Announcing Studio Élan Garden Variety: Dandelion Set!

Today we announced the Studio Élan Garden Variety: Dandelion Set, an internal game jam where we'll be working on four titles through the month of September. If you've never heard of a game jam before, it's where people work together to make games in a limited amount of time, sometimes with a theme. For us, we're making yuri-themed games in 3 weeks during September!

These games will be free to play once they come out, though if you're a paying Patreon member, you will get access to weekly, exclusive updates to progress on the games!

The four games being included in the Dandelion Set include:

On Wings Bringing Sleep

A dark lesbian fairytale, On Wings Bringing Sleep is the story of Morgaine, an outcast among the fae as her people's power is ever-dwindled by the advance of human technology. When she meets a mysterious and enthralling human girl within the forest one day, Morgaine grows certain that this girl is in need of her magical protection. But Ilse has secrets of her own, and the growing feelings between them may cost more than either girl might ever pay…

The Team

Lexiiii (Studio Nekomata Artist & Administration): Director, Editor, UI, Programming

Dakuma (Studio Nekomata Artist & Marketing): Character Design, Art, Programming

RoseCrowned (Studio Nekomata Assistant): Story Concept, Writer

Theo (Twofold): Programming Assistance

Faerieko (Studio Nekomata Artist & Events): Fae Consultant

Upwards, Rain! The Post Office of Farewells

On the outskirts of a small village stands a massive tree whose canopy disappears far above the clouds. While grandiose on the outside, its interior houses the humble Mortem Post, which receives and delivers letters from those who have passed on. Deciding to break protocol to lend a helping wing, Rain, a flighty little courier takes a skittish girl by the name of Mila on an adventure through the inner workings of the post office. Together, they search for a letter containing the last words of someone who seemingly never existed.

The Team

caps (Twofold) - scenario, writing, UI

theo (Twofold, Summer at the Edge of the Universe, Heart of the Woods & more!) - character design, art, gameplay design

papaya (Twofold, A Tithe in Blood) - scene direction

Sarah Mancuso (Heart of the Woods, Please Be Happy, Summer at the Edge of the Universe) - composer

Witch You Want

With an oddly sparkly magical paper, you look over the job listing for a local witch needing an assistant with making potions before the town festival that weekend. Something so short notice would surely be hard for her to find workers, and you just happen to be in between jobs—so you sign up, unsure exactly what to expect......

A pompous and questionably excellent witch runs a local apothecary in town but finds that if she wants to make enough potions before the festival that weekend to sell (and keep her ongoing potion shop afloat) she'll need some assistance. After a dubious help wanted ad, she gains you as an assistant.

The Team

Arimia (marketing for everything) - director, programmer

Natasha Luna (Please Be Happy editor) - writer

Dreamaruu / Dani (Rainbow Valley character designer) - artist

Yuri Paddle: An Anime Convention Murder Mystery

In an otherwise typical anime convention, a famous cosplayer is found dead. In order to avoid spiking insurance rates, a convention staff member named Stella works to uncover the mystery behind this unusual death, entangling herself in scandals and plots at every turn.

The Team

Syon (Highway Blossoms, National Park Girls) - scenario, writing

Faerieko (Studio Nekomata, Our Home My Keeper) - character design, art

Lopson - programming

Ratsukare (Offkai Co-founder, Bellflower) - reference, consulting, additional help

The Dandelion set was originally revealed on our bellflower Lirie's twitch channel, and on top of hosting the event she also asked a question of the development teams prior to the event, which you can read below!

Lirie “How did you come up with the initial idea for your game? Did much change while you were brainstorming?”

• On Wings Bringing Sleep: We knew from the beginning that we wanted to create a darker take on a yuri story, and a dark fantasy, Brothers Grimm-esque fairytale was the obvious route to take! Most of the basic story outline has stayed the same throughout, but numerous characters and plot beats have been cut or combined in order to make it a manageable project for a short timeline.

• Upwards, Rain!: (caps answering) The first thought was simply "we should do something with a more fantasy kind of feeling." We kept that in the back of our minds for a while, waiting for something to click. After watching a video with an old-timey looking post office, I thought "oh, this looks really comfy aesthetically, this would be a good setting." From there, most of the scenario planning came very quickly. "What kind of fantasy spin makes sense for a post office?" "How about it can receive and deliver letters from the deceased?" Perfect. "What kind of story lends itself to that?" "A post office worker helping a visitor find a missing letter from a loved one." Easy. From there, theo suggested making the couriers owls and aging down the two leads for a first love/childhood crush kind of vibe as well as making the adventure feel bigger from their point of view. Those two things fully fleshed out the rest of the story almost overnight. It felt like a very natural A-to-B kind of brainstorming session, where everything just fell into place without any friction.

• Witch You Want: (Arimia answering) I love witches and anything frilly & fancy with magic, so I'm always creating different witch characters to throw into fun outfits. But, I also grew up playing a lot of point-and-click style management games, so that continues to inspire me to this day. The first thought I had for this game was "what if there was a short romance game with a witch who really needs your help via a small minigame?" and we expanded the idea from there, refining what kind of "minigame" you'd be tasked with to help her and such. We actually went through several ideas for minigames, such as a game where you help her gather ingredients in a field, or help her sort out the potions, or help her actually sell potions to customers. Eventually, we decided on making the potions themselves, and further refined that idea and how it'd work.

• Yuri Paddle: (Syon answering) I've had the idea in my head of a murder mystery at an anime convention for a long time. Since right after Highway Blossoms released, probably. Everything else was very loose and liquid, but when the opportunity to do the game jam came up, things started to solidify. The idea was always for a cosplayer to get whacked, but it was actually caps who had the idea for it to be a Melanie cosplayer. The idea of a player opening the game for the first time and seeing our beloved mascot dead filled me with good-spirited, very normal, very hinged joy. 

That's all we have to share with you today! Special thanks again to all of our Bellflowers for their collaboration, we encourage all of you to keep an eye out on them in the following weeks, as they'll also be providing updates on the game jam as weeks go on! And if you want to stay on top of it yourself, please consider subscribing to a paid tier!