Heart of the Woods
Heart of the Woods is a 2019 romance visual novel developed and published by Studio Élan. The game follows a pair of influencers as they travel to a remote village where ghosts are rumored to reside. The game launched on February 15, 2019, for Microsoft Windows, MacOS, and Linux, with ports later launching in 2021 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, and Nintendo Switch. Gameplay. The game is a typical visual novel, with the player's main form of interaction being clicking forward through text to progress between scenes . At certain moments, the player can make decisions that can lead to alternate endings for the title. Development. Earlier in development, the setting was completely different, with it being a time travel story set in a small town. The developers said that they kept "running into plot holes or having trouble making certain parts interesting, so we decided to start from scratch." They maintained that one element kept from the earlier version was "love across time and boundaries". In terms of the soundtrack, the developers focused on using leitmotifs in order to represent certain elements of the game world like  snow, and also used silence to highten the dramatic tension of scenes. Reception. "Digitally Downloaded" gave the game a positive review, liking how the mystery and romance elements blended together, the reviewer did feel the game had a poor opening, writing that "Heart of the Woods does start slowly... This set-up is more than a little melodramatic, and it meanders its way to its conclusion." NoisyPixel liked the character art of the title, feeling the art helped to make the characters "expressive and fitting to the story", but felt the soundtrack could have been used better throughout the game . NoisyPixel also noted that the game had numerous slowdowns and crashes on the Switch version, leading to an unpleasant experience.