Разработчик: Studio Élan
Описание
Heart of the Woods is a fantasy yuri visual novel about paranormal investigation, ancient mysteries, and a love between two girls that transcends life and death.
Maddie Raines has had enough. After years of serving as manager, editor, and general business-handler for her best friend Tara's popular paranormal vlog channel, she's finally ready to move forward with her own life. But when she agrees to take one last trip with Tara to the mysterious village of Eysenfeld, she's suddenly swept up in a dangerous supernatural crisis that will change the course of both of their lives forever. A strange young woman named Morgan has promised them undeniable proof of real paranormal phenomena, and what she has to offer eclipses anything they’d ever seen before.
However, out of all the strange occurrences the three of them bear witness to, one in particular captivates Maddie in a way she’s never been before: the ghost of a young woman. This woman is Abigail, the victim of a centuries-old injustice now bound eternally to the forest surrounding Eysenfeld. Drawn to Maddie in a way she can’t explain, Abigail reveals herself to another person for the first time in more than 200 years.
While Tara and Morgan investigate the mysteries surrounding the village itself, Maddie begins to form a bond with Abigail that grows to be more intense than any bond she’s felt before. As she learns the truth about Abigail’s death and imprisonment, she realizes that it falls to her and her friends to break the curse that has ruled over Eysenfeld for centuries. But more importantly than that, it falls to her to finally free the woman she loves.
A part-time manager, part time video editor, and full-time babysitter, Maddie has the thankless job of handling the absolute whirlwind that is her best friend.
She’s professional, meticulous and intellectual; the first person to turn to when a problem needs solving. But when their investigation entangles her in an ancient curse, she's forced to confront phenomena beyond her comprehension, and more importantly, her own self doubt.
For the last two centuries, the ghost of a young woman has haunted the forests of Eysenfeld. That ghost is Abigail, a kind and playful soul forcibly bound to the forest as part of an ancient curse.
Two hundred years of wishing for a life cruelly denied to her have led to a feeling of crushing loneliness and one overwhelming desire: to finally have someone to talk to.
One of the world’s most popular paranormal vloggers (according to her), Tara is unfailingly charismatic and bursting with limitless energy. She’s brash, intrepid, and always seeking something new. That often makes her a magnet for trouble: whether it’s from relentless flirting, minor criminal activities or just plain pig-headedness, things around Tara have a tendency to end in chaos.
A loyal Taranormal viewer and the daughter of Eysenfeld’s mayor, Morgan is… different. When not running her small and mostly empty antique shop, she’s known to disappear into the woods for days at a time. That, combined with her resistance to traditional social standards, has caused her to develop a bit of a notorious reputation in the village.
However, this resistance is not just an act of rebellion: Morgan knows that there’s something sinister deep within Eysenfeld, and she’s not going to stop until she tears it out at the roots.
- Incredible character and CG art from Rosuuri
- Full English voice acting
- Approximately 130,000 words with multiple endings
- Fully original backgrounds and soundtrack
- Ending theme from In Love With A Ghost
- Multiple accessibility options
- Fully translated to Traditional Chinese (繁體中文), Simplified Chinese (简体中文), German (Deutsch), and Spanish (Español)
- Steam trading cards
- Extra features including a music room, CG viewer, and guest art gallery
- At least one really, really gay ghost
Maddie Raines - Allie Goodell
Abigail - Heidi Tabing
Tara Bryck - Stephanie "Teffi" Arata
Morgan Fischer - Kira Buckland
Evelyn Fischer - Tara Langella
Fairy Queen - Emaline Tuck
Fairies - Anairis Quinones, Lisa Reimold, Tina Kim
Поддерживаемые языки: english, simplified chinese, german, traditional chinese, spanish - spain
Системные требования
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7 or higher
- Processor: Any 64-bit Intel, AMD, or ARM / Apple Silicon CPU (※ x86_64 translation is required on ARM / Apple Silicon.)
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: Any GPU that supports at least OpenGL 2.0, OpenGL ES 2.0, or DirectX 9.0
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 2 GB available space
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
Mac
- OS: macOS / OS X 10.10 Yosemite or higher
- Processor: Any 64-bit Intel, AMD, or ARM / Apple Silicon CPU
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: Any GPU that supports at least Metal, OpenGL 2.0, or OpenGL ES 2.0
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Linux
- OS: Any reasonably modern Linux distribution (※ Roughly equivalent to Ubuntu 16.04 or above.)
- Processor: Any 64-bit Intel, AMD, or ARM / Apple Silicon CPU (※ Earning Steam achievements / trophies on ARM Linux requires x86_64 translation.)
