Development Update 16.01.2026

Level: 
With our return to the office last week, the Environment team focused on the Secret Area and Yterra, finalizing the tileset blockout for the production of finished assets. On the tribal side, we added patterns to the buildings of the Sky Village to introduce a touch of color.

Code:
In the code department, we have implemented two new ambient creatures; the Jelly Bomb and Jelly Baby. The Jelly Bomb is an airborne jellyfish that gives you a painful zap if you get too close. The Jelly Baby is a small version of the Bomb and can be picked up and used in crafting.

New interactable world objects like the ancestor shrines and being able to dig up chests/objects have been added, as well.

In addition to that, we implemented quest markers that allow for a search radius display, both in-world and on the map screen.

We have also started implementing improvements to how equipped weapons are displayed on characters.

Lastly, a new set of  character screens is in the works now: an overview tab for displaying current character stats as well as spending learning points on attributes and a perk tab for spending learning points on perks.

For the sandbox, we removed the "Start Time Of Day" and "Day Length" from the game settings and moved them into the sandbox scene level settings to allow changing these options on a per-scene basis.

Character:
We finished up the final model for the new Skyray and, this week, we finished rigging, a basic flight animation loop, and implementation into the engine. Also, a feral boss model has been implemented - Gorgh the leader of the cannibals. We are working on a cool new outfit for Shey, as well, and work on the collectible Ancient armor set has moved to the high-poly stage.

Tech Art supported the Character department with updates and cleanup of our character materials, adding additional features such as FX layers for wetness, blood, and dirt. Additionally, we looked into general optimizations to reduce texture sizes in order to ease VRAM usage, while keeping the overall quality of our characters.

Animations: 
In the animation department, we created a bunch of small animations needed for certain features to be finished: grappling hook animations for Max, a special move for a feral miniboss, a flying shock stagger for when Maya collides with flying jellyfish - also called Jelly Bombs, and an animation for interacting with shrines. We fixed an issue in dialogue emotions that caused arms to behave strangely, as well.
We are also continuing to work on sandbox animations here or there as time allows so that that content doesn't come too short ;)
As for mocap, we have shot a few animations needed for hologram-sequences and a few minor cutscene-reshoots..

Design:
For the combat, we took in the feedback from the community on the arena combat and already designed various improvements for many different aspects.
Along with that, we designed various improvements to be able to fully implement and benchmark ranged combat.
And last but not least, we took a first dab at how we can do proper controller support.

For quests, Lala's quest has been improved, specifically the Flint part of it - you now have two ways to get rid of her for him and both yield different rewards. Also, Denna's quest dialogues have seen a major overhaul to bring them more in line with what we envision Sky Village to be like.
In the design team we also worked on adding zones for music and ambient sounds for all the biomes and caves.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team

Wild Life Skin Wetness Demo (YouTube)