The Crown of Leaves Reviews

;3

No updates since forever.

a game that has been in progress since 2016 and still isn't complete. the artists are more interested in doing private furry commissions than finishing the project that should have taken 2 years tops to make. the avg visual novel takes 6mo-1yr to be compiled and made, including by tiny studios with only 1-2 people. another lie made by the devs, they claim they are just a 2 man team, they are not, there are about 20 ppl in the credits or more which is more than enough to put a finished product out. even if there is only 2 people working on the product, with basic math we can estimate a realistic workload: at a generous 10 backgrounds (as in large town backgrounds) per year along with 20 or so character sprites total and let's give a generous 20 small scene images let's breakdown the math very simply beign extra generous with 1 large scene [town scene] per week, in 1.1 months, only 1 of the artists could complete every large wallpaper scene. since there are two artists, we can easily grasp it to take far less time. but for the sake of common sense arguments, let's continue the sprites usually have about 6 expressions per character. this can easily be done in a single day, and once they are done, there is no need to do them all over again. between 2 artists, a single character sprite can be fully finished including alternate expressions 1 per day with ease. that's 2 weeks tops to "animate" all characters. being extra generous, a month. this would include the 3rd artist/animator. individual background small scenes such as bedrooms and hallways can be completed in 3-4 days with a minimum amount of work per day (estimating 5hours of work per day) that means that all of the artwork for a single chapter can be done in a whopping 3 months tops. LESS if you include the 2nd and 3rd artists into the formula. The remaining time should be correctly allocated to writing the story, which for visual novels is a non-complex, mainly linear story told in bite-sized pieces and parts. typically a vusual novel has less words than a 150 page paperback novel, which can easily be written in just a month. that's half a year of work we're up to right now. so, explain why a game started in 2016 is not complete in 2025? almost 10 years later? laziness. that's the reason. the translations are also whack as hell and make no sense, especially the hysterical word "doodee" which means poop in baby-speak english. there are a lot of nonsense words like this that were clearly not translated well from russian to english. unfortunately it seems this game, however interesting it may be, is clearly suffering the same fate as LINGRIMM's FAR better comic "Asmoteus". the fate of abandonment. it's quite a shame because the art is decent, but the work ethic of the artists is abysmal. the discussion board on the store page is full of comments of people wondering why there hasn't been an update in 2 years now.

It's captivating. It has the great characters and world-building of a top-tier VN, but with a point&click gameplay loop to hold your attention. I can't describe the story. It's nothing like anything I've read before.