Hello everyone, and happy new year! There’s still a few more hours before it rolls over here on the west coast of the US, but we know several of you are already living in the future. No matter what kind of year you’ve had, we hope your 2022 is even better.
We don’t have a big blog post this year, although we do have some quick personal messages from a few of our members. We do want to thank you all for another year of support, and hope that you’ll join us for what should be a very busy 2022. We’ll have a lot more news to share in February or March, as part of a special event we’re planning. More on that later, though.
For now, the first message we’d like to share is an important one from Theo Minute, one of our founding members.
Happy New Year! 2021 is finally over, and with 2022 I’m sending all my good vibes to every person reading this. I have passed every day hoping for the next one to be better, and my resolution this year is to take some time to enjoy each day as it is and enjoy it whenever I can. As of this new year, I’ve decided to step back from Studio Élan and many of my responsibilities – I hope this decision truly, genuinely will be a good one! Thank you to every one of my friends here in the studio for their friendship, support, and understanding. I love you all. Please Be Happy, Summer at the Edge of the Universe, and Lock and Key are shaping up to be such incredibly special games and I feel so lucky to have been able to contribute to them. I hope with this decision, the team will be able to restructure and fill out the roles I’ve had, and each game will be able to flourish and bloom even faster. I’ll be focusing on smaller projects and responsibilities for a while, but mostly I’ll be taking a lot of time to spend with my family, find my creative voice again, and continue supporting the amazing projects everyone here is working on. (And I’ll still be around of course!) Take care everyone! I hope your year is as amazing as you all are.
All of us at Studio Élan want to express our gratitude for everything that Theo has done for us, and wish them all the best. We love you, Theo.
There are a couple messages from some of our other members, just below. Thank you for reading, and one last time, happy new year!
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Another year gone by, huh…as it was for so many others, 2021 was a really tough year for me and my loved ones. But through it all, my fellow elan teammates and friends had my back every step of the way. I’m so grateful to be a part of this team and can’t wait to share some of the hard work we’ve been doing on Lock and Key this year with all of you! Here’s to a new year filled with happiness, with warmth, and most of all, with magic. Happy New Year! – Rachel
2021 has been a year of ups and downs, and I’d be lying to say it was more up than down. However, through it all, there’s been a lot of good things that have happened and more than ever, I find myself grateful for what I have in life. Thank you for sticking by us through the good times and bad, and I hope that 2022 will be our best year yet. – Josh
If nothing else, the year end write-up is a Elan tradition, isn’t it? It’s been a year, and somehow we reached the end of it. It’s been a year of new beginnings and sudden endings, and it hasn’t been easy, but it was a busy year. Heart of the Woods came out on the switch, Highway Blossoms had an official vinyl release, and we also released the Please Be Happy demo! Unfortunately, it was another year of not releasing Please Be Happy, and as director I genuinely want to apologize for that. We’ll keep working hard and next year for sure! Happy New Year, everyone, and here’s to a good year! – adirosa
