- One line in elder's interior had the wrong subtitle formatting.
- Could give fruit to daughter to early.
Stories of Blossom
Patch notes for 1.0.0.1
Stories of Blossom Is Out Now!
Stories of Blossom is now out for everyone to enjoy! 🌸
Thank you everyone for your support so far.
We cannot wait to hear what you think about the game. Do share feel free to share around with your friends and family.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1581680/Stories_of_Blossom/
Release Date Trailer
During the Access-Ability Summer Showcase we announced Stories of Blossom's release date with a brand new trailer:
We are excited to say, Stories of Blossom will be coming out August 16th on Steam.
Be sure to wishlist and follow us to keep updated.
Thanks everyone for the support so far! We could not do it without you.
Wishing you all the very best,
Conor
Access-Ability Summer Showcase!
Tune in for some great accessibility updates and stories from disabled gamers and advocates.
Stories of Blossom has a feature that you will not want to miss!
June 9th 2023. 4 PM UK, 11 PM Eastern, 8 AM Pacific.
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/LauraKBuzz
YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P--rmXifm3U
ASL, BSL, and audio described versions will be premiered simultaneously.
A big thank you to LauraKBuzz for making all of this possible!
Event is sponsored by I Need Diverse Games.
Games London Festival
We have the honour of being selected by the London Games Festival Official Selection under the category International Innovators.
The event page that features all the selected games is live until the 9th of April. Be sure to check out all these great games before then.
Exclusive Footage
For the event, we sat down and gave a short commentary of what to expect in Stories of Blossom. This video also features footage of our second story, Millie and the Fungaloids.
We would love to hear what you think!
Speaking At GAconf
For those that have yet to see this year's schedule for GAconf, I will be giving a talk about Stories of Blossom and accessibility driven development.
Here is the date and time for it. I am really proud of this talk, and I cannot wait for it to go live then.
Thank you for your continued support, it really does me the world to us!
Until next time,
Conor
New Year Update
This year has already got off to a great start. Clare and I are currently wrapping up the production of Stories of Blossom, which is exciting. We cannot wait for everyone to play it!
Last month we had some great opportunities to showcase our game's accessibility and the work we are doing at Soft Leaf Studios to improve it.
During GA conf's Awards we had a short segment about Stories of Blossom's accessibility features:
Access - Ability
We had the honour of being awarded "Best Indie Game Outdoing the AAA Competition" at Access-Ability's Game of the Year Accessibility Awards. To learn more about that check out the following link.
On top of that Laura covered how we are approaching accessibility in our game, focusing on its audio descriptions. We are thrilled that people are enjoying the work we have put into the game to make it more accessible.
Last but not least, for anyone who has yet to try out the accessibility features in our game, we currently have a short playable demo here on steam.
That's all for now. I best get back to finishing the game!
Until next time,
Conor
Demo Now Available For Steam Nest Fest!
Here is a handy link to our store page where you can download our demo.
We have created a few posts for anyone who has any feedback to give us on our community hub page.
We would love to hear from you!
Many thanks!
Conor
Inspiration Behind Making Accessible Games
Like all good stories, it’s best to start from the beginning, and for us, at Soft Leaf it starts with what inspired us to make accessible games.
Our Origin Story
As gamers, we grew up playing some amazing games, and experienced stories that impacted us on so many levels. We played, and continue to play, games with very little barriers, nothing to restrict us from trying something new or revisiting the classics
This got us thinking about what if; what if we couldn’t play these games? Gaming for many (ourselves included) is a chance to escape and to lose ourselves in something outside of our own lives. They can be a chance to catch up with friends and to make new ones.
To not have the leisure of having such experiences, because of a game’s inaccessibility, seemed unfair to us. Yet to this day this is still the case for so many.
Where It All Started
My first real exposure to accessibility was by hearing about the game accessibility conference (GAconf) during an audio event at GDC. This planted the seed that I believe was what started our journey.
After attending the GAconf I quickly discovered that lots of great work were being done, from the accessibility of Last of Us Part two, the various guidelines and programmes available from the amazing team at Xbox, to those sharing their insights on the work that still needs to be done.
The Disability Community
But what stuck with me the most was how welcoming and kind the community was to each other. Everyone had this common interest in improving accessibility in the games industry. And it felt like home.
We feel honoured to be welcomed into this community and we can only hope that through the work we are doing we can help push the industry in the right direction of making games accessible for everyone.
Until next time,
Conor
Links
For those curious about the events and findings discussed in this post, here are several handy links:
GAconf’s website - Select the archive tab to view all previous talks at the event.
The Accessibility in Last of Us Part II: A 3 Year Journey - A recorded talk from GAconf on YouTube.
Xbox Accessibility resources - We have found these extremely useful for our game’s development.
An Introduction To Soft Leaf Studios
For this post, we would like to share a bit more about us as a studio and where we are heading.
Accessibility
Most of you are probably aware that we are very passionate about accessibility in games. We are striving to develop disability-friendly game experiences.
For the most part, games are not accessible to most of the disability community and we are trying to change that in any small way we can.
Our hope is that by doing so we can allow more people to enjoy video games. This is what drives us forward as a company.
Receiving Feedback
As we develop, with your help, we can make great experiences together.
Already the help we have received from our testers has been fundamental to our growth as a studio, and we will be continuing to involve more voices from the disability community.
Our Goal
We are approaching everything we do with the lens of accessibility, from our games, how we demo at events, to how we communicate, hire new team members, and even this post you are reading.
The lower the number of barriers there are, the better.
This is where we are at the moment. As we learn and get feedback on our solutions, the closer we will be to our goal.
Thank you for all of your support, and for tagging along on our journey!
Until next time,
Conor
Welcome To The Community!
With these posts we get to share more info with you than we could on the likes of social media.
You can expect to hear all about our studio, the games we are making, and the world of game accessibility.
We hope you enjoy our posts, but if you ever feel there is something we could do to improve your experience, we are more than happy to hear from you.
Until then, have yourself a lovely day!
Conor
Director of Soft Leaf Studios