Development · Roadmap

What comes next.
Lion’s Life comes first.

WildLives is at Version 0.3 and is being developed toward a stable Version 1.0. The next work stays focused on Lion’s Life. Other animals and worlds come later.

Before the larger packs

Work before Version 1.0.

No release dates are set yet. Work will be grouped into updates and tested before it is called finished.

Ongoing

Feature updates

Additions to Lion’s Life will arrive in smaller releases: better animal behavior, clearer pride interactions, more reasons to explore, and better information while playing.

Ongoing

Stability and bug fixes

Startup, saves, movement, animation, browser support, and long sessions all need continued testing and correction on the way to Version 1.0.

Ongoing

Presentation and access

Controls, camera behavior, interface clarity, performance, download size, sound, contrast, reduced motion, documentation, and accessibility will keep improving.

Ongoing

Expansion preparation

Lion’s Life comes first. Other animals and habitats remain later work until the current game and shared code are dependable.

Work that continues between releases

These areas need attention throughout development, not only when a large feature is added.

Between releases

Controls and camera

Keyboard and mouse feel, camera orbit and distance, clear prompts, sensitivity, alternate inputs, eventual remapping, and hands-on input testing.

Between releases

Animation and animal models

Turning, foot placement, walking, stalking, running, attacking, feeding, drinking, resting, swimming, injury, age, sex, and a recognizable silhouette for every animal.

Between releases

Savanna art passes

Terrain, grass, rocks, water, trees, weather, light, distance detail, landmarks, portraits, visual scale, and the removal of anything that breaks the natural-history presentation.

Between releases

Sound and communication

Animal calls, direction and distance, movement, weather, water, combat feedback, quiet periods, individual voices where needed, and player control over music.

Between releases

Accessibility

Readable scale and contrast, reduced motion, text and sound cues, subtitles where applicable, focus states, input alternatives, and assists that do not conceal what the simulation is doing.

Between releases

Performance and download size

Smaller exports, staged loading, quality presets, culling, lower-memory options, startup measurement, browser profiling, and long-session checks.

Between releases

Saves and recovery

Versioned saves, safe migration, corrupt-save rejection, autosave, manual slots, clearer recovery, portable exports, and cloud sync only when the architecture can support it honestly.

Between releases

Interface and field information

A restrained HUD, animal and group information, contextual actions, notifications, tutorials, journals, and knowledge revealed through play instead of permanent omniscience.

Between releases

Testing and simulation tools

Deterministic seeds, AI inspection, population graphs, event logs, save fixtures, automated contracts, performance capture, balance controls, and repeatable browser checks.

Between releases

Browser and device support

Current desktop browser stability first, followed later by installable web builds, offline support, storage management, touch controls, battery settings, and practical device testing.

The expansion plan

Later expansions and games.

The first six plans add more depth to Lion’s Life. Separate animal games and habitats come later and will need their own movement, senses, social behavior, and survival rules.

