Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report.

Level: 
Over the course of the last two weeks, a lot of things have started happening in the Level Department. We've been preparing for the lighting rework, which involves checking all textures relevant to the world map. We've also introduced a new approach to our atlas textures, allowing for highly detailed texturing of our assets while being more VRAM efficient than before. In addition, we've been improving several assets for Nanite to reduce the overall number of textures used by these meshes.
We also started auditing the tools our artists use to identify areas for improvement and introduced new ones to help them get as much work done as possible during the last months before release, while improving the overall quality of the world map.

Code:
In the UI, the Inventory screen has been updated with new textures, with overhauls of the other tabs being in development. 
We are also working on a Fog of War overlay that only reveals the parts of the map you have been to before. The fog texture in the screenshot is preliminary and will be replaced with one that gives hints of elevation and locations. 

Character:
In the character department, we finished setting up LODs for all character related meshes, which includes outfits, hair and beard styles, fur, etc. The meshes have 4 stages now instead of 2, so the LODing happens sooner and should result in some performance gains in GPU constrained scenarios. The Sandshark Scale armor is progressing slowly but surely, too.

Animations:
We completed all the Umbar VIP minigames, they consist mostly of existing sandbox animations and a few newly created climax animations and the respective transitions. We also made a Maya version of the Bol minigame in the surveillance container near the Pearl Village.

Design:
We are in the process of making the last quest related updates. We finished Primo's boat quest and added a new quest in the Pearl Village around Novak's caravan.
On the dialogue front, we did a bunch of narrative polishing and made sure all characters in Sky Village can appropriately react to Maya. Meanwhile, the locking down of dialogues continues. We have now locked close to 50% of all lines, which means the first batch can go out to the recording booth as soon as voice castings are done. This includes almost all of the romance dialogues, which are the most complex ones, so the pace of finishing up characters for recording will now pick up going forward.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team

We originally planned to share one more sandbox-only build with you in late November or early December. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to release another build before Wild Life launches on February 8, 2027. Some essential reworks have turned out to be more extensive than expected and need to be completed and tested before we can put another stable build in your hands. Preparing a build also takes around two weeks of coordinated work across departments, and we need to dedicate that time to these improvements and getting the game ready for launch. We know many of you were looking forward to another build this year, and we’re very sorry for the disappointment.

Wild Life reached its content-complete milestone this month! This is a huge step for the team, and we’re now deep into polishing: taking a closer look at how the game looks, runs, and feels to play, and addressing the areas that need more attention before release.

That closer look has already led to some significant discoveries. Several improvements require more work than we initially expected, but they also give us the opportunity to make a meaningful difference to the final experience. Here’s what we’ve been working on.

One of our biggest current tasks is a much-needed lighting rework. As we began that process, we also identified significant issues with how some of our materials were set up.

Addressing those issues is helping us improve the appearance of our assets while reducing their VRAM demands alongside our code optimization process. That makes this work especially valuable: it contributes to both the visual quality of the game and our optimization efforts.

We’ve included previews below so you can see the direction we are aiming for. These are still a work in progress, but we’re excited to share how things are coming together.

Alongside the lighting and material work, our code team has started a dedicated optimization process.

We’re taking the time to investigate where the game is putting unnecessary demands on hardware and how we can address those issues. This is a substantial part of the polishing phase, with the goal of making Wild Life run more efficiently and feel better to play.

We’ve also started our voice-over pipeline, and casting is now underway!

Finding the voices for our characters is an exciting milestone. We’ve spent years developing their stories and personalities, and we’re looking forward to hearing actors bring them to life.

Our release date remains February 8, 2027, and the team’s focus is on making Wild Life the best experience we can for that day.

There is still plenty of work ahead, and some of it is more involved than we anticipated. But seeing these improvements take shape makes us even more excited for you to experience the results.

We’ll continue sharing our progress through our Friday development updates, with more looks at the changes as they come together.

Thank you for your patience and for continuing to support us. This community has made Wild Life possible, and we can’t wait to put the finished game in your hands.

-Wild Life Team

Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report.

Level: 
This week, we continued our efforts in the Apoc Canyon and Grassland regions and pushed a lot of minor changes. We also started auditing our assets and textures to plan the improvements we want to make over the coming weeks regarding performance and visual quality, in preparation for an extensive lighting update for the world map. Level Design continues to work on the Cannibal cave systems, and our 3D Artists continued working on additional requested meshes for the environment.

Code:
This week, we made some status effects changes. If you have the Tough Skin perk, dashing will reduce the remaining time of the burn effect, and with the Tough Veins perk, the poison effect will never kill you. We implemented some new effects for food buffs as well, e.g. health or exhaustion regeneration, damage or armor buffs, etc.
On top of that, we changed how weapon attribute requirements work. Now, instead of preventing you from equipping the weapon if you don't meet all requirements, the weapon will deal significantly less damage, scaling with how many attribute points you're missing.
Additionally, a lot of sounds have been implemented, mainly for NPC routines, as well as in-world music for the Umbar Temple.
Hovering over inventory items now shows additional details, including recipe ingredients, changes to life stat values, and status effect descriptions and durations.
Hitting an enemy with a ranged weapon now also displays a hit indicator on the screen.

Character:
We continued work on Maya’s Sandshark Scale armor. We also started working on proper character mesh LODs.

Animations:
In the animation department, we are now fully focusing on the Umbar VIP area minigames and the remaining animations that are needed for them to work as planned.

