Wild Dose: an important update

It's been a long time since I've given any news about Wild Dose, and it's time to take stock of why I've been silent in 2024. Sorry in advance for this probably “too long to read” post, but there's a lot to say.

A little background

In 2022, Lappi Soft was lucky enough to join the Polish acceleration program Digital Dragons, and thus obtain budget for the development of Wild Dose. Not being a 3D artist, I took advantage of this opportunity to work with two artists, Darya (part-time freelance) and Zuzanna (full-time junior), who joined me at the end of 2022, in order to have our own 3D models, our own identity.

I like to think we succeeded in giving Wild Dose a more assertive artistic direction, and I personally loved that period when we were building this world. Unfortunately, I soon realized that my impromptu role as art director was preventing me from making progress on production, given that I was the only developer/game-designer/level-designer.

At the beginning of 2023, I therefore decided to close the Polish branch of Lappi Soft by the end of the year, which meant parting company with Zuzanna (who finally left us in May 2023 for a new position). In June 2023, the Polish branch of Lappi Soft is mothballed before liquidation (the French “parent company” remains active). I decide it's time to go solo again for a full year to finalize all gameplay and narrative aspects of the game, before finalizing the artistic side (with Darya) using the remaining budget.

In July 2023, Wild Dose was announced as one of the 4 finalists in the Game Cup, France's independent video game cup, with the chance for first and second place to win 20,000 and 7,000 euros respectively.

What happened?

Unfortunately, a few days after the Game Cup nomination, my wife Aude (also co-founder of the studio and who was assisting me as narrative designer on Wild Dose) was diagnosed with a perforative corneal ulcer in her only functional eye. Knowing that she was already totally deaf (and had other disabilities, including balance, breathing and swallowing problems), the stakes were high.

The summer of 2023 was chaotic, with a total of 5 amniotic membrane transplants on her eye in the space of 3 months. In addition to the care and busy monitoring schedule, these surgeries left her temporarily blind. Her deafness and temporary blindness made communication extremely complicated and time-consuming (I wrote on her hand, letter by letter). What's more, Aude needed constant assistance with all activities of daily living.

Communicating with her to break her sensory isolation and combat the psychological exhaustion linked to the fear of losing her only valid eye was a full-time job. Added to this was the “business as usual” that I usually take care of (with weekly supervision from professionals): daily physiotherapy and speech therapy exercises to ensure that her breathing, swallowing and balance problems don't get any worse. I'd like to tell you that we'd always juggled her fragile health and were well versed, but we were now facing the biggest crisis of her medical journey. Production of Wild Dose has been on hold since the first operation in July 2023.

For the Game Cup, I still tried to produce a new teaser that would honor the work we'd done with Darya and Zuzanna. I was even able to free myself for an express trip to the final in Angoulême, where I missed out on second place by a few dozen votes (no regrets, I was really