Our work on Split has been a bit out of order lately. We’ve been focusing on writing scenes that we’re absolutely dying to show you, even though they take place chronologically later in the game. We just needed to jump around like that for a bit to recharge our batteries.
We’ve been also working on the upcoming update, and Part 2 of Chapter 4 will be out on June 30th. It’s still hard to say exactly how big it's going to be, but you can expect something around 20–30K words.
If you're interested in additional content, you can check out our Patreons, where we share both free content and some extras.
To be fully transparent, we don't share a single account. Everything you find on our individual Patreons focuses either strictly on the characters each of us writes independently or on our romance content.
The DEMO will continue to be published regularly, just like before.
✨ Here’s another fresh release from our Patreon — T-pose references and sprites for a batch of adopted characters from The Crown of Leaves! ✨
You’ll meet this colorful squad in various routes of Chapter 3, and yes — you’re absolutely doomed to have a chaotic, funny, and lore-packed adventure with them. No escape. Just vibes.
These characters were all designed by us first, then lovingly adopted by some of our wonderful patrons (their names on sprite cards!). Each adopter holds the rights to their character’s appearance and can commission art, roleplay, or create personal content with them!
That said, their in-game personalities, backstories, and plot roles are part of our narrative — so those elements remain fixed in the official game canon.
We can’t wait for you to meet them properly in Chapter 3!
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You can support the development of The Crown of Leaves on:
→ Patreon
→ Boosty
Your support helps us bring new characters, chapters, and strange constellations to life. Thank you!
Episode 2's release is right around the corner! If all goes as planned, it will be out before the end of the month. All the major cleanup mentioned in the last update is done - just gotta give it a few more runs to clear up typos and quash bugs related to unlikely situations & stuff like that.
So, in the interim, let's get into a few things you can expect to see in the next episode!
Misc. tweaks and fixes
Starting with the least exciting thing on the list: quality of life and small continuity edits!
The settings menu will offer options for larger portraits. It was kind of criminal for me to make them so small on desktop in the first place, I know. (Blame mobile! Responsive design is hard! I only own so many devices to test with!)
The scrolling choice menu will display more choices at a glance and generally be more cooperative now. If you still hate it, you can always switch it to the static list in settings! (I prefer playing with the static list myself!)
Some minor continuity corrections will be made to Episode 1! For multiple reasons, we try not to tamper with the events of past episodes. It gets confusing for everyone involved, both player and developer. However, we will occasionally correct non-load bearing mistakes and oddities. In this case, we've made the following changes:
-"Licorice" is now a few years younger to better reflect the intended story.
-Some of the travel times given throughout the first episode have been altered. (We did some math and realized that either Vestur was even smaller than we meant it to be, or those were some VERY fast horses...)
-The major Quincy studied at VRMA is now a trait rather than a variable floating quietly in the background. Players loading saves from old versions of Episode 1 will automatically have their respective Major trait added when they reach Episode 2.
Meeting Imani!
I think I've said this already, but I can't find where I did, so I'll say it again. In Ep2, Imani will be joining you, thus reuniting the Convoy as seen in the demo.
We didn't get much space to explore her in the demo due to its premise, and what was there didn't quite do her justice. We're very excited for you all to meet her character properly for the first time!
Your first opportunity to select a Confidant!
You may be asking what the hell a Confidant is and why that matters. Or, maybe you remember seeing this mysterious spot on the "You" page:
Either way, you don't know and I'm going to tell you. In the context of the game, your "Confidant" is a party member you have chosen for Quincy to focus his attention on.
So what does that mean?
Once a Confidant is chosen, the narration assumes Quincy (depending on other factors) either is or wants to be close friends with this person. It's not an automatic best-friends button - it's more like a flag to help the game know you're thinking about that character. A willingly adopted bias of sorts.
Being someone's Confidant will occasionally give you more or different roleplaying choices, alter flavor text in scenes, and change who Quincy hangs out with off screen.
