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The story
In October 1994, the video game development group that would become Leaf was established in the Kansai region of Japan as U-Office. The core members who launched Leaf were friends who met in high school such as Naoya Shimokawa and Shinji Orito who bonded over computers and music, specifically desktop music (DTM). One of Leaf's founders was Shimokawa, who wanted to work in video games to work on their music scores. In the early days of Leaf, they team members would provide music for other companies' software under the U-Office name. Orito, who then had quit his job in programming for a banking company, joined U-Office on an invite from Shimokawa.
Leaf would initially make bishōjo games, which included a number of strip mahjong video games such as debut title DR2Naito Suzume Oni in February 1995. Shimokawa said the company made bishōjo games as consoles games were not within their budgets and PC eroge titles were what he described as in a blurry field where the difference between a mainstream game and doujin title was not obvious. They would also make both an adult-themed and general audience-themed Japanese role-playing games with Filsnown (1995) and Legam respectively. During this time in development, Shimokawa said that the Leaf was struggling financially. Orito would leave Leaf after Shizuku, as he had a lot of insurance-related bills that he could not handle while working for Leaf.
From Wikipedia’s article on Leaf (Japanese company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4