new screens to our Extras menu, "Notes" and "Credits". We've left a couple sentiments from our team members in the Notes section, and the Credits screen will let you scroll and appreciate all the wonderful humans who made Heart of the Woods what it is today. Thank you Adirosa for the beautiful designs, as always!

Have a great weekend!

Changes

• Removed the Anti-Patch. Abigail's Story should now display correctly for all users, but if you're still experiencing performance hiccups, we recommend disabling transitions in the Options.
  
• Added two new screens to the Extras Menu: "Notes" and "Credits"
  

Fixes

• Flag checks for some dialogue. No more repetition of events!
  
• Save Name fixes to show the correct chapter in a couple scenes
  
• The first screen of Abigail's Story doesn't try to generate a 20,005 x 57,880 texture - which was causing the "hiccups" (sweat emoji)
  

A full changelog is at the bottom of this post.


by @huixci


by @pentagonfruit


by @vividgrim

Wow.

It's been a week since release, and we're still blown away by all of your love, support, and feedback. Thank you all so much! For those of you who have already completed the game, those of you still playing, and those of you yet to even start it... Thank you. We love seeing your posts on social media, from your playthroughs, to your image edits, to your keymashing.

For us, this is just the first step in a long journey of bringing magic, love, and élan to the world.

On to the patch notes!

Changes

• Per the title, in Chapter Four "In The Past Now" we received numerous bug reports just before Abigail is about to tell a story. We've moved some in-line image manipulation to the init phase, which should help some people experiencing crashes. If not, we've also added a file in the game directory called "Abigails Story Anti-Patch". If you're still experiencing crashes, we recommend DELETING this file and trying again. All image manipulation is removed and instead replaced with panning images of what it was supposed to look like.
  
• Added more text to the help menu. Right-Clicking on the skip button will fast-skip to the next Chapter or Choice, and this information was omitted from the screen. Replays ahoy!
  

Fixes

• SO. MANY. TYPOS. Thank you everyone for your numerous reports. We've gone through and hopefully fixed all of them (fingers crossed).
  
• In Chapter Five, there was a missed POV switch between Morgan and Maddie. The POV colors now switch to Maddie as intended.
  
• Typos, again. There were a lot of them!
  

This marks Studio Élan’s first-ever full release as a studio. After releasing our free demo last year, we hope you’ll look forward to experiencing the full version of this thrilling, heartwarming, and utterly enchanting adventure from start to finish. Your feedback on the demo was invaluable, and we put our all into making sure that the final release was as refined and polished as possible.

Thank you all for your continued support. We try to say this as often as we can, but we honestly couldn’t make it this far without all of you. Please enjoy Heart of the Woods, and please look forward to Studio Élan’s continued work in the future!

A full changelog is at the bottom of this post


art by @vividgrim

For the past 3 months, we've been overwhelmed again and again by your love, support, and feedback. Thank you all so much for giving our demo a try; We hope its made you excited for the full game.

We've been working hard to bring the full version out to you all very soon; In the meantime, we've also been working with Indienova, a Chinese translation group. Thanks to them, Version 1.2 now features a full Chinese translation! A big applause to them, and a special shoutout to our GUI artist @adirosette for painstakingly translating/exporting all our GUI to its translated counterpart. Whew!

A couple of backgrounds have been updated too. The pink lake clearing is no longer a placeholder made by our programmer (me), and the church background should look a bit more frosty and touched up.

We've touched up a lot of screens and features to give a smoother experience as well. Even if you can't read Chinese, we hope you'll appreciate the love and effort that went into this translation. And if you're learning the language, be sure to check out the Q. Translate button in the quick menu now! It'll translate your current line right before your very eyes.

Onto the changelog!

Changes

• Menus now have a soft dissolve effect in the main menu
  
• Option to choose your language at the start of the game
  
• A Q. Translate button in the quick menu, to switch between English and Chinese
  
• New Lake Clearing background
  
• Revised Chapel background
  
• Chapter card and Save/Load thumbs have been updated
  

Fixes

• The main menu image shows up properly behind the game menus during the title screen
  
• A few game menu transitions have been fixed
  

As always, thank you for your support. Please let us know if you come across any issues while playing!