The Road to Wild Life 1.0
Hey everyone,
We want to give you a clear overview of what is happening over the coming months as we approach the release of Wild Life 1.0 on February 8, 2027.
February 8 is not a tentative or placeholder date. It is the confident and determined release goal our entire team is working toward. Everyone on the team is giving their best to deliver the strongest possible 1.0, and we are incredibly excited to finally share the result with all of you.
What happens next
This Week: First overhaul of our Steam page, this steampage will continue to evolve during the next couple of months
End of September / early October: Wild Life reaches content complete
October onward: Full transition into polishing and optimization
Early December: Final gameplay trailer and our final visual overhaul of the Steam page
February 8, 2027: Release of Wild Life 1.0
The current DEMO will be removed
The demo currently available on Steam is based on a 2022 crowdfunding build. It is several years old and no longer represents what Wild Life has become or what players can expect from the final game.
The demo will be removed next week on Friday the 11th of September
Anyone who still wants to experience this old version should download it now
There is no other demo currently planned for Wildlife
From content complete to polishing
By the end of September or early October, we plan to reach one of the most important milestones in Wild Life’s development:
Content complete.
From that point onward, the team will fully transition into the polishing phase, focusing on:
Optimization and performance
Bug fixing and stability
Gameplay balancing
Visual consistency
General polish across the complete game
Our goal is not simply to finish the game. We want to use the remaining months to deliver the best possible version of Wild Life 1.0 in February.
Sandbox and additional context
Wild Life 1.0 will launch without the Sandbox. This allows our team to fully focus on completing and polishing the story-driven game first.
The Sandbox will follow later in 2027 as free DLC for everyone who owns Wild Life. Before its release, it will receive a dedicated and much-needed polishing phase of its own, focused on stability, usability and the overall experience.
The Sandbox DLC will include all Sandbox content we have created throughout our crowdfunding journey up to the point of its release.
When we began crowdfunding Wild Life almost ten years ago, our community made this entire journey possible. We believe that fully honoring that promise means making everything we have created up to the Sandbox DLC release available through the purchase of the game.
Supporters who have reached at least $40 in lifetime support through our crowdfunding will be eligible to request a copy of Wild Life 1.0.
We will explain exactly how this process works in a separate post later this year, including the necessary steps.
Wild Life will cost $40
The Sandbox will follow as free DLC
There will be no battle passes
There will be no in-game microtransactions
Your $40 purchase gives you everything we have created, including the Sandbox DLC later in 2027
Stay connected with us
We will continue sharing our regular Friday development updates here on Steam, including progress from the polishing phase and the improvements being made ahead of release.
You can also join our Discord to speak directly with the team, discuss the latest updates and share your thoughts with us:
The entire team is focused and giving everything we have to deliver the best possible Wild Life 1.0 on February 8.
We are looking forward to sharing the result of this long journey with everyone, and we cannot wait to finally hear your feedback when Wild Life launches.
Thank you for following and supporting us.
Wild Life Team
Development Update 04.09.2026
Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report.
Level:
During this week, the set dressing for the Pillar Region and the Desert made steady progress, and we fixed various issues with the landscape blending of large cliff and rock assets, as well as the landscape normals, to improve shadow casting on our landscape mesh. Level Design and 3D Artists finished the tutorial area blockout, so our Design department was able to start implementing quests and routines. Additionally, as always, we continued implementing more final assets and adding new minor locations to the world map.
Code:
This week, we continued with the save system improvements. We are now using a different system which allows for saving asynchronously, reducing the game thread impact from 2 seconds down to 50 milliseconds, with potential to reduce it even further. The save file sizes are also significantly reduced from 6MB down to 1MB with the new system.
In the sandbox, we’ve been working on a bunch of smaller bug fixes, along with some improvements to the functionality and usability of the in-game file explorer.
You can now create folders directly from the file explorer, and there’s also a new tile-based view with larger thumbnail icons.
Thumbnail loading is now handled asynchronously as well. During testing, folders containing a large number of files and subfolders could cause a noticeable lag spike when navigating into them, so this should make browsing feel much smoother.
Character:
In the character department, we have now fully rigged and implemented the Caravan Slugroth into the game. We also transferred a few outfits to other characters for both sandbox and story mode needs.
Animations:
We have been working on some more routine animations for the bandits in the camps. We also made a routine animation for Milanna who will be doing some sort of sci-fi livestream as part of her quest. Additionally, we have worked on a couple of investor animation requests this week.
Design:
On the quest side, we fixed some issues with the Locu quest. It should now (hopefully) be clearer where you have to go and Mona will point you towards the letters in case you don't yet know where Maya's house is. The sex scene has also been polished up by fixing cameras and transitions.
On the combat front, we tweaked a couple things about ranged combat. Bows have been rebalanced to be way more effective from the get-go, but scale less with attributes and upgrades. The goal is to make them feel impactful right from the start of the game. Additionally, all ranged weapons properly use attribute requirements now, and arrow carry capacity was increased across the board.
We also planned out the improved game start to smooth out the introduction into the game world and make the arrival at the Alpha Camp feel more meaningful.
Thank you for all your continued support,
-Wild Life Team