🦋Love, Life, and Lilies from Save the Villainess! The February 2026 Update!

[p][/p][p]Dear Villains and Villainesses, [/p][p][/p][p]This is Tanya and Emily, the dashing duo behind Save the Villainess, wishing you a great Lunar New Year, a wonderful start to Ramadan, and all the romance you enjoy during this just-passed Valentine’s Day! Though we’re in the midst of a blizzard, we hope you stay toasty and are excited to tease you with more game progress, a glimpse of a gorgeous new background, and mailing-list-exclusive Valentine’s cards. We also hope you enjoy Rui’s Valentine’s Day art, featuring our prince of hearts. Would you choose him over the chocolates? [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]
This month, we got the pleasure of programming a fantastic new location - the solarium! [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The solarium is an important background that Jane will revisit continually throughout the game, depending on the choices you make. The upcoming scenes 36 to 41 take place in this magical and plant-filled space, which is why we needed to animate the solarium beforehand. [/p][p][/p][p]The solarium consists of hundreds of art layers from Karel Kok (who did the lovely main background) and Saleha Chowdhury, who created the beautiful plants that are around the solarium. These plants are deliberately designed to mimic actual plants used in Victorian-era solariums. You can see an example of those plants in the litograph below ('Laeken' by Arthur Byrne), which depicts the royal greenhouses of Laeken in Brussels, Belgium. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]To program the solarium, we went through several combinations of layers until we figured out the optimal ones to use at various zooms to suggest a beautiful, wild, and even dangerous bloom of plants and flowers around Jane.[/p][p][/p][p]Of course, these plants aren’t planted for their beauty alone. Those who have read Save the Villainess’ free prequel novel know that the Neville family that Lady Jane Neville hails from has a special connection to plants. So keep your eyes on those leaves, lovelies. They’ll play a big role eventually…[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]After we revised the solarium, we also programmed scene 36, which offers a magical interaction with a certain white-haired Duke of the North within the solarium. After all, if Jane’s going to ‘train’ to overcome future obstacles, who would serve as a better guide than a man who wants to train her to survive? However, it’s still important to consider what she may be surviving and what the cost of survival means…[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Next month, to set up scenes 37 and 38, we’ll program Jane’s and Izel’s action models. In anticipation of that, we have exported the dozens of Photoshop (PSD) Layer files that will allow us to change their regular character model to an action model that can take part in action scenes. We’ll continue programming those action models and related scenes next month. [/p][p][/p][p]Writing-wise, we continued to shape the solarium-related scenes by writing and editing scenes 39, 40, and 41. These scenes involve a surprising reveal about Jane’s past, a new mystery for you to solve, and a great deal of conditional dialogue. Stay tuned for more next month![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Love is in the air this Valentine’s Day… and as you can see, our girl Jane found a new date to take to The Love, Romance, and Heartbreak Debutante Ball hosted over on Steam by Sunny Demeanor Games.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]If you’re interested in snagging a new digital date yourself, check out the ball![/p][p][/p][p]Finally, remember you can always find us at the various sites below:[/p][p][/p][p]✦ Our discord server - come chat with us and hear what other players have discovered about our game![/p][p][/p][p]✦ Our mailing list - we send out cute kitten pictures and free cards featuring new banter from our main characters every month. This month, the characters share how they wish to be wooed during this romantic month![/p][p][/p][p]✦ Youtube, Bluesky, and Tumblr - our main social media accounts.[/p][p][/p][p]✦ The Villainess Wants Her Prince to Live! - Our Free Prequel Novel - Available Online, as a PDF, and an Ebook file[/p][p][/p][p]See you next month for more new art and updates! [/p][p][/p][p]With Dearest Love, Emily & Tanya[/p]