DevLog #4 - February 2026

🌸Hey everyone and thanks for everything regarding the My Dear Emma demo launch. 🌸

We had a lot of detailed feedback and positive reviews that made the team really motivated to continue working on the project!

We will deliver some more devlogs to keep you updated!

Starting today with the changes that happened during February:

🖼️ Visual changes

There have been a lot of changes to the forest mood and the colors/tone of the lighting. Here is a before/after of some places:

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You can also see that some props & foliage have been added. You will be able to explore new paths & see much more in the final release!

👁️ Depth Of Field has been added as a setting:

It can easily be disabled in the settings, and will receive some tuning for the intentsity!

🎒 The User Interface & inventory icons have been rethinked completely for a new hand-drawn style:

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It will be integrated in the final release of the game, what do y'all think of it?

We also had someone that worked on the design overhaul of the encyclopedia, with hand-painted drawings! 🖌️ (You would have already know that if you were on our discord server 😉)

Here is a preview of it in-game:

⚖️ Gameplay balancing

• The headbob has been reduced during all movements; this should avoid unwanted headaches for some of you :)

• Emma moves a bit faster.

🪲 Bug fixes & issues

• The voice lines don't overlap anymore. A queuing system has been added, and the more important ones can also be repeated as many times as needed.

• A lot of collisions have been adjusted, mostly to fix areas that Emma should not go to, but also adding some new areas to explore!

That's it for the devlog, you can connect to the community and get some insights by checking this link: https://www.soulven.com/join/

Stay cozy 🍂