Announcing the first Élan Festival, an event celebrating LGBT+ visual novels! 🎉
For the past few months we've been hard at work on our games, but we've also been planning something new - an upcoming event featuring our games and some other LGBT-themed games from our friends.
This event will be a livestream held on
2022-04-30 01:14:40 +0000 UTC
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Meowdy everyone! I hope you are all well! While I haven't had wallpapers to post, I've been working hard on the CGs for Please Be Happy - and in fact, I'm nearly done! Just three left.
I wanted to show off one of the earlier CGs I had done, in which Aspen and Miho are helping out at the library! Miho's doing her best!!!
I usually work at slightly bigger than 4k resolution, so there's roo...
2022-04-17 05:22:43 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone,
We're posting a day late because we didn't want people to think a post yesterday was an April Fool's, totally not because we forgot. Anyway.
March was another good month of progress for us overall. Sickness and some personal circumstances did set things back a bit, but for the most part it went well.
On PBH, adi finished up 4 more CG's plus other stuff, while I wrote a bunch of new scenes. We're beginning the editing process for the earlier chapters while still ...
2022-04-02 22:04:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone, it's adi! I'm excited to tell everyone that the Highway Blossoms OST Vinyl have been pressed and shipping has begun! It's really been such a wonderful experience working to make these, and I'm truly honored to have done the cover art for it.
The vinyl is still available on the VOV website, the EU distributor 2022-03-15 23:50:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello and meowdy everyone, it's adi! We've been hard at work on all of our games, and I wanted to preview a little fun something for all of you.
Sarah's been doing an incredible job with the LAK original soundtrack! I was given the okay to preview a little snippet - so here's the first thirty seconds of it!
As a little bonus... I've finished something super exciting as well. I can't say much, but I did make these transformation videos as a part of it too.
2022-03-13 02:12:25 +0000 UTC
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Meowdy everyone! It's adi here! Thank you for your patience everyone!!
It's a little overdue, but I've finished the January wallpaper - and therefore, the 12th wallpaper!!! Even though it took a bit longer than I hoped, I wanted to do something special for this one. I've never attempted a picture with 12 characters in it before..! I fit all the major characters from PBH into it.
I also made it so it would work vertically and horizontally, so I rendered out a lot of the characters ...
2022-03-05 09:04:26 +0000 UTC View PostHey all,
We hope everyone is doing well and staying safe. We've been buckled down working on stuff like always, and before we knew it, February was over. Here's what's been going on.
-More PBH progress! The CG's for Chapters 2 and 3 are now complete, with adi somehow doing a whopping 11 CG's this past month, on top of wallpapers and other stuff too. It was a really productive month for me in terms of writing, and some of the scenes I finished up this month are among my favorite th...
2022-03-01 20:12:18 +0000 UTC View PostToday, February 15th, we're celebrating the 3rd anniversary of Heart of the Woods' original PC release! Although it was a written a couple months ago, today we're posting an untitled short story that Rachel wrote, focusing on the friendship between Abby and Morgan. Enjoy!
When Tara and Maddie forged our birth certificates, we all decided that Abigail would be my cousin. It was important to both of us that we be related, but we couldn’t exactly tell the government t...
2022-02-15 17:23:36 +0000 UTC View PostHi all,
Just to start things off, if you haven't already heard, the Playstation and Xbox versions of Heart of the Woods will be coming out in just a couple weeks, on February 14th! These are the final ports of the game that we've been working on, so we can't wait to have them all wrapped up and completed.
Aside from that, January was a pretty productive month for us, with a lot of progress being made on the art and script for Please Be Happy. I'm really satisfied with some of the ...
2022-02-02 20:02:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Meowdy everyone, it has been... a hot (or cold, for the northern hemisphere) minute (or uh, months)!!!
I hope everyone has had a good holidays! I've started to experience a bit of hand pain from December, so I've been taking it a little slow but I've been feeling a lot better so hopefully I will catch up soon! Sorry and thank you everyone for your patience.
This month is actually one I've wanted to do since last October; a snowy swan lake themed wallpaper featuring our favourite s...
2022-01-31 06:33:43 +0000 UTC View PostIt's time to enjoy First Snow for the second (or third, or more if you've already replayed it) time.
