Greetings bushcrafters!
I’m pleased to announce that Ember’s Verge will be officially launched on April 2nd 2026.
The full game will contain all 4 seasons, drought and flood, the travois, a game map, +70 % more area to explore (compared to demo) and of course end game challenge back to civilization.
The development story
Before the development I really liked survival games and played a lot of them. At some point I started searching for more grounded survival games, where I could actually survive in the wilderness and have a deeper connection with nature. I actually found one but I soon noticed that the development was going anywhere. So I got this crazy idea: “Why not build it myself?!”. So that was the beginning of this dev journey ~4 years ago.
I developed the game for 3 years and decided to release the demo directly to Steam's Next Fest Feb 2025. Now looking back, this wasn’t the best thing to do as I didn’t run any playtests. But after releasing the demo I surely did receive feedback and it wasn’t entirely crushing, but there was a lot to fix in the game. The game didn’t offer enough information on how game mechanics worked. The biggest issue for the players was that crafting was tied only to a flat stone. So based on the feedback I decided to implement basic crafting, but keep the flat stone. The most frequently asked question was “Where to find clay?”. I decided to reposition clay deposits near water sources. There were also many other issues popping up as well, but the feedback really drove me to improve the game. During the autumn of 2025 I realized I wasn’t able to finish the game by the end of the year, so I had to postpone the launch by six months.
Sticking to the game design
Early on I decided to create everything from scratch. I’m not a pro at using 3D software, but I’m happy with how the assets in the game turned out. I wanted the game to take place in a northern environment where the seasons play a big role. While I’m pleased with how the environment and seasons look now, I wasn’t quite able to capture the specific Scandinavian forest appearance I originally aimed for. However, the goal was to have a unique look, consistency and identity, even if it was a little rough around the edges.
I’m very pleased that my original idea of making a survival game, which doesn’t contain any modern items, has come to life. I was very tempted to add some “high end” loot like a modern knife or an axe, but I stuck to my original vision.
Thank you for all the patience, support and feedback during the development of Ember’s Verge. See you on the island on April 2nd!
Feralless games