Hi everyone! Long time no see, and belated happy new year!

Most people who have been following us in one way or another are probably aware by now, but just in case you weren’t:

Twofold has been released!

We’ve been working hard on the game ever since the original re-reveal post, and a lot has happened, including partnering up with Studio Élan’s Bellhouse publishing wing who have been of tremendous help. We legitimately couldn’t hope to have gotten the game out in this state without them.

So… it’s on Steam, and it’s paid! We have put a lot of love and care into the game over the past… twelve years, and hope you will give it a shot and enjoy whether you are a long-time follower or first-time visitor!

Finally, thank you to everyone who has followed and supported us on this very, very long journey. Both Twofold and the team started off very different from what it has grown into at the end, with ups and downs, but at least I look back very fondly on the entire process. We have made acquintances, friends, and even relationships through making a visual novel together on the internet, lived through innumerable cool, weird, sad, and happy experiences, and ended up coming out on top with something, and we’re proud to have it out there. In the end, it’s hard to imagine a better way to end things.

So if you’re still reading this, so long and thank you all! We hope you’ll enjoy the fruits of this long journey.

- Shiz

Happy new year everyone, sorry for the wait! We’re pleased to announce that as of immediately, the partial voice update for First Snow is now available on Steam, itch.io as well as directly from our website.

The update is entirely free and, if you own the game on Steam, should download automatically! If you’re using the other two platforms, the update is baked into the game itself so you’ll just be downloading the game again.

We’ve put a lot of time and effort into this update, so we hope you enjoy it, whether you’re returning to the story to check out the update or if you’re experiencing it for the first time. Furthermore, First Snow merch is now available from the Studio Élan store which you can access here. Imagining ever getting the opportunity to do something like this would have been unreal way back when we started, so it’s super exciting for us!

And with that, our long First Snow journey is over (assuming we don’t need to push out a bug fix….fingers crossed!!!). Thanks for walking this road with us, and we hope to see you again soon so we can start working toward wrapping up that other loose end of ours…

Hi! We just dropped the trailer for First Snow’s upcoming voice acting update, which you can check here!

For those without video access or just want an easily digestible cast list, we have that for you too!

• Allison: Elizabeth Quedenfeld
• Eileen: Kira Buckland
• Rose: Nola Klop
• Caprice: Lisa Reimold
• Millie: Jill Harris
• Hayley: Elissa Park
• Wallace: Steven Kelly
• Eve: Aimee Smith
• Andrew: Bradley Gareth
• Elizabeth: Abigail Turner

First Snow is partially voice acted, which means that most of the time characters will usually only chime in with specific phrases or expressions. However, CGs as well as select lines significant to the story are fully voiced!

To better accommodate the new voice acting, we’re making a couple tweaks to other areas of the game, which we want to detail now.

1. The individual volume sliders in the options menu will be available from the start. When First Snow originally launched, we wanted to keep the post-credits scene a total secret, so that page in our general options was hidden until once the scene was accessible. Since voice acting is a baseline feature now, we’re opening that menu from the get-go and adding all of the characters to it. Naturally, they’ve all been given unique sound test dialogue as well, so please check that out when you can!
2. We’re making a tiny addition to how names are displayed in First Snow: When a character is speaking using a voice line, this little icon will appear next to their names. We thought this was necessary for Allison specifically since she lacks a screen presence most of the time, but we decided to add it for everyone for consistency as well as accessibility.

We hope you’re excited for the patch! It’s worth noting that this update will mess with the existing saves, so please plan accordingly. As always, we heavily encourage you to follow us on Twitter for more up-to-date smaller announcements, as well as occasional things like screenshots and other previews.

Until next time!

Hello again! As promised, this is The Big Textbox Post. The skeleton of this overhaul has been done for quite a long time and I’ve been really itching to talk about it, so I hope everyone is fine with me rambling a bit! As should always be the case when we present anything, keep in mind that things are subject to change as development goes on, but otherwise…

So, the textbox has been completely redone, and now looks like this:

The goal was to drive the paper-y aesthetic even further forward with the presentation, while also allowing more versatility with direction. Like with First Snow, you’ll be able to swap between Fall and Winter themes if you have a preference. Each theme has its own unique background pattern during narration on top of the usual color changes!

The big change, however, comes when a character speaks. Rather than a simple colored name, we’ve given each character a tailor-made pattern that runs alongside the edges of the textbox. These patterns should make recognizing the speaker even easier, and this also solves a problem with First Snow’s textbox, in that some character nametags got sorta lost in some backgrounds.

