Sweet Leaves Dev Update - July 2026

Hi everyone! Thanks for your continued patience as we toil away at the mountain that is episode 2 (I overuse this metaphor). Here's the update for July 2026 across the various departments of production:

Writing

Writing is right around 50% complete. 13/25 scenes are completely done (save our final pass, which usually changes very little). 6 of the unfinished scenes are mostly written and just need a bit more work and polish, and the rest need to be written from scratch. This represents a non-trivial amount of writing ahead of Midori and myself, but we're making good progress.

Having reached the halfway portion of the script, I went back and read through scenes 1-13 in order, and I couldn't be happier with it. I hope you're all ready for stuff to happen, because unlike episode 1, stuff happens in episode 2.

Artwork

Tons left to do, but we're making lots of progress all the time on the art, too. Our background artist, Reo, continues to knock it out of the park on everything he touches. I won't tell you what this WIP is for exactly, but some of you who are familiar with the series or have read the comics might be able to guess where this is.

We've also got some new animated backgrounds; I'd love to show you all of them, but we just can't spoil the one that takes place in the landmark scene of the episode (which we just finished writing/editing, and it's a doozy).

Here's one I can show you though, and it's one of my favorites from episode 2 for sure:

And one more from a scene where we'll meet a character who's only been talked about before; who might it be, I wonder?

As far as character work goes, we've finished our sprites entirely now, whoo hoo! Flint even whipped up a sprite for a nurse who has like 2-3 lines in the script:

We've also completed a couple more CGs, but I can't show you those for spoilery reasons! Flint is back on to doing more doll work at the moment, since now there's only CG + Doll work to do (you know, only).

Here's some more scene previews for you:

Also, we needed an art teacher for a small part in the script. Flint and I conspired behind Reo's back (😈) and surprised him out of the blue one day in our group chat:

Getting to do nice surprises for everyone on the team is something I try to do as frequently as I can, and this one was particularly meaningful. Being able to do a self-insert where it's not intrusive and makes sense, especially when it's for someone as sweet and kind-hearted as Reo is.

iOS Support

We're looking into this - it's definitely possible on a technical level, and we'd love to give everyone the chance to read the story no matter what device they're on. The budget needs to allow for this, and it's a lot of extra work to get something on the App Store.

Steam Release/NSFW

Complicated. Originally we were looking at just doing itch.io while in development, but we're expanding our audience a bit by having a display of Sweet Leaves at San Diego Comic Con at Sofawolf Publishing's table. Steam has a little more reach (as you might guess).

The issue that complicates all of this is the NSFW scene. This can't go on iOS (period), so it either has to be a patch or a completely separate file/release from the SFW version. While we could create DLC and link it on the main Steam page, this would likely get us delisted/deindexed, just as it does on itch.io.

Another VN author suggested two completely separate game pages on itch.io (e.g. Sweet Leaves and "Sweet Leaves NSFW"). The main/SFW game should still remain indexed and available for pay-what-you-want that way, but this is only on itch.io. Hopefully Steam has a helpful support department because we'll likely have to get creative here.

We'll keep you updated on this, but if you were looking forward to the adult scene, don't worry; it's not getting cut.

That's all I've got for July's update. Back next month with more!

-August