2024 Wrap-Up Post

With another year soon to be in the history books, we wanted to once again take the opportunity to look back on what we accomplished this year, while also looking ahead to next year and beyond. Like always, we've got a lot of stuff cooking right now! We fell a little short in some of our 2024 goals - mainly when it comes to actually releasing stuff. However, we're aiming to get back on that track next year.

For one thing, we attended more cons this year than any other year so far. We went to OffKai Expo, Otakon, Nan Desu Kan, and more. It was really great getting to meet a lot of people, including some of our long time fans. We won't be doing quite as many events in 2025, although we will be at OffKai again, plus a couple other cons. Hope to see you there!

More cons of course means more merch, and one of our big items for this year was the Tara plush that we created with Makeship. She's found her way to most people's homes by now, but if you missed out, we'll have some up on our store next year. We also released a bunch of new keychains, flags, and other items too.

Some of that merch came about from the Without a Voice Kickstarter, which let us release the Blooming Edition of that game alongside L3. Next year, we're aiming to release a console version of that game too.

It won't be our only console launch for 2025, either. Both Please Be Happy and Twofold are slated to come out on consoles in the first half of next year. PBH is pretty much done, and while Twofold is still being ported, the team working on it, Refint Games, seem confident in the progress. Twofold is only coming to Switch for now, though PBH will be on Switch, Playstation, and Xbox. Once we have a better idea of release dates, we'll share 'em!

In September, we hosted our first ever internal game jam, this time being the Dandelion set. A lot of our team worked really hard over the course of the monthlong jam, and the result was 4 lovely little titles: Witch You Want, On Wings Bringing Sleep, Yuri Paddle, and Upwards, Rain! Each of those games can be played for free on our itch.io, and some of them have even received updates since their original launches right after the jam ended. There's still more to come for some of these…!

Finally, we announced a couple new games as well: Rainbow Valley and A Tithe in Blood. Since we've got a lot of titles currently in the works, here's a quick update on where all of them stand:

-A Tithe in Blood

ATIB is coming along really well, and is maybe 80% of the way completed. Scripting for the game is mostly done, with just a couple spots still using placeholders and the last handful of art assets in progress. The bulk of the remaining work should be done in January/February, and we're aiming to have the game out in the first half of next year, ideally in time for OffKai Expo!

-National Park Girls: Love Our Parks Edition

The complete version of NPG is also basically finished, save for one or two final tweaks. We're looking at a mid to late January digital release of the game - we need to get a new trailer done, and that's about it. The physical version actually debuted at our most recent con, Holiday Matsuri, and will be on our webstore soon, even sooner than the Steam release!

-Summer at the Edge of the Universe

This bulky solarpunk game is coming along steadily. In the last month alone, the length of the soundtrack has nearly doubled, thanks to Sarah putting out an enormous number of amazing new songs. Meanwhile, art and writing progress are still plugging away. We are starting to think 2026 for this game instead of 2025, due to how much we have left to go, and how much other stuff we have going on too. Some people on the Summer team are working on other projects too, meaning they have to split their time. We don't want to end up competing against ourselves in terms of releasing things too close together, so we're probably gonna push this one back again. Sorry to everyone who's been waiting - we know we announced this game too early. But all the extra time just helps us make it bigger and better. Once you get to play, you'll understand.

-Our Home, My Keeper

At this stage, we're mostly waiting for the last art assets to be completed for OHMK before we can finish off the rest of the game. If you're on our demo tier of Patreon, there's a short little teaser available that you can play in order to check out the vibe of the game. Once we get those assets, it should hopefully be smooth sailing to the end of development. We can't really give an estimate of when that'll be, but we hope it's soon!

-Please Be Happy

A few months ago, we announced a crowdfunding campaign to help us raise the funds to translate Please Be Happy into Japanese. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, one of the parties who was going to be helping us with the campaign ran into some trouble, so our plans have been on hold while they figure things out. We don't know exactly when that will resume, but will update everyone when we can! Our plan was to hold simultaneous English and Japanese campaigns, to allow our existing audience to have a chance to pledge for the new goods we're offering and support the translation project. We're thinking of just launching the EN campaign sooner rather than later, ahead of the Japanese one. Any funds that are raised will be put towards the translation costs, same as if they had happened simultaneously. We're trying to decide when the best time would be to schedule that, so stay tuned.

-Lock & Key: A Magical Girl Mystery

Another game of ours that's been in dev for a long time, we're very excited to say this one is coming next year too. 4noki, developer of Who is The Red Queen and several other games, started assisting us last year with this game, helping out on the production side of things. With her help, the game has been making great progress the last few months, and we're in the home stretch now. We're also going to be holding a crowdfunding campaign for this game relatively soon - it'll be the first and next campaign that we run. It'll help us do preorders for physical copies and goods, as well as fund the last stages of development. We do have something today to share with our beta-access patrons and above, though: early access to the new and improved Lock and Key demo! This version has improved art and direction from the original version, more in line with what the final game will look like. If you pledge $15 or above to our Patreon, you can check that out right now! Access details are in this accompanying post.