Due to the layering of the UI, the speech tail is also adaptive rather than baked into the images. This means it’ll be able to 1:1 follow characters in real-time rather than just guestimating their positions. This last part’s a big deal: First Snow had a variety of customization options to account for accessibility and personal preference. This textbox is relatively static and doesn’t offer the flexibility of First Snow’s. So naturally our solution was to make a second textbox.

We’re calling this the “simple” option. While the base textbox is designed for aesthetics, we also wanted the simple textbox to also look visually appealing while also being streamlined enough to allow for customization. On top of the options present in First Snow, we plan to add an opacity slider for the simple textbox, and naturally the Fall/Winter variants will be available for it as well.

With all of these options available, we believe you’ll be able to fully customize the UI In Twofold to fit your exact tastes and needs. See you next time!

Hi everyone! It’s been a long time coming, but today’s the day we finally “re-reveal” Twofold to the world. Some of this information has been shown on our Twitter already, but please let us throw everything here again so we can talk things through thoroughly!

A New Protagonist

First Snow was the story of Allison Merlo and her budding relationship with Eileen Turner. In Twofold, you’ll be reading through the perspective of a brand new character not seen in First Snow: Olive Penn.

Olive is a student struggling to keep their grades afloat as they attempt to juggle both their school and work lives. In an attempt to salvage their GPA, Olive seeks aid from either an on-campus writing or art club. For those who have followed Twofold prior to First Snow’s announcement, you’ll recognize that the character is different to the protagonist we had established previously. We hope you’ll react warmly to Olive!

New and Returning Characters

In Twofold, Caprice and Millie will serve larger roles than they had in First Snow, acting as the primary foils for Olive. Hayley will serve a substantial role in the story as well, acting as a bridge between Olive and Caprice/Millie. Other familiar faces will be present, including the entirety of the art club.

On top of that, you can be expected to be introduced to the writing club proper, who have a very different dynamic than the art club and we hope people find interesting. More characters will be featured in the story, but our focus for now is on the clubs.

Choices

While First Snow was entirely a linear experience, we’ll be adding choices In Twofold. We don’t plan to have multiple endings—both Caprice and Millie have only one beginning and end each—but our choices will rather put an emphasis on building friendships with the various club members. Hanging out with certain club members will allow you to advance their own personal storylines and get insight on their perspectives about their respective club leaders and the conflict the two have found themselves in. Whether you’re interested in a new writing club member or just want to catch up with Allison, there should be a few reasons to go back and re-read Twofold.

A Step Forward

When First Snow was originally pitched, it was more or less designed to be an expansion pack for Twofold, using assets that would then be directly ported into Twofold. After First Snow wrapped however, a common sentiment the team felt is that we wanted Twofold to feel more like a sequel than a direct continuation, so we’re making a few upgrades to hopefully help Twofold feel like a fresh experience.

First, the VN will now be displayed in 2560x1440 with varying options to scale! First Snow was built on a very old foundation and bumping the resolution up was an immediate priority. Our sprites were already drawn larger than what you saw in First Snow, so porting those over isn’t proving to be difficult. We also have systems in place for the backgrounds, so we’re confident we’ll be able to handle this successfully.

Another large visual change we’ll be making is with the textbox. There’s actually a LOT to say about the new Twofold iteration, enough to fill up a second blog post. So… expect a second blog post in a couple days. For now though, here’s a baseline screenshot.

An Expanded OST

This seems obvious, but naturally Twofold will include new songs. It’ll also be re-using a lot of tracks from First Snow though, and as such we’ve done a tiny bit of rebranding: the First Snow OST is now labeled “Sounds of Winter” whereas the new tracklist from Twofold will be called “Sounds of Autumn” and together they’ll form one unified OST for both games.

Voice Acting

Following in the footsteps of the post-credits scene in First Snow, we’ve been working with Studio Coattails to prepare voice acting for Twofold. Like the planned VA patch for First Snow, Twofold will be using partial voice acting for moments that are directed using sprites (re-usable phrases and the like) while CGs are aimed to be fully voiced. Plans are always subject to change, but this is our current goal right now!

Week One

Our current development priority is the creation of a demo, which features the first seven days of Twofold as Olive gets acquainted with the two clubs. To set expectations, this should be about as long as an act from First Snow.

The Website Is Live!

After a bit of a wait, the website is now live. You’ll find some new art, character bios, and even a new music track!

On top of that, we’ve thrown in a few desktop wallpapers featuring the character patterns from the new UI. We’ll be periodically updating the website with screenshots and the like, so keep an eye out!