WBO May Newsletter 2026

Welcome to May's Newsletter!

We’ve got some exciting new updates to share with you this month!

As a reminder, we are still very early in development, and everything shown is currently a work in progress. All features, designs, and visuals are subject to change as we continue refining and building the foundation of Wildborne.

We truly appreciate your patience, support, and enthusiasm as we grow this project from the ground up. Now, let’s dive in!

Co Owner / Lead Developer-

Hi again everybody! I'm really excited to show some new changes to our character creator, server improvements, UI changes and other technical updates.

Overhauling the Character Creator

I've been working on completely remaking our character creator to make it more intuitive and functional.

Markings are now put into their own individual layers that you can color either in batches or separately by checking them off. You'll also be able to adjust the positioning of layers and customize how they're stacked. Coloring your markings is done just using a simple color wheel, and there's also HTML/HEX color code support.

I've been working to improve just the overall look and feel of the UI for the character creator as well. Sliders now use gradients and there's new dropdown animations. And overall, it's looking just a little less busy and confusing.

Changing environment options for better previewing under specific conditions is now more advanced. The environment also gets saved with your character, so depending on your currently played character, it will change the vibe of the main menu itself. The environment options are especially useful for previewing your glowing markings/glowing eyes, and if you'd just like to see what your character looks like in dark conditions.

Improving the Onboarding Experience

We've recently stripped out our placeholder Main Menu level, and we're now using ZIO's MotherTree map as the back drop. Going from main menu to in-game is also much more streamlined, and makes more sense. We've gotten rid of a lot of confusing buttons and text, and did our best to make the UI/UX experience almost minimalistic. However, there's definitely still improvements to be made in terms of our UI design and general aesthetics.

Wandering Social Characters Prototype

This is a small but fun thing that I've been prototyping. As you build up your repertoire of characters, you'll start to see them be populated on the main menu map with all of their markings, sliders and other customizations. These characters wander around the map, perform occasional emotes like sitting and laying down, and even sometimes chase each other. I'm still brainstorming other interactions. You'll be able to fly around and watch them too if you'd like, and they can even be clicked on to take you straight to the Character Creator so you can edit that character.

New Graphics API Options

Previously, Wildborne exclusively used DirectX 12, which is most likely a key contributor for a lot of performance issues during our alpha testing. Especially if the player was running older hardware to play. The game now gets packaged with DX11, DX12 and Vulkan as options for you to choose. It will be a good idea to test each one to see what gives you the best performance when you boot up the game. Vulkan will also be a must for playing on Linux and Steam Deck, so that Wildborne can run natively on both platforms and not through Steam's Proton render translation.

Here's some benefits of using native vulkan vs steam's proton on Linux/Steam Deck

• No translation overhead, vulkan calls go directly to the Linux GPU driver

• Lower CPU usage

• More predictable FPS in general

• Faster initial Unreal Engine shader compilation

• Better compatibility & stability

Future Downloadable Demo

There's not too much to show or talk about on this subject just yet, but expect to see updates in the future about us releasing a playable demo for Wildborne. This is separate from our alpha test build, which is exclusive to previous backers, and future supporters. We believe this will help us get a lot of great feedback outside of our closed alpha testing. And will help players get a general feel of how the game will be on release before it's out.

What will the demo contain?

• The full current character creator with all of its markings and other features

• One tutorial map for you to explore

• A small batch of quests and NPCs to talk to

The demo will not contain any sorts of online/multiplayer/account features that are in our alpha test build. This is just an offline demo anyone can download so players can get an idea of how the game plays and functions. If you'd like to play Wildborne with all of the content we currently have, future updates as we go forward, and being able to play with others, you'll need to become a supporter and get alpha build access.

Other Small Additions...

I've been working on making items/pickups more visually and mechanically interesting. A lot of them will use procedural generation to make them all unique. Right now, this only applies to mushrooms and bundles of sticks. If there's a bundle of for example, 3 or more items in one spot, you'll be able to just pick one up to carry in your character's mouth, and then it can be dropped for other players.

We think this will be a lot of fun for players to create their own minigames, and could also be a lot of fun for roleplaying. Say you had a group that hunts and gathers. They can go out and find items, pick them up, and bring them back to a location your group is staying at. The spawn location of items is done on the server, so everyone can see and find an item in the same spot. But picking up those items is client only, you don't have to worry about other players stealing items before you can grab them.

However, if an item has been placed/dropped by a player, other players will be able to pick up that item. This is a similar system to some MMOs where you can drop and trade items on the server.

Got stuck on a map and not sure how to get back? I've added a "Stuck?" option in the pause menu which takes you right back to the last portal you went through. This is definitely a must since during our alpha testing, we had a lot of instances of players geting stuck, lost and just not sure how to find their way back to a portal.

Right now we still have limits placed on various character creator features like markings (9), character count (50) and presets (100). However, I've added a new option to the Gameplay Settings which lets you remove these arbitrary limits if you don't have worries about space/storage. You'll be able to make as many characters, and presets as you'd like but this only applies to both of those things. Markings will always be capped due to how they're rendered on the server.