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: Any GPU that supports at least OpenGL 2.0 or OpenGL ES 2.0
- Storage: 2 GB available space
- Additional Notes: ※ Tested on Ubuntu 22.10 (x86_64) and Asahi Linux (arm64e, Apple Silicon).
Отзывы пользователей
Very good story had me hooked recommend for any visual novel enjoyers =D
I love girls
This is a weird game. The first 2 chapters and a bit of the 3rd are really good, but in a totally different way from most of the rest of the game. That part feels less like it's about romance and more about a mystery, and the atmosphere and writing really make it feel like a veritable horror story!
But then, the romance begins. It's not bad, but it's such a change in tone, it's difficult to go from horror to romance... they're on, like, the opposite ends of the spectrum... and it's mostly romance until the end (even more so if you get the 18+patch).
There are also parts where the story is too, I dunno, annoying? Like, imagine a bunch of girls being chased by a killer, and the killer trips and stabs himself with his own knife. The girls are happy to no longer be in danger and go back to their house to celebrate... WITHOUT CHECKING IF THE KILLER IS ACTUALLY DEAD! A similar moment happens here, and it's really difficult to ignore.
Having said that, it's still worth playing, even if maybe you should wait for a sale if you're not 100% sure about it, because the voice acting is solid, the art is beautiful and I'm sure you'll absolutely love at least one of the characters!
Overall a good experience. Heart in the Woods serves its purpose as an adventure novel first with romance coming secondary to the plot. The story is fairly simple but the characters and voice acting are likable and engaging enough. The beta couple seemed to have more believable relationship development as opposed to the main couple -- Abigail and Maddie's escalation felt rushed in a couple spots, and it could have used a few more encounters or CG's. The writing does give a robust, albeit predictable narrative of good conquering evil, and the player is always rewarded for choosing the compassionate / optimistic dialogue choices (There's only three). Given this game is an homage to the fairy tale genre, the audience is pretty much getting what's being advertised on the tin. All four of the POV characters are gay, and they're well-written and believable throughout. One of the protagonists is revealed to be a transgender woman, which is also handled tastefully. Still, totally accessible to any audience that might enjoy the fairy tale genre, would recommend to anyone that's interested.
I was so close to giving up on this game.
I'm glad I didn't
I really did enjoy the story and it was a satisfying game to finish. The characters were lovable and relatable. One of this game's strong-points is its plot. The places it takes you as the reader/player are sure to be thought-provoking. The art style has some breathtaking high points.
The ending theme is GOATED. Its actually how I found the game in the first place.
A couple years back, the ending theme was shuffled into one of my spotify playlists; I was instantly in love.
I wish list the game and eventually buy it on sale for the sole reason of beating it and hearing the song in its natural habitat. (and boy was I glad I did)
However, in fairness, there were some drawbacks to the game.
Firstly, the voice acting was grating at times. This was more to do with the technique in how the actors were recorded rather than the actors themselves. Secondly, the ending(s) [Especially the bad endings] were barely fleshed out. Playing it live it appeared to me that they just ran out of ideas and left loose ends untied. (The True Ending was leaps and bounds better and well-thought out, by contrast)
All that being said, I was left with a lasting emotional attachment to these characters. I do recommend this game
Very cute and engaging story, with beautiful visuals. And kudos for having a trans character (voiced by a trans voice actress!)
blew my expectations out of the water. loved the romance and story. what an absolute yuri cinema.
If I knew one the main characters was a trans wouldn't of bought the game :\ Please put a mention / warning in the description!
I'll still give it a good rating though, haven't finished but I'm liking the story so far and I like the characters.
Great story, nice atmosphere, very cute lesbian romances
I'm crying, this was devastating in the cutest and best way possible.
Compelling story with interesting and relatable characters. And also very gay.
This game is currently the best yuri game I've played. The romance is clearly the highlight of this game and I love tara as a trans lead character
The art is beautiful and the story has a good pacing to it
Highly recommend
lovely, magical, and sweet. if you are looking for that kind of thing, this game definitely provides: main GL dynamic was heart-warming and i enjoyed the characters. i found the ending to be a bit weak, but the overall game is very... gentle? i don't have a good descriptor for it, but it was nice. definitely recommend if you love ghostgirls and GL
also: art is beautiful. rosuuri never misses ever
first of all, LETS GO LESBIANS. secondly, slight spoilers ahead you've been warned :3 just my opinions after i've reached all endings and 100% it ahhh
such a lovely game, filled with so many cute and wholesome scenes. consisted of six chapters. 14ish hours all up, which took me roughly two hours per chapter (to get to one ending). three different endings which took me roughly 40ish minutes to get to after the last dialogue choice. amazing artwork and amazing music. good voice acting and relatable characters. entertaining story for the most part, magic... twists... mayhem... drama. plus like lots of lesbians, all four main characters being lesbians, making two very adorable couples (i <3 abigail). also having a gallery as an extra is pretty cool, so much amazing artwork, both fan drawn and official.