One of the first titles we've published under our Bellhouse wing, First Snow by Salty Salty Studios, has just received a free partial-voice acting update! This has been in the works for a while, and we're all very excited for you guys to finally be able to experience it. Like our other games, ca...
2022-01-21 23:11:55 +0000 UTC View PostHello, and happy new year! We hope everyone had a pleasant holiday season and a safe start to 2022. If you missed it, we posted a couple messages from some of our members in a post for the occasion. We chose to forego doing a longer, more in-depth post this year, but we didn't want to go totally silent. If you read the post, you probably saw that there's an important announcement in there: one of our...
2022-01-02 23:05:54 +0000 UTC View PostHi all, and welcome to December.
It's been unusually dry here in Colorado, so I'm crossing my fingers for some snow soon. I don't ski or snowboard, but the aesthetic is nice at least. The snowy mountains and forests that I grew up around were a big influence on Heart of the Woods, and even Highway Blossoms at times. On the plus side, it's nice to go outside without it being below freezing. I'm sure the HotW characters could relate there, too.
Speaking of Heart of the Woods, we're ...
2021-12-03 02:39:55 +0000 UTC View PostHello hello everyone, hope you've had a lovely week so far! We've got several merch & sale updates, so I (Arimia) will go over them quickly.
Back by popular demand, we've reprinted ridere! This is an art book featuring illustrations by our very own adirosa, including her birthday artworks for our characters.
Just like before, this is a very limited run- there's a little under 2021-11-26 22:48:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone,
As promised, here's the early access for the Highway Blossoms Dusk Record! To pre-order your copy, please go to the Very Ok Vinyl website and click the "login using password" button at the very top right. Enter the password "ELANPATREON" to get access, and then go to the "Very Ok Vinyl" option under the Vinyl dropdown menu to find the record! There are 3 of the test press bundles available right now, with ...
2021-11-05 18:16:52 +0000 UTC View PostIn yesterday's update, I mentioned something exciting happening today. I'm super thrilled to announce that we'll be releasing selected tracks from the Highway Blossoms soundtrack on vinyl!
Specifically, this release will include all the tracks by Georgie Art Baker, also known as Smoke Thief. Their songs have been newly mastered for vinyl, with a brand new cover illustration by adi. The record a...
2021-11-05 00:23:06 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone!
We hope you had a good Halloween. I always look forward to the day after it, when Halloween candy goes on clearance sale to make way for Christmas stuff at the grocery store. It's the most wonderful time of the year. In keeping with the spirit of things, we've got a few treats to share today.
-First up, the art progress for PBH has been incredible this month. The backgrounds are all finished, thanks to adi's hard work. There are a ton of wonderful places for Miho to h...
2021-11-04 00:31:47 +0000 UTC View Post
MEOWDY EVERYONE!!!
Tis the season... of Halloween! We're back with a BRAND! NEW! EPISODE! of I Told You So!, and also voice acting for the two that were added last time! These are all set post-Heart of the Woods, so make sure you play that one first!
We have amazing voice acting from Stephanie Arata, Allie Goodell, Kira Buckland and Heidi Tabing as they reprise their roles as Tara, Maddie, Morgan and Abby respectively. As usual, the folk...
2021-11-01 00:02:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Meowdy everyone and Happy Halloween, I come with the most self indulgent wallpaper ever!!!!!
"But adi," you may ask. "It's not November yet?"
Aha! That is where I use the power of TIMEZONES... because while you are Happy Halloweening, it'll still also technically be November 1st here in NZ!!! I pulled this wallpaper forward because I really wanted to get into that spooky spirit. This does mean that November proper won't have a wallpaper - I'll have one ready for December. The trut...
2021-10-31 22:00:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi patrons! I decided to draw this month's wallpaper closer to the start of the month instead of near the end of the month, which is a change up for me!!! I wanted to get my Patreon posts ready earlier and then get stuck right into doing a bunch of in-game art for PBH.
As you may have noticed! It is a companion piece to last month's wallpaper! I've had the image in my head for a Juliet hand-kis...
