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| Company type | Brand of Aquaplus |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer games |
| Genre | Eroge & visual novels |
| Founded | Osaka, Japan (1995) |
| Headquarters | , Japan |
Area served | Japan |
Key people | Naoya Shimokawa |
| Products | |
| Website | leaf |
Leaf is a Japanese visual novel studio under the publisher Aquaplus, and has offices in Yodogawa-ku, Osaka, and Tokyo. It and its competitor Key (to which it is often compared) are two of the most popular and successful dedicated visual novel studios operating today.[ citation needed ] It was launched out of obscurity by its early release To Heart .[ citation needed ] Leaf used the XviD video codec in several games: Aruru to Asobo!! , Tears to Tiara , Kusari , and ToHeart2 X Rated . Since XviD is free software, released under the GPL, Leaf was obligated to release the source code to those games under the same license. [1] [2] [3] One still requires the game data to actually play the games with the source code. [4] [5] In addition, a free software game engine, named xlvns, was developed soon after Leaf released its first three visual novels. [6] [7] Characters from Utawarerumono , Tears to Tiara, To Heart, and Kizuato are playable in Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match , a fighting game developed by Aquaplus featuring characters from various Leaf games. [8]
