This article is a summary of all the announcements Studio Élan made during their Élan Festival event.
The Élan Festival (Élan Fest) is an YouTube event, held by Studio Élan themselves. It was the second event that was held in such a way, the first one being in March 2022. This year’s Elan Fest was streamed on their YouTube Channel during October 1st 4pm PT. The event itself could be compared to a Nintendo Direct in terms of presentation.
Studio Élan’s Vtuber mascot Mélanie (VA: @madelinedorroh) had the role of the moderator. Discussion about the event’s contents was held during and after the event on the Studio Élan Discord server. You can join it here!
Announcements
The event started with Please be Happy which was released almost a year ago. Studio Élan announced that the game had sold over 5000 copies. They’re also going to release a merchandise bundle featuring a new standee, a commemorative booklet, as well as a Miho postcard signed by Dottovu! They also have an Adirosa Art collection.
Visit their store! (already sold out)
About Please be Happy, Studio Élan currently faces problems to find a publisher for the console port. I am surprised nobody picked it up so far. Their earlier games had been ported to console by Limited Run Games or Ratalaika Games depending on the system.
Next up is a small update regarding Our Home, My Keeper A project co-produced by ebi-hime (Blackberry Honey, Dreamy Planet, co.). They wanted to confirm that development on this game is still ongoing, but presented not much more than a sprite for it.
Finally some Lock & Key: A Magical Girl Mystery information, and its another delay ._.
The game is delayed until next year, and they announced another Kickstarter campaign to complete the game. If we remember right, they did the same with Please be Happy. Thankfully, not everything’s a bad news regarding this game. They promised that they would overhaul the character artwork and GUI. Both were facing a little criticism when the demo had been released a while ago.
Next up is Love In a Bottle. Élan shared information regarding its OST. The BGM tracks are composed by Jaxchesse and the character themes are done by Hazel. After that announcement, they said the release date. The plan is to release the game on Valentine’s Day, cute.
Now its Twofold time! Studio Élan announced that this will be their largest title on their Bellhouse brand – the publishing arm of the studio. They promise a volume of 150,000 words and full voice acting. A new trailer to commemorate Élan Festival has also been released.
But that wasn’t all aboutTwofold:
The game will actually see release this month! They also announced a physical version that includes First Snow.
(I remember writing about First Snow in the past. It was a cute little Yuri Visual Novel.)
Beyond this, they were still not finished with Twofold. They also announced a Demo you can try out RIGHT NOW on Steam!
Summer at the Edge of the Universe
And there’s something really exciting! An entirely new project, the name is Summer at the Edge of the Universe. They describe it as an intergalactic road trip, which kind of sounds like Highway Blossoms, but now in SPACE. Interesting looking game with beautiful looking artwork.
Merch
There’s some new products in the Élan store. Here’s a list of them:
- Efest keychains & tickets
- Twofold physical pre-orders
- Please Be Happy anniversary pack pre-orders & hic et nunc. artbook reprint
- Who is the Red Queen couple keychains
Patreon
Now there followed a few Patreon updates. We will leave their twitter post if youre interested in following and or backing it.
There’s also an update on their tiers, not outlined in the video but on their Discord:
We now have 2 new tiers- Demo Access at $15/month and Seasonal Merch Club at $25/month. Going forward, we’ll be releasing more demos and betas for Patrons who pledge $15+/month, not including the Summer demo we just released. The Seasonal Merch Club is a new thing we’re trying where every month Patrons get a sticker or postcard of one of our monthly illustrations in the mail, even if you’re international. Every 3 months you’ve pledged you also get a seasonal-themed bonus! More info on new tiers: https://www.patreon.com/vnstudioelan
And here the game announcements ended. But there were some more tiny announcements relevant to specific audiences. Let me summarise:
- Studio Elan will be attending Anime Los Angeles fair next year. They hope to attend more conventions in the future.
- A few previews of their 2024 stuff. The first volume of the Highway Blossoms novel adaptation is going to be released. It was part of the Highway Blossoms Kickstarter campaign. A Complete Physical Edition of their recently finished National Park Girls Series is also rolling in.
- The Vinyl releases of the Please be Happy and Highway Blossoms (The Highway Blossoms one still wasnt released?) Soundtracks are also coming.
Closing Thoughts
And that was everything! To summarise, the Élan Fest was a solid event, but not an event that deserved that much advertisement. Thanks for reading my report and I hope I’ll be assigned something like this again in the near future.
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In addition, you can also support us on Patreon or by buying us a Ko-fi.
If you enjoy our work, please follow us on Twitter for more visual novel news and join the community in our forums and discord server: we’re pretty active there!
In addition, you can also support us on Patreon or by buying us a Ko-fi.