i wasn't too sure about it at the beginning, i struggled to get into it but it was worth it. the first chapter was super slow, but picked up pace right at the end.
i was a little disappointed when it came to the fact that there was only three dialogue options through the entire game. i was also a tad disappointed that it wasn't as much horror as i was expecting for it to be, like it was spooky but nothing too scary. tiny bit of gore when it comes to blood splatters, descriptions and the "demons" (not what she actually is) facial expressions. the endings were all unfortunately a bit anticlimatic, i was expecting more from them and expecting dialogue and scenes to be drastically different after the final dialogue choice. the endings are quite different though.
the "why am i here" ending has to be my favourite. super bittersweet.
honestly overall very cute game. would recommend if you love slight horror, lesbians and talking cats, 8/10
This game surprised me with its quality , it is so good , the story itself is very well-written and exciting , i really liked it , the story have enough frama and made me worry for the characters . i really cant describe with my words how cute and impressive story is , i recommend everyone try it. The game is around 8-9 hours to read . it is also very good made from technical side except resolution settings , it is my only complain that game runs only in fullHD and it was a bit soapy when i tried to play on m 4k TV like i do with other novels . but i will still recommend to play this , it is 10/10 anyway
I underpaid for this
I bought this on sale, and now I feel guilty, because I think it might be one of the best VNs I've ever gone through, out of, hmm, dozens I'd say. I've just assuaged my guilt by buying the soundtracks and art book at full price. I don't listen to soundtracks or look at art books, really. Well, maybe I will. But I just, as a fellow gamedev, wanted to reward them better for their very expressive work here.
The narrative writing here seems to be done by skilled craftspeople. They know what they're doing. Sometimes a VN's story can be fun and interesting while still being kind of shallow or amateurish. I felt like there was a lot of well-thought-out backstory here, and a lot of care with world-building and continuity. The characters had a lot of flesh to them and it felt like meeting actual people, rather than just reading tidbits about them and glimpsing moments of their lives.
The artwork is well done and the characters each seem unique and consistent with their own story. I get a feeling that this studio is really cohesive, or at least well-directed, because it doesn't have that feeling one often gets in a modestly-priced VN that a lot of the work was contracted out via Fiverr to people who didn't talk to each other by someone who just wants to check boxes on a production timeline. I really feel like the people who worked on this game cared beyond getting a paycheck.
The voice acting is great too. Everyone actually suits their character, which is not exactly a guarantee in voiced VNs. I loved Geladora in particular, a really good combination of writing and acting that suited the character type.
There are multiple endings, and they are all excellent. As usual there are bad vs. good endings, but even the bad endings are fully-fleshed, which I appreciated. Usually the bad endings tend to be rather clipped, basically saying "u fupduck, game over" in not so many words, but the devs here make sure you get something that feels solid out of each ending, even when it's not a good one.
Buy it, play it. In my opinion, it's under-priced vs. comparative VNs. Get a deal on it if you want, but if you feel like I do after you play it, maybe do what I did and throw them a few more bones via DLC.
[hr][/hr]
Some minor notes that really don't really affect my opinion of the VN, but which I think people might want to know about:
- This is mostly a novel. You do get choices, but not very many, and there are only a few endings. Expect mostly to experience, rather than "play", this VN.
- There's at least one case where the choice you make doesn't seem to work and you say/do the other thing anyway. I suspect there might be an ending that got cut and they just tied the two choices together, but they really should have at least made it seem like you did the thing you picked, even if the result wasn't different.
- As usual, there's an offsite patch to add adult content, but it's not really that kind of game. This game already stands tall on its characters and their relationships. If you want to see what they do in their bedrooms, or maybe hear their pillow-talk, then the patch is for you, but it's not strictly necessary. I will say the scenes were fairly well-written and not the sort of anatomical guesswork you often find in disappointing VNs written by young men.
HEART OF THE WOODS is no less than absolutely the best visual novel that I have read this year. I simply love a solid story line, especially a brilliant and original fantasy, beautiful graphics, a reliable user interface and lovely background music. Studio Elan provided all these for the reader and added a wonderful incorporation of character voices as well which added a special extra. The key characters, Maddie, Tara and Morgan were brought into view in Chapter 1, though it was not until early Chapter 2 when Abigail entered the scene and forged a brilliantly intriguing path for herself along with Maddie to pursue. May I say once more that the story is absolutely superb - hence why I would clearly endorse HEART OF THE WOODS - placing it head and shoulders above any other visual novels I have read to date - and trust me - I have read many. My sincere thanks to the developers in Studio Elan for a gorgeous, classic visual novel.