Design:
On the quest side, locking characters down for voice recording continues. We've also started with the quest structure for Maya's VIP orgy with Mayor Othys - similar to Max, she will have to get some special guests before the party can start.
On the other side of the world, we are finishing up the polishing of the secret lab area. Quests and transitions between chapters are working properly now. Items and new enemies were added, as well. We went over all the interactables with logs and holos, assigned flavorful names, and adjusted positioning. Commander Fox can now be found in the Secret Lab. Spawn logic for all Blackrocks was reworked. As a side quest, we also worked on tooltips for consumables and recipes.
We implemented the 5 arena champions now, which are fully functional in the world. If Max is a warrior, he can challenge them. Maya can do it in any case. Winning a duel grants one of the 5 exploration perks related to a weapon.
We also did the first implementation of the "Mayday Mayday" quest where Max has to rescue a bunch of crashed survivors. Last but not least, we are working on populating the Cannibal Jungles with their name giving Cannibals, and making sure their camps look alive.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team

Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report.

Level: 
During this week, we continued working on the Grassland hills and Apoc Canyon, adding more detail to these regions through foliage updates, landscape polishing, and more. Level Design focused on everything surrounding the cannibal tribe located in the Umbar Forest and near Warrior Village. Meanwhile, our 3D Artists updated the grappling hook assets to improve their look and visibility, making sure they don't get lost in the visual noise of the environment.

Code:
This week, we implemented outfit skin masks. This works like the existing outfit fur masks and allows us to "hide" skin under clothing to prevent it from clipping through the clothing.

On the sandbox side, the custom materials for Props, Decals, and Voxels have received an additional "Channel" parameter for the Roughness and Metallic slots. This can be useful if your external material textures have data stored in multiple channels (for example, ORM/ARM, or other custom packed textures). In those cases, you can put the same texture in both slots and select the corresponding R/G/B/A channel.

Character:
In the character department we have been continuing work on the Sandshark Scale armor for Maya. The model is currently in its high-poly state and we are adjusting the different plate parts for better proportional sizes. We also finished a new mask outfit intended for our cannibal enemies in the game.

Animations:
On the animation side, we mopped up a few more small tasks this week such as a new special attack for the Feral Lion boss and Lazra, and interaction animations for the player like pushing a button on a wall. We also made a few variations for taunting animations, so NPCs look more lively during group fights.
Additionally, we spent some time evaluating various animations for use in the Umbar Temple VIP area. There will be various smaller minigames for Maya and for Max using existing animations and some new ones.

Design:
On the quest side, we have been working on the main story chapter 4, getting everything to work.
We have also started locking the first characters down for voice recording, which will start soon. This involves going through every character meticulously, starting with the important romance ones, and double checking that they have all lines they need - as once recording starts, they will be set in stone. We also did a test recording this week to help optimize our workflow.
Further, we implemented a little bonus scene for Sahid at the end of the "On Thin Ice" quest: After freeing Sahid from Gulhragg, he can now be found back in the Warrior Village. Maya can talk to him there and offer to help him with his libido - before it gets him into trouble again!
We additionally completed a couple of small tasks like adding the last melee weapons and updating the dialogues with the latest native speaker revisions. 
Lastly, we implemented 5 arena champions scattered in the world. Max and Maya can challenge them to a friendly duel. Winning grants the player a unique perk based on the arena champion's weapon proficiency.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team

Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report.

Level: 
This week, the Level Artists moved on to the next regions, starting a first set dressing pass in the Apoc Canyon and Grassland regions. The focus is on increasing the level of detail in these areas, with improvements to cliff-to-ground transitions, riverbeds, increasingly detailed landscape painting, and more. Level Design is currently working on additional content in the Apoc Canyon, and our 3D Artists started work on quest-relevant assets and polishing foliage assets, adding details like moss to tree bases.

Code:
This week, we worked on resolving some issues, e.g. we implemented a solution to prevent loading screens during cutscenes, and resolved a few issues with the save game. We also improved Shey's melee tutorial sequence. 
In the sandbox, some small additions have been made. The character customization screen has received some more options: Skin Normal Strength, Skin Specular, Hair Roughness, Hair Metallic, Teeth Color, Tongue Color, and Eyebrow Highlight.
For custom materials, the 'Texture Randomness' option that is currently available for Voxel materials can now also be used for normal materials, too.

Character:
In the character department, we have been working on a set of low-resolution NPC models based on existing outfits and characters. These are rigged using a much lighter skeleton with way less bones and model details. They are going to be the enemies and non-interactable NPCs that we populate the world with, designed to have a minimized performance footprint. We also finished the concept for a special armor set for Maya built out of Sandshark scales. Model production for that will begin shortly.

Animations:
On the animation side, we added a few more routine animations, such as Kim making her "medicine" in the tutorial and a new special attack for the legendary sword Maya can find.

Design:
On the Design/Quest side, we gave all lizard enemies custom combat AIs and did some slight number-balancing on them. We have filled the area around Apoc with bandits and camps and added routine behaviors to them to make them feel more alive.
We are also focusing deeper on chapter 4 to polish player flow and introduce improvements to the overall content.
In the Alpha Camp, we have implemented the Max x Shey rooftop date minigame. We also addressed various player feedback, such as making Shiva's Blackwing search area a bit easier, and resolved some issues with the new quests from Otto, Ivanov, and Milanna. In Umbar, we have added a few quest-related paintings by Zumon and Sheema. Maya can now get a painting from Sheema that will appear in her house in the Warrior Village, should you decide to appreciate his "avant-garde” art. Likewise, Max can get a painting from Zumon that will go up in his quarters in Alpha Camp. In the Warrior Village, we have also gone and made an overall improvement pass around all Max related quests and dialogues.
We also made some initial preparations for a thorough lighting pass for all the minigame scenes. It will get tackled as soon as the general lighting setup is done.
Another quest we worked on is the Garden Hill questline in the Great Plains where Max can prove himself as an honorary member of a pig gang: “The Rosy Cheeks”.
We also started implementing the Arena Champions, where players can unlock weapon perks.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team