- Now Free To Play! - 10 April 2026
Hi everyone,As of today I am making Stories of Blossom completely free to play.Since its launch back in 2023 it hasn't reached many players, but the project itself has always meant a lot to me.By making it free, I hope it can now reach:Players who may benefit from its accessibility featuresDevelopers interested in accessible designAnyone curious about what more inclusive games can look likeTo everyone who supported the game when it was paid — thank you. It truly does mean a lot.Happy playing,Conor
- We Won 2 Accessibility Awards! - 25 January 2024
Last night we won the GAconf awards for Indie Excellence and Most Dedicated Studio! We had to poke ourselves to make sure we were not dreaming. A big thank you to Steve Saylor, Nick Kaman, and MikeTheQuad for each of your lovely comments. We are incredibly proud of the work we were able to achieve with Stories of Blossom, and to be apart of this community. It just goes to show that with the right mindset you can make your experiences accessible to more players. It does not require a large team or budget to make an impact. A huge congrats to all of last night's winners and nominees, and also to the hosts and organisers for running what was a great and accessible awards show. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1581680/Stories_of_Blossom/
- Nominated For 4 Accessibility Awards! - 28 November 2023
Soft Leaf Studios and our game Stories of Blossom have just been nominated for four accessibility awards at the GAconf awards: Wow! 💙 It is incredible to be put up alongside these giants also doing great work in game accessibility. Public voting is now live until December 3rd.
- 1.0.1.3 - Patch Notes - 27 November 2023
Bug fixes: audio caption typo. Subtitle reference is missing when you close and re-enter the settings. Text to speech child count not updated correctly.
- 1.0.1.2 - Patch Notes - 21 September 2023
Bug fixes: The primary for the 'Side menu' input action is the same as the secondary for the 'Left' input action by default for controllers.
- 1.0.1.1 - Patch Notes - 18 September 2023
Bug fixes: Jungle path exit does not enable after interaction. Loading text size not set. Start screen input icons not sized with text Improvements: Change made in the Post office exterior hotspot focus order. When using Point, on achievements close from start screen it now updates the cursor. When using Point, on deletion of the last save file, it now exits the button to update the cursor. It now cross checks the player profile achievements with steam's and unlocks any that have not been unlocked for whatever reason.
- 1.0.1.0 - Patch Notes - 13 September 2023
Bug fixes: Text to speech reads right and left analogue sticks incorrectly if they have a direction. On Tutorial enter if you change navigation mode you receive both initial tutorial prompts. When in point, selecting the point navigation option causes the cursor disappears. The colour preview of the hue options are not set after the initial opening of the settings. Audio Captions are cleared at the end of interaction events. Uses the wrong audio caption for celebratory music cue. Audio caption was still up over the diary, and stayed up. On controller reconnect message close, the time scale is set to 1 even if a display is up. Controller disconnect message is behind some UI elements. Walked into kitchen ext, crab walked until direction change was triggered or slide in. Gameplay displays have conflicting sorting layers with pause menu created displays. There is an issue with the old heirl…
- 1.0.0.4 - Patch Notes - 21 August 2023
Bug Fixes: Demo was stuck on the initial load screen. When using certain items in certain scenarios the game stopped responding.
- 1.0.0.3 - Patch Notes - 18 August 2023
Bug Fixes: Story select's next button is still up after reaching the last story.
- Patch Notes - 1.0.0.2 - 17 August 2023
Bug fixes: Load element not showing on the first autosave file creation. Not loading inventory items. On cutscene outro - The game occasionally sticks on white screen.
- Patch notes for 1.0.0.1 - 16 August 2023
Bug Fixes: One line in elder's interior had the wrong subtitle formatting. Could give fruit to daughter to early.
- Stories of Blossom Is Out Now! - 16 August 2023
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 - 9 June 2023
Hey everyone, 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! - 7 June 2023
This Friday is the 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! https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyA8xz1XoAE5Jim?format=jpg&name=900x900 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 - 6 April 2023
Hi everyone, I hope this post finds you well. 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!…
- New Year Update - 8 February 2023
Hi everyone, we hope this post finds you well! 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 accessibl…
- Demo Now Available For Steam Nest Fest! - 3 October 2022
We are excited to announce the release of a demo for Stories of Blossom! It will be featured in Steam’s Nest Fest running from the 3rd to the 10th of October. 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 - 6 September 2022
We hope this post finds you well! 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 fir…
- An Introduction To Soft Leaf Studios - 27 July 2022
We hope you are having a lovely week! 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 accessi…
- Welcome To The Community! - 15 July 2022
Thank you for joining our community! It means the world to us that you want to follow along on our journey. 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