(RPGs will often do this kind of thing based on raw "friendship points" alone, but as a player I find that leaving it up to invisible numbers often turns the nicest characters into inescapable pests and everyone else into a cryptid that needs to be summoned via arcane ritual. Everyone remember the infamous Dragon's Dogma Innkeeper situation? Yeah.)
In Episode 2, you'll get three pre-determined choices as to who to make your Confidant, one of those being "no one." In future Episodes, your potential Confidants will be based on your actual choices and friendship levels. You'll periodically get chances to keep or change who your Confidant is - no need to worry about locking yourself out of being besties with someone else later or anything like that.
(...While I am here, I would also like to mention that the Confidant system is separate from Romance. Being Confidants is not a prerequisite to Romance, nor will it gate you out of Romance down the line! )
ANOTHER FEATURE NOT YET TOUCHED UPON...?
The end of Episode 2 will also have you unlocking your first Vignette.
As for what exactly that means... well, you'll just have to wait and see.
I'm graduating this week which mean I am officially out of my dev hiatus.
So what are the plans ?
July is artfight season, I've been participating in the event for 6 years now and will continue to do so, which mean no major work will be done during this month. Nevertheless, I'll be working on the 2.0 of 21 questions and host the 2026 editions of colorful love Jam during the month.
Apple bag will get back in development for it's second major update starting August. New positions will be open during that season ( such as guest artist, voice actors and possible writing help. ) The estimate release of the update will be for winter of 2026.
In the meantime, Let's meet tomorrow and Another romance game might get a final correction update to clear all typos and errors in game.
In the paralel, without a certain date, Tulipe and Night Shift will be completely revamped for a new release.
Now that all for the already existing game, let's talk new games !
I have two small game draft ideas and one game idea already 90% written. There is a chance (If i'm not overworking myself) that new games will be made as breaks from major work. I won't share much about them as drafts stay drafts to not give false hope.
REGARDING ASKS ANSWERS
I'm gonna continue answering them but there is a chance that the ask box will get closed in the month of August as I work on apple bag. This is yet confirmed.
Thank you all for your patience, support and interest. I’m really happy to dive back into game making.
Hey! Just a small update about the project. I didn’t disappear.
This is a side project for me, and right now I'm putting most of my time and energy into my main project, which is getting close to the finish line.
I still want to come back here with another update, though, realistically more on a quarter-ish timeline. It probably won’t be a huge chunk of content, but it’ll be a noticeable change in scenery (we’re leaving the hospital and jumping into the pressure cooker).
So, to sum up, this project will be on the sidelines for a while, and we’ll see how the juggling goes. For now, I’m still figuring things out 🙈
I'm 95% done with writing the next chapter of Merry Crisis (i.e. 27th Dec) and it's already a banger at 56k words!
Features
The lead-up to the Nat surprise(!!)
Visit the columbarium with your family (to commemorate your grandparents 👴👵), and relive some childhood memories! <flesh out your MC's family life!>
Skip the columbarium family trip and have lunch with Qiu (at their workplace 💼🌶) or Shay (includes an optional boxing 🥊 session, and potentially meet someone dear to them 🍲). Or play boardgames with Joony 🎲 instead!
Meet Qiu or Shay at a 'winter'-themed funfair/carnival in the evening (or save it for a future Nat date)🧸🎄🍻 <win stuffed animals, drink mulled wine, sit on the lawn and... experience... snow(?)>
Release dates
Early: 22 Mar
Public: 5 Apr
Call for Beta-testers
Merry Crisis has reached a really substantial word count (past 200k with this new chapter), so it's about time I started editing it more systematically! :)
I would love to get a couple of beta testers involved, so do drop me an email at [email protected] if you're interested to help beta-test the newest chapter and the entire IF!
If you have noticed some errors, do also drop them here (much appreciated!)
Sneak peak scenes
As you guys know, I was meant to publish an early sneak peek for Qiu's lunch scene a long time ago--and it just took a long time to take shape.
I'll be releasing not just Qiu's lunch, but also Shay's lunch, and both will be fully interactive. You will need to do a quick input of your MC's/Qiu/Shay's pronouns though.