2021-10-12 20:30:24 +0000 UTC View PostHi y'all,
Unlike last time, we do have a good amount of news to recap from the past couple weeks! On that note though, real quick, we're probably going to move back to just doing once-a-month updates unless we actually have something worthwhile to report for the mid-month ones. Lately a lot of those updates have just been "business as usual," so when that's the case, we're just gonna skip it. We'll still be doing one at the start of every month, though! Anyway, with that out of the way...
2021-10-01 21:10:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Meowdy patrons! It's adi here!
I wanted to talk about how the PBH script evolves from outline to final with one of the earlier scenes in the demo - specifically the very first one!
Outline:
Miho is hiding on an airship as it arrives. A voice announces that they’ve arrived, which means it’s time for her to figure out how to sneak out. She pulls on her hood, and blends in with the crowd effortlessly. It’s been a little while since her last airsh... 2021-09-30 22:54:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone, it's Adi again! Today I wanted to talk about how you can do some little steps to really enhance the feeling of your itch.io page. It's nothing advanced (since honestly, I don't know how to do something more advanced either) so it should be easy to follow along!
Because this is design-related, it's all subjective - I'll be talking about approaches and things I do, but ultimately it is up to you what you think is the best way to present your project, and I just want to help p...
2021-09-21 07:07:03 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone,
Pretty brief update this time, because a lot of it's more of the same. So, to get right to it:
-Work on the Please Be Happy script is continuing. I've gotten past one of the biggest hurdles in it storywise (or at least will be coming back to it later) so there's a much more consistent writing groove now. Adi's finished another background for the game, along with another beautiful wallpaper that was posted earlier today. Be sure to check that out! We've also had some p...
2021-09-18 05:54:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello lovely patrons! I hope you're having a lovely month. Sorry about the delay on the technical posts from last month - I will work hard to catch up soon, but this image wouldn't leave my mind so I wanted to finish this wallpaper for everyone as soon as possible!
You can find the timelapse here! It's a bit of a different fo...
2021-09-17 19:58:19 +0000 UTC View Post
My mind is going a mile a minute. Why did I leave Alessia unattended for so long? Why didn’t I take her with me? How did the Rail Office even find us? I went out of my way to find an out-of-the-way inn they’d just skip over... But every second I spend musing over my slip-up is one I could--and very much should--be spending getting her back. I step forward, reach for my sword...
“No, don’t.” It’s Sabrina, gently gripping my shoulder. “This isn’t a fight you’ll ...
2021-09-09 17:17:24 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone,
Hard to believe August has already come to an end. As with the mid-month update, this hasn't been our busiest month, but there's still a few things to talk about.
For Please Be Happy, adi's been continuing to plug away at the backgrounds, and completed 7 (!!!!!) this month alone. In case you missed it, she often streams on our Youtube channel when working on them - check out the Patreon or PBH channels on our Discord server for links. There are still a few more to be ...
2021-09-01 02:58:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello to our lovely patrons! I've been hard at work for this wallpaper since the start of the month, and I'm happy to have it ready for you before it became the next month!
This month's theme was an outfit swap. I asked on the patron-only channel on Discord on how we should do the swap, and this was the more popular response! Don't they all have such a different feeling with the different clothing?
It really was so much fun. This was based on a suggestion from the comments of our ...
2021-08-21 09:45:46 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone,
These past few weeks have been filled with a lot of us being sick or on vacation, so there's not quite as much to report as usual. Still, that doesn't mean we've been totally without any progress!
If you've been hanging out in our Patreon channel on Discord, you might have seen adi livestreaming some work on backgrounds for Please Be Happy. She's been breezing through them, so here's one of the recently finished ones. This is the pier that Miho visits, and can be a re...
2021-08-17 22:04:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Ah, how I’ve missed having a roof over my head and a bed under me. The inn we’ve found isn’t that luxurious, or even above-average, but I’ll gladly take it over the bedroll at this point. The mattress, the pillows, the--
“...Honorine, what are you doing?”
Alessia’s voice snaps me out of my reverie, and it just hits me that I’ve been rolling around on the bed. “O-Oh, sorry. It’s just... I was getting tired of sleeping on a bedroll, and...”
“That is und...
2021-08-10 00:12:34 +0000 UTC View Post