You matter. Despite your flaws, you are important to those close to you. Your abuse doesn't define you. You deserve happiness, and its never too late to find it. Love can be healing, love can be the most powerful force in your life.
That's what this game said to me, and while i already knew most of it, hearing it all out loud was still impactful. Doesn't help that the characters are all adorable and i became overly attached to them lol.
I wanted to like this so much but I just couldn't. It felt really flat and superficial and a lot of times cringe. The art and music was pretty at least.
Very beautiful yuri story ;)
Yeah, this VN is amazing, easily the best I've ever played. The story was compelling, and Maddie, Abigail, Tara and Morgan were all absolutely wonderful characters. The romances were sweet and done incredibly well.
Honestly, this is the best game I've played in 2024. Wholeheartedly recommend it.
Heart of the Woods surprised me with its level of draw-in in terms of mystery. I enjoyed this element of the story, and found both couples in the game to be likable. Heart of the Woods has its threats throughout the game, but maintains an overall optimistic viewpoint, so if you like that this may be for you. The only complaint I really have is that I feel that the main antagonist of the game had no proper motivations, so the sense of danger was lessened. Overall, my favorite characters were Morgan and Abigail, and I also think they had the best voice acting of the cast. If you like nature, mystery, or yuri, then you will most likely find something to enjoy in Heart of the Woods.
I loved every second of it, I loved Madison and I loved Abigail and I loved their relationship. Incredibly cute and sweet. It's definitely among my favorite pieces of fiction of all time.
Heart of the Woods is a good, fairly short (10 hours or so) yuri style VN. It's voiced in English, and the art style is clean and colorful.
There are a few choices, and a few separate endings, one of which is the "true" ending.
I'll make this short. It's probably a 7.5/10 for me, the story is entertaining and the character interaction and development is engaging. The story itself is really unique, and has twists and turns that keep you guessing to the end. Extra points for Geladura being ... herself. There's magic, there's mayhem, there's drama, and there are moments you can really empathize with the characters. Maddie's and Tara's voice actors especially bring a lot to the table.
I'd like to have seen more support characters as background filler, especially to liven up the town (though I understand why lively isn't the word to use...) Also, some of the actions the characters take during the climax of the story aren't intuitive and make you wonder how they knew what to do. These are very minor gripes, otherwise this is a solid VN with great pacing.
Absolutely incredible game.
I would definitely recommend this game! It has more twists than a gnarly tree and there's only one very weak criticism I have. (This next bit might be a tad spoilerish? I tried to be very vague)
I would have appreciated for a certain character to have a conversation with Maddie after seeing two other women kiss. I think this certain character would probably not have seen such a thing before and should have been at least curious/questioning. Other than that, this game is very excellent.
This is so good. I'm three chapters in but I'm greatly enjoying it. It's super well written, the characters really feel alive, and the art and music/sfx that accompany it all just build together towards a very pleasant experience. I bought a bunch other VNs from this studio, and I am quite sure I'll like them all as well.
Genuinely one of my favorite visual novels ever. It was incredibly engaging and I adored the characters, the world, and the writing. The adult content is quite well done too. It was very passionate and romantic <3
The look and feel of heart of the woods is relaxing and pleasant. The story is relatable with stuff about what is real or something else, it is hard to step away from stuff when it is a blink a step away from the other side of the mirror. Loved all the unexpected twists and Ooo the spicey bits and the girls relationships develop. Wow had not idea Tara was T.... she was cool and fun, Maddie was responsible and nice, Morgan was mysterious and cute and Abigale was wonderfully sweet and even more cute. there is a cat too.
Would of liked a few move expressions and clothing changes with the main people but it was still nice. At one stage did felt a bit losses jumping from one main character to the next but by the middle of the game through to the end loved it as it was. A scene remind us that in the past use to wear headphone and listen to music full volume in the woods at early hours in the morning drunk or high with no light and sometimes it was so dark could not see the ground below the feet and would sometimes walk into trees and pass out.
There was lots of powerfully emotional moments, got so cosy and fell asleep twice playing it. Am going through a bad time, heart of the woods was a lovely story to escape into. There was crying at the ending, the ending was magical, the ending was most beautiful.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Studio Élan |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac, Linux |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 17.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 97% положительных (559) |