Extra Information

• I've made great improvements to the general server architecture for Wildborne. Going forward with alpha testing, servers should now be much more stable with no crashes which will help our tests. In the past, we've had game breaking bugs like errors popping up and getting logged on map servers every tick/millisecond. This resulted in the server exhausting all resources with sometimes thousands of error logs every second, all day long, eventually not allowing any players to join that map. Essentially, it would silently crash. These bugs are now fixed, and it's feasible for us to run map servers 24/7.

• A lot of features for the game are going to be moved to the cloud, instead of being local. My first step is to move creating your characters to our cloud, instead of being local only. This means you can log in on any computer with your Steam account, and get all the characters you've made on another. We have plans to let you use the character creator also, even while offline with no internet access. Having characters persistently online is going to be needed too so we can let players preview all of another player's characters through the Social UI. You'll be able to showcase your favorite characters in your player card for others to see.

Again, thank you to our community for always supporting us, giving us great feedback and just being a wholesome community in general. I'm just as excited as everyone else to see how development continues! <3

Developers-

Branding & Visual Progress Update

We’d like to give a huge thank you to both Nukinit and Ani for their continued contributions toward Wildborne’s visual identity and branding!

Nukinit has continued work on the official Wildborne logos, including the completion of the finalized socials logo. These designs have played a major role in helping Wildborne establish a stronger and more recognizable identity across our platforms and community spaces as development continues moving forward.

Additionally, a huge thank you to Ani for assisting with vectoring the logo assets and images. Their work helps ensure the artwork remains clean, scalable, and usable across multiple forms of media, promotional content, and future branding materials.

Developer-

Mother Tree Progress Update

Zio has continued making fantastic progress on the Mother Tree map this month, with several new additions and environmental improvements now underway!

This month’s showcase includes newly created environmental models, updated cliff rocks, and an early work in progress look at the portal area. These additions are helping further shape the identity and atmosphere surrounding the Mother Tree region while continuing to push the map toward a more distinct experience.

Work has also continued on the new cave systems within the map, adding a deeper sense of exploration and environmental storytelling to the world as a whole. Even in their current state, the caves are already beginning to bring more depth and mystery to the environment.

Developer-

Continued Progress on Darkwoods

Development on Darkwoods (temporary name) has continued steadily this month thanks to Sito’s ongoing work on the environment and overall atmosphere of the map!

Darkwoods is currently being built with a heavier focus on mood, immersion, and exploration, helping further establish the darker fantasy side of Wildborne’s world design. From environmental detailing to terrain refinement and overall map flow, progress has continued to push the area closer toward a playable first iteration.

Developer-

Canyon Map Progress Update

Continued progress has been made on the Canyon map this month as environmental work and world building steadily move forward!

Development has primarily focused on expanding the overall landscape, refining terrain flow, and continuing work on the cave systems throughout the region. The goal with the Canyon map is to create a large, visually distinct environment that encourages exploration.

Additional detailing and refinement passes have also continued across the environment to further build atmosphere and improve the overall feel of traversal throughout the map. The cave systems in particular are beginning to add more depth to exploration opportunities.

Co Owner / Project Manager-

Roadmap, Crowd Funding & Community Support Update

This month has been incredibly eventful across all aspects of development, and we’re happy to officially announce that the Wildborne roadmap is now public!

The roadmap is intended to give everyone a clearer look into our current priorities, planned systems, development goals, and the direction we hope to take Wildborne throughout the coming year. As always, please remember that all roadmap goals are subject to changes, adjustments, and setbacks as development continues.

Additionally, after running a community poll this past month, we have decided to move forward with light crowdfunding support for the time being, patreon will come later.

Our Ko-Fi is now officially live for those who may prefer one time support instead of a monthly subscription. We have spent nearly a full year building Wildborne with passion, dedication, and an incredible team. Any support genuinely means the world to us as we continue pushing development forward.

Support directly helps with:

• Development Costs

• Software & Infrastructure

• Asset Creation

• Testing Phases

• Music & Audio

• Contractor Assistance

• Supporting the current Team

• Long-Term Sustainability of Wildborne

• And much more as development continues

Every bit of support helps us continue improving development, supporting the team behind the project, and building the future of Wildborne together.

You can find the link below!

Wildborne Ko-Fi

Member(s) of the Season

This season we’d also like to give a huge thank you and congratulations to our Member(s) of the Season as we bring this into our community:

Human_topicality_violation Rabidvixen_

Thank you both for your continued support, community engagement, and overall presence within Wildborne. Community members like you genuinely help make this space what it is, and we appreciate you being part of the journey with us.

As a thank you, both winners will be receiving:

• Alpha Access

• Exclusive MOTS Discord Tags

• Recognition within the community for the season

Congratulations once again, and thank you for being part of the Wildborne journey.

500 Member Milestone Contest Winners!

A huge thank you to everyone who helped us reach 500 members in our Discord community! This milestone means so much to us, and we're incredibly grateful for all of the support, excitement, feedback, and encouragement you've shown throughout Wildborne's development.

To celebrate, we held a raffle for two Alpha Access keys, and we're excited to officially announce our winners:

@Valeriusoffools @FishSticks!

Congratulations to both of you! We’ll be reaching out shortly with information regarding your prizes!

Thank you again to every single community member who has joined us on this journey so far. Watching Wildborne continue to grow has been amazing, and we're excited to share even more milestones, updates, and adventures with all of you as development continues.

Here's to the next 500 members! 🩵