Lion’s Life expansion01 · Hard CountrySurvival becomes a matter of condition, place, and changing weather—not simply keeping a few meters full.
  • Body condition that distinguishes fat, muscle, fullness, nutrition, exhaustion, sickness, pain, stress, blood loss, and infection.
  • Injuries tied to parts of the body, with limping, reduced strength, slower movement, wound recovery, fractures, and lasting consequences.
  • Healing shaped by hydration, nutrition, time, shelter, sleep quality, temperature, and the seriousness of the injury.
  • Rain, storms, heat waves, drought, wet and dry seasons, changing temperatures, wind, and weather that alters animal decisions.
  • Water holes, rivers, and lakes that shrink, flood, become dirty, carry disease, or turn dangerous as conditions change.
  • Food with age, freshness, nutritional value, contamination, ownership, decomposition, and competition from scavengers.
  • Scent carried by wind, tracks and spoor left on suitable ground, concealment, movement noise, and information that fades with time and rain.
  • Daily animal schedules for feeding, drinking, resting, travel, shelter, migration, and avoiding dangerous hours or places.
  • Ground and water that matter: mud, rock, sand, slopes, currents, deep-water movement, swimming, drowning risk, and shoreline hazards.
  • A more legible physical-condition record so injuries, illness, recovery, and environmental pressure can be understood without turning the game into a spreadsheet.
Lion’s Life expansion02 · Pride CountryThe pride grows from a group of nearby lions into a social world with memory, loyalties, conflict, and land worth defending.
  • Named lions with individual trust, affection, fear, familiarity, rivalry, resentment, confidence, stress, and remembered events.
  • Greeting, grooming, play, submission, threats, avoidance, reconciliation, grief, food sharing, cub defense, and social learning.
  • Membership, expulsion, rank, leadership challenges, alliances, coalitions, factions, and disagreements inside the pride.
  • Group travel and coordinated hunts in which position, experience, stamina, risk, and the reactions of other lions matter.
  • Carcass ownership and feeding order that can strengthen relationships, create resentment, or expose weak pride members.
  • Recognizable calls and individual voices, with direction, distance, emotional state, imperfect interpretation, and group response.
  • A territory map built from patrols and familiarity, with borders, scent marks, resource pressure, crossings, losses, and contested ground.
  • Rival prides and male coalitions that raid, challenge, divide, take over, retreat, or form temporary arrangements instead of acting as simple enemies.
  • Reputation and group decisions that reflect what the player has actually done over time, including protection, abandonment, aggression, and care.
  • A social history that survives individual moments so friendships, grudges, grief, leadership, and family ties shape later behavior.
Lion’s Life expansion03 · BloodlinesA complete life matters from cubhood to death, and the next generation inherits more than a name.
  • Playable cub, juvenile, subadult, prime adult, mature adult, elder, and declining stages with different bodies, limits, risks, and responsibilities.
  • Juvenile play, imitation, protected exploration, dependence, skill practice, teaching, and the gradual move into adult life.
  • Courtship and mate choice shaped by relationships, health, rank, fertility, kinship, opportunity, and the surrounding pride.
  • Pregnancy, den choice, non-graphic birth, nursing, guarding, teaching, cub growth, loss, and different forms of parental care.
  • Family trees, parentage, biographies, major life events, natural and violent deaths, and continuation through a living descendant.
  • Inherited build, coat, size, health, fertility, temperament, and other plausible traits without turning genetics into fantasy upgrades.
  • Rare traits and mutations kept biologically grounded, with population health, isolation, inbreeding, and compatible gene flow represented honestly.
  • Personality, instinctive pressure, learned skills, knowledge of places, trauma, confidence, habit, and behavior that changes through experience.
  • Family and regional traditions that can be taught, copied, altered, forgotten, or lost when the animals carrying them disappear.
  • A long-range Evolution Mode for population traits, selection, isolation, environmental pressure, and change across many generations.
World expansion04 · The Living SavannaThe land continues to change when the player is elsewhere, creating a world with its own ecological history.
  • A broader roster of predators, herbivores, scavengers, birds, reptiles, insects, and small animals with distinct ecological roles.
  • Births, deaths, age structure, carrying capacity, predator pressure, disease, dispersal, and regional population change.
  • Food webs, vegetation growth, grazing pressure, migration routes, seasonal herd movement, scavenging, and carcass decay.
  • Disease transmission through animals, food, water, parasites, density, and outbreaks that can reshape a region.
  • Drought, flood, fire, storms, prey booms, population crashes, and other events with consequences that outlast the visual effect.
  • Connected regions shaped by elevation, soil, mud, rock, sand, trails, water, shelter, vegetation, and recognizable local character.
  • Dynamic rivers and lakes, ecological succession, changing climate patterns, disaster history, and places transformed by repeated use.
  • Shelter with different tradeoffs for concealment, temperature, disease, sleep, injury recovery, offspring, and access to resources.
  • Lightweight off-screen simulation that preserves important lives and trends without trying to run every distant footstep at full detail.
  • World history, population records, stability measures, and geographic memory that let players see how the savanna arrived at its present state.
Lion’s Life expansion05 · Human FrontierRoads, settlements, livestock, research, conflict, and conservation enter the same landscape without turning people into a single moral category.
  • Villages, farms, ranches, roads, fences, protected areas, tourism zones, research sites, and settlement growth over time.
  • Rangers, herders, farmers, drivers, researchers, veterinarians, tourists, poachers, officials, and residents with different goals and reactions.
  • Encounters involving vehicles, fences, livestock, noise, light, waste, fire, deterrence, injury, rescue, observation, and avoidance.
  • Human responses shaped by the animal’s history and context rather than a universal friendly-or-hostile setting.
  • Institutions and policies for land use, roads, hunting, livestock, compensation, protected areas, research, tourism, and enforcement.
  • Conservation projects such as corridors, water work, veterinary care, conflict prevention, relocation, monitoring, and habitