From: Mara Voss <mara@fireflylanestudios.com>
To: team@fireflylanestudios.com
Subject: July milestone notes and festival build
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2026 09:42:00 -0400

Morning everyone,

Thanks for the late push on the Harborfall demo. The current build is feeling much closer to what we want people to see at Tiny Games Fest next month: the lantern mechanic reads clearly, the fishing dock scene finally has the right mood, and the new pause menu makes the whole thing feel less like a prototype.

A few priorities for this week:

- Lock the first 18 minutes of content by Thursday evening.
- Keep new art requests limited to bug fixes and missing UI states.
- Send any crash logs from the weekend playtest to Jules before noon.
- Do one more pass on controller prompts, especially for Steam Deck.

I know the scope has been tight, but the smaller build is working in our favor. People are responding to the tone and the character writing, not the feature count.

Nina, your note from Friday is below. I agree with your suggestion on the intro pacing, so let’s trim the second lighthouse interaction and bring the gull scene forward.

> I think the demo starts stronger if players reach the first strange moment sooner. The quiet opening is nice, but we are asking for patience before they understand what kind of game this is.

We’ll do a quick check-in at 3:30 instead of a full production meeting.

Mara