-Rainbow Valley

Our other title that we announced at OffKai Expo this year, and one that we're making in collaboration with Izzzyzzz! Although we've been pretty quiet about it since then, progress has continued, and we're also hoping to release it next year! With this game, we've made the decision to make it less of a yuri game, and instead have the protagonist be more of an ambiguous, faceless nature. This was how the game was originally conceived, and though we tried moving away from that direction for a bit, the dev team decided it would make for a better story and game to go back to the original way, a decision which we support! In fact, that leads into one of the major things we want to talk about in this post.

Looking Ahead

For the past few years – really since Heart of the Woods came out in 2019 – we've been beholden to previous decisions that we made, starting projects before one was complete and such, and so we've basically had our future laid out for us ahead of time. For example, we first started work on Samayuni at the end of 2019, intending to develop it concurrently with Please Be Happy. That ended up not working, and so we did PBH first, before turning our attention to Summer. After leaving it mostly inactive for most of the time in between, we finally started actively working on Samayuni last year and all throughout this year, with one more year of active development to go.

What's different now is that once we get our current projects done – Summer, ATIB, etc. – we've got a clean slate. We'll be able to decide then what we feel like working on, instead of having to get to stuff we began years ago. That doesn't mean we don't have a couple currently backburnered projects that we intend to get back to, but for the most part, we're not making any serious commitments at the time. Not to say that we won't be working on something, just that we don't know what that something is yet. There is one thing that we know though: we want to start exploring additional genres in addition to yuri in the future.

To be clear, Studio Élan is and will remain as a yuri-exclusive dev team. However, there are several members of our team who are interested in working on other genres of games too, like otome or BL, and so we're thinking of forming a new brand/developer name that can run alongside Studio Élan, that will be our home for non-yuri titles. These will still be a minority compared to our yuri projects, which remain our focus. But we wanted to have a home and a label to explore other genres too.

Our current social media, Patreon, and stuff like that aren't going to change - we'll start new social media for the new brand when we're ready, which won't be anytime soon. Although we'll do a bit of cross promotion, especially right after we launch it, we intend to keep things pretty separate. So, what do these changes mean for you guys, our audience? Not much at the moment, really. When Rainbow Valley releases, we'll probably do it under the new name, but for now, we'll keep news and updates for that game where they currently are.

As is probably clear from all the status updates above, we've got a busy year ahead of us. We say that going into every year, but it feels especially true here on the cusp of 2025. Which, of course, is a year filled with uncertainty in a lot of ways. At the risk of sounding too cheesy, we ask that you'll not just continue supporting us, but that you'll support each other. We're very fortunate to have such a fun, vibrant community that's always there for us. We're going to need that more than ever. But we also hope that you'll look after and take care of yourselves, of each other, and the people around you. Be safe, be well, and please, be happy.

To end things off, as is tradition, we'd like to share some quick messages from members of our team. Thanks for everything this year. We'll see you in the next one.

What? The year's over already!?!?!? 2024 felt like a blur that somehow also took forever to pass. It came with some of the worst and some of the best moments of the decade so far, and it looks like 2025 is going to be a wild ride of its own. Thank you for sticking with us through it all, and I hope you enjoy the wonderful stories we have to share with you in the year to come. L'chaim! -Rachel

i cannot believe its 2025 Already?!? happy new yuri!!!!! many exciting things are brewing behind the curtain at studio elan, and we look forward to sharing them with you! -mado

Happy 2025, everyone! It's been a busy year for all of us here at Studio Élan. For me, that meant a ton of music for Summer, Lock and Key, and Upwards Rain! I'm so excited to show more of what we've been working on soon. Thanks for always supporting us! - Sarah

Happy new year! Although not everything in 2024 went exactly as planned, there's a ton of stuff I'm excited for coming up soon. Thanks for joining us on this ride so far. Can't wait to see where it takes us next! - Josh

It's 2025. The cold march of time continued in 2024, only to briefly stop and nest in a field of dandelions. Soon it will be summer. - Syon

Farewell, 2024. It's been one with many ups and many downs, and it's maybe a little difficult to stay optimistic in these times, but it's one that I'm glad to have spent creating stories that I love. Thank you all for your support and making this something I can do, and I hope to be able to greet everyone next year in the form of a finished visual novel (or two, or more...) to play! - adirosa

2024 was a whirlwind of a year. We had great strides towards all of our projects, and while there were some roadbumps along the way, it's been fantastic seeing them shape up. It was also so much fun being a part of our internal game jam, the Garden Variety, as spearheaded by caps and theo. A lot of us are game devs as a hobby on the side because we really love visual novels, and this was a refreshing way of tackling VN dev. Everyone was able to make incredible little games in such a short amount of time with such a big variety—that's my favorite part of game jams! My favorite part of the year was by far going to Offkai Expo (my first convention away from home and first time traveling alone!), where I got to not only finally meet some of our other members but also meet some of you! It was amazing talking to people who actually knew our games—it's such a weird feeling for people to say "Yeah, I've played that" to you in person. And not only that but our panel at Offkai—I remember turning to Syon and saying "they're all in the wrong room, right?" when our room became near full. Thank you so much to everyone who came out to California and has supported us since then! I hope Offkai next year will be just as great. - Arimia