Hello and welcome to a very special interview. After the release of Visual Novel Highway Blossoms (which has the honor of being one of two I have actually enjoyed), creator Josh Kaplan launched a brand new venture – Studio Élan, dedicated to creating Yuri Visual Novels.

On the cusp of their first major release, Heart of the Woods, (my review of the first chapter demo looked pretty good), we took some time to talk to Josh and his team about their work.

Q: You launched Studio Élan right after completing Highway Blossoms, what was your motivation in putting together a VN studio focused on specifically Yuri Visual Novels?

A. There are a couple reasons! The most plain is simply that I think it’s a comparatively underrepresented genre in the west, compared to otome and bishoujo games. Admittedly, the number of yuri games available in English has really skyrocketed in the past couple years. Still, it’s definitely a smaller genre, and there are also very few developers devoted exclusively to it.

Aside from that, though… We’ve been really fortunate with how well-received Highway Blossoms was, and I wanted to use the opportunities its success has provided to be able to carry on its legacy, so to speak. That is, to continue to make games with a similar sort of wholesomeness and attitude. In addition, I wanted to help give a platform to other creators. The vast majority of our team consists of LGBT+ women, which is a pretty far departure from the HB dev team.

Q: There’s a surge of Yuri VNs inside Japan and in the West right now – what do you see as areas that haven’t been explored…and should be?

A: For one, I think it would be nice to see more stories that feature older characters, even if it’s college aged as opposed to high school. In Japan in particular, the majority still tend to fall within the “high school romance” category. Of course there are notable exceptions like Seabed, but still. Also, games that include characters who are trans or nonbinary.

Finally, while this is more of a personal taste kind of thing, it would be great to have more games where the romance isn’t the central part of the story, but more of a subplot, similar to most mainstream media nowadays. In fact, that’s one element that we make sure to incorporate in all of our own games – the fantasy aspect is just as important as the romance.

Q3: In Heart of the Woods, the story is a “ghost story” but is not a scary one, what did you want to explore with this work?

A: We really wanted to go for a fairytale feeling. There’s a certain whimsy and wonder to the stories that you hear growing up, where you don’t necessarily question everything that’s happening but instead let yourself get wrapped up and pulled along. We took a lot of inspiration from Disney movies as well, both in tone and aesthetic. I used Disney as a sort of guideline as to “how dark” the story could get. My barometer was always “could I see this happening in Frozen or Snow White?” Although we do have a couple different endings for the story, it was always crucial to us that the “real” ending is a happy one.

Q4: This is a question for adirosa, your game designer:  What was your inspiration for the look of Heart of the Woods?

adirosa: For HOTW, the direction I was given for it was to keep it simple and modern. I’ve always been very invested in game accessibility and giving players a comfortable reading experience, so I decided to couple these together. Queen at Arms and their option to change font sizes + Autumn’s Journey‘s alternate font options is what inspired me to start this, and I’ve been trying to expand on the accessibility options in the games I work on.

I was also given the direction to make it clear who the POV character was for each scene, so I did heavy colour theming. Persona 3 Portable‘s alternate GUI colour scheme based on the male/female protagonists and idol culture’s character colour theming is what inspired me to take this approach with HOTW, and I’ve taken that approach to marketing materials as well to tie it in. (Fun fact, the HOTW game theme colour is the dark teal of the trees in the logo!)

I’m personally a huge fan of the rococo and art nouveau art movements, and I try to incorporate elements where I can! The inspiration isn’t heavy in the HOTW UI but there are little bits (like the NVL border and the cover image border) that will tie the Élan games together lightly. I’m super extra and I can’t stop putting those elements in.

Q: Music is also very important to helping set the mood for a VN. Sarah, tell us a little bit about the place the music has in Heart of the Woods.

Sarah: Heart of the Woods is a magical fairytale, but one where magic isn’t something to be taken lightly. I wanted to reflect that in the music I contributed — you’ve traveled out to an unfamiliar town in the middle of nowhere in the depths of winter for a paranormal investigation, and you don’t know what you’re going to find there. There’s a lot of uncertainty and trepidation, and you’re starting to realize it might be more dangerous than you anticipated when you left home. You don’t know if you’ll make it back safely.

The first piece of music that I wrote for the Heart of the Woods soundtrack was “Into Another World,” which was used for the opening train sequence, though I didn’t initially know where it was going to end up in the story. It was my audition for the project, and I wanted to try figuring out exactly what Heart of the Woods should sound like and really define it in one song. It ended up being a sort of template for the wintry and spacious sound of a bunch of the other music on the soundtrack, enveloping you with icy orchestral strings as twinkling piano and chimes echo off into the distance.

