Introduction Post

Hi everyone!

This is Josh, the founder of Studio Élan. We wanted to write up a quick introduction for anyone who hasn’t heard of us before. If you’re one of those people thanks for taking the time to check this out and read it!

There are 8 of us in Studio Élan currently, as well as a number of people that we’re working with on a project-to-project basis. Here’s the list of permanent members:

Josh (me!) - Game director, writer

Ally - Game director, writer, editor

Rachel - Writer

Jaime - Writer

Minute - Programmer

Adirosa - Designer

Sarah - Musician

Astartus - Musician

Then, as mentioned, we’re working with lots of other great people like Rosuuri, Namie, Loika, Anckp, Huixcia, and more.

Currently we have two games… that are announced.

Those are Heart of the Woods and The Waters Above. You’ve probably read about those on our main page here. Try the HotW demo, if you haven’t yet! We’re releasing a free prequel for TWA really soon. Like, within the next week or so.

In addition, we already know what our next two games after these will be, and they’re in the super early stages of pre-production right now. We’re still finalizing character designs, writing outlines, and more. But, even in these early stages, we know a feeeeew details about ‘em both. If you’re pledged to us at the highest level, you’ll be hearing about those really soon! Otherwise, look forward to more news probably close to the end of this year.

Just on Day 1, the support we’ve gotten from you guys helps us out a ton. As we mentioned in the milestones, our first objective is covering some of our development costs. That includes stuff like email suites, Adobe subscriptions, new sound packs for the musicians, and more. As we’re able to grow on Patreon, we’re looking forward to being able to add more content to the games themselves. For instance, we know that we’re going to need at least one more song for the soundtrack of TWA. Additionally, we could use some more expressive sprite poses for the girls in HotW. Stuff like that was previously not possible because we’ve been at the limit for what we can do from our own means, but we’re already well on the way to changing that. We’re also going to be making a giant list of everything that this Patreon funds directly; which assets we couldn’t have gotten without you.

We’re excited and motivated to keep working, and we’re already discussing the first piece of Patron-sponsored content that we wanna create. We’ll keep you posted on that! In addition, please look forward to The Waters Above: Prelude - a free prequel for TWA that we’re going to be releasing on the 27th of June. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out our trailer for it!

Thanks!