In 2016, the Yuri Visual Novel Highway Blossoms impressed me with some quirky story-telling and decent character development. Creator Josh Kaplan followed that VN up with the announcement that he and a team of creators were opening Studio Élan, a Yuri Visual Novel studio. It’s just under a year later and Studio Élan has released the demo to their first Yuri Visual Novel, Heart of the Woods, available  on Steam and itch.io.

I will begin this review with my usual disclaimer about me and Visual Novels – I am not the audience for these. No matter how many I “read” (the quotes here express exactly how I feel about them) I will continuously be vexed by the mechanism of reading one line at a time while an-all-but-static powerpoint slide image sits there doing almost nothing. And, I believe that my criticism of this mechanism is not just get off my lawn-ist rhetoric, but that it speaks to the very essence of the weakness of VNs. But I will get there. 

The story of Heart of the Woods is described on the website this way, “Traveling to a remote village in the woods, Maddie and Tara have low expectations. The two run a popular online show focusing on the supernatural, but thus far it’s been nothing but smoke and mirrors. When they receive an invitation to the antiquated village of Eysenfeld, they’re expecting more of the same. But it soon becomes apparent that the locals are hiding a secret. Maddie sees unnatural beasts in the forest that she’s sure are products of her imagination. Lights in the woods flicker and sparkle but disappear if she gets too close.

In time she learns that the lights come from a girl named Abigail. Well, the ghost of a girl. She was sacrificed hundreds of years ago by the villagers to appease the god of the forest. Maddie devotes her time in Eysenfeld to getting to know Abigail, and eventually promises to break the curse that binds her to the woods.”

This seems accurate and appealing, if you like ghost stories, curses, etc. And, given the setup of Tara and Maddie running a supernatural online show, it feels right for the characters to become involved with this. Very much unlike the confusing setup of Starlight Vega. 

First, let me address the demo itself. AS A DEMO, I think the Heart of the Woods demo was brilliant. It gives me a nice window to the story, the characters, the setting, the art and writing. I feel confident that I understand what the full VN will be like. I also enjoyed the meta-commentary of chibi-Tara and chibi-Maddie, pointing out where we timeskip through the story, for technical or demonstrational reasons. These were my favorite part of the demo, in fact.  I’m never above a little meta-commentary. ^_^

The art is lovely. The caveat for this (and for all VNs) is that “lovely art” is what, a handful of pictures? (This drives me crazy, when people who tell me that the art for Flowers is beautiful, I’m like, “Well, sure but it’s like 6 pictures. So what?” Yay, they did a couple of really pretty landscapes. Is that worth money to you? Then rock on. ) Rant aside, the art here is thoughtfully created and thoughtfully presented. There even is a little movement to imply motion. And there are a few scenes where sprites are not just facing us in a line. That was refreshing, although the range of motion of sprites still leaves me befuddled. I will not, cannot and do not understand why I am told “She grabbed my arm” and the sprites stand there. Why?!? Draw them grabbed. You can do it, you’re artists. 

Now we get to the meat of why I rarely really like VNs and the source of my contention that reading them like picture books is a flawed mechanism. Reading one line at a time means writers are writing for people who read one line at a time. Like a picture book, this removes the space and function of writing for readers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but I am a reader of words. The pictures, IMHO, are meant illustrate a scene, not to be the focus. The upshot is characters are rendered down to – again, in my extremely biased opinion – simple, unsubtle concepts, words and scenes.  

All this has been stated for the purpose of being extremely clear why I, personally, do not much like VNs. It is not a judgment of you liking them, nor a condemnation of this specific VN. And, if you do like VNs I am fairly certain you will very much like Heart of the Woods, which is a solid ghost story wrapped around a romance with an outcome that I cannot even vaguely predict, based on the demo. All of which seems very promising.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 7 in demo, but TBD
Character – 6 I had a bit of trouble liking Tara or Maddie upon meeting them
Service – N/A in the Demo. There is an adult patch that you can download. I think this is an excellent solution to adding adult content in an otherwise romantic story
Yuri – 9
Music – 7 Original, and there’s a soundtrack. I can’t stand repeated bgm riffs, but it wasn’t bad

Overall – 7 with potential for more if you like VNs

I’m probably not going to read the full VN when it comes out later this year, but if you do and would like to tell us all about it, please let me know! I’d love a guest review. And I certainly hope you will try this demo out and decide for yourself!