“Why Am I Here” is one with a bit of a personal story behind it. It was written during a period in my life where I was evacuating from a storm while also dealing with a sudden emergency, and for a few days found myself unexpectedly alone and adrift in an unfamiliar city wondering what in the world I was doing with my life. It was written in one sitting and was basically just me pouring out my emotions into music, though I didn’t really recognize it as such at the time. It ended up being adopted as Maddie’s character theme because it really mirrors a lot of what she’s dealing with after Tara has dragged her along to Eysenfeld.

Of course, this isn’t just a bleak and depressing story, it’s still a romance VN and there are pockets of warmth and comfort to be found here too! There’s a bit of that warmth mixed into the soundtrack in places, such as the character themes for Morgan and Abby. Morgan is an odd one but she means well, and I wanted her theme “Restless One” to make you feel like “ah, this girl is someone I can trust!” when you hear it.

Meanwhile, Abby’s theme “Communion” is a song where I tried to do a lot of things at once, with feelings of isolation and angst and love all rolled together in a string quartet arrangement that took forever to get just right. Visual novels can be a lot of hours of reading and so there’s not much avoiding having to hear to the same songs on repeat a few times, so I really like it when a song can be versatile and carry different emotions depending on the context it’s being used in.

Q:  What’s the structure of Studio Élan like, and how do you all work together?

Most of us wear a few different hats. minute went from being “just” the programmer to also being an editor as well as contributing some creature designs and background art. adirosa not only does the GUI for our games, she also created our new studio logo, graphics for promo materials, our trailer, and more. Plus, every member of the team is encouraged to give feedback on the story, release plans, pretty much everything. It was really important to me that really feels like part of the team, rather than just being instructed on what to do.

Q: Heart of the Woods seems to me to be a step forward in reader engagement with sound and movement integration. Can you speak to some of the enhancements you’ve made to the VN experience with Studio Élan?

minute: The scripting for Heart of the Woods is very much my love for visual novels coming through. It’s honestly one of my favorite mediums- its accessibility, format, and history means a lot to me as both a creator and avid reader.
That said, it’s also a medium with a lot of room to grow. In the past few years visual novels have been extending into the western audience in a great way- so many new, incredibly skilled creators are pushing the boundaries of genre and target audience with their work. HotW is scripted with these new advancements in mind, but with the classics of VNs very close to my heart. I wanted to make the characters feel alive, with tiny movements or subtle expression changes to offset the limits of a traditionally-styled VN. It’s a process of making sure the game is both fun to play and easy to read, which I hope we’ve achieved so far!

The sound design is a constant back and forth – you’d be surprised how many variants of “tree branch snapping” we can go through to find the right one. But in the end, as a team we are all focused on trying to make every aspect of Heart of the Woods enjoyable. To that end, it’s also why our accessibility options are so extensive! adirosa and I spent a long time trying to make sure every option is equally viable for every reader – so no matter how someone chooses to play, we hope they’ll have a good time.

Q: What creative work has inspired you, personally and artistically? Are there any games, VNs, comics, animation that has informed your work on Heart of the Woods?

minute: Fate Stay/Night is my biggest inspiration for choreographing and visual directing!

Sarah: For this particular soundtrack, Yuki Kajura and Ryou Mizutsuki were my biggest influences.

adirosa: I draw a lot of inspiration from the English visual novel community in general. The HoTW UI was inspired by the more sci-fi UIs Auro-Cyanide used to do (such as Break Chance Memento) and Dischan’s UIs in general like Dysfunctional Systems Ep.1 and Juniper’s Knot.

Josh: Aside from what I mentioned above, I get a lot of inspiration from music like Nightwish, as well as the book series The Enchanted Forest Chronicles.

Q9: What does the future hold for Studio Élan?

Hopefully, a lot! Every one of us is in this for the long haul. We already have our next couple VN’s planned out. We’re going to be starting a comic for our Patreon, and we also hired a merchandise designer to help out with, well, merch designs. Eventually, we’d like to try making games other than VN’s, as well as other forms of media in general.

We have a couple long-term, grand dreams as well. First and foremost, it would be wonderful if we could do this for a living, rather than a hobby. Additionally, like many if not most other western VN devs, we’d love to be able to find some success in Japan.

Ultimately, for me at least, I just want to continue making stuff with this particular group of people. We have really great chemistry and, while there have definitely been some stumbling blocks, I think we have the potential to make something truly great. I hope that someday, there will be people out there consider us their favorite developers, and who get excited when we announce a new project. I hope that the stories we tell can have an impact on someone the same way that the books I read and games I played help shape me as a person today.

Thank you very much to the folks at Studio Élan for their time and we look forward to the full VN of Heart of the Woods, which is being released this week!  Check out the Studio Élan website for details of the VN. From the Studio Élan Twitter feed:  Heart of the Woods is also going to be a participating Steam Trading Card game as well! So take a look and let us all know what you think in the comments. ^_^