Heart of the Woods Sneak Peek: Brand New Backgrounds! (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Rachel here with a few quick looks at some of the new backgrounds we’ve got in store for Heart of the Woods. Our awesome new background artist, Hui, has been hard at work finishing up the few remaining locations our girls will be traveling to. Here’s a peek at an in-progress sketch of one of the most exotic locations of all: Morgan’s kitchen. The final version will have a number of other appliances, including a very beat-up microwave and a very pristine coffee maker. The girl’s got priorities.

We also have a new snowy forest background made by our very own studio member, Minute! 

“Wait, Rachel!” you might say. “Didn’t you already show us that on twitter? How is that a sneak peek?” Well, first of all, I can’t hear you through your screen, so saying that out loud is probably a waste of time. Secondly, while we did show off that background on twitter, we only showed off one variation. What makes this background really special is that, unlike our other forest backgrounds, this one is made up of a ton of different individual trees and layers. More specifically, it’s made out of three ground images, eleven foreground variations (with each one having any random number of trees ranging from 3-11), and three zoom levels. With all those factors combined, you’re looking at hundreds of different possible forest arrangements (and if you take every single minor variation into account, you’re looking at a frankly absurd 359,251,200 variations!). Obviously, trying to upload every single one of those would crash my laptop, so instead we asked Minute to pick out her personal favorites. Check them out!

Last but not least, the coolest thing about this background is that its arrangement for a number of scenes is going to be completely random! While certain scenes that involve the forest being set up in a specific way will have a fixed background, other forest scenes will have a slightly different layout every time you play through the scene. And here they said procedurally generated visual novels weren’t possible.

That’s it for this sneak peek, but we’ll be back with another one soon! If there’s anything in particular you’re interested in seeing, be sure to let us know in the comments!

Much love (as always),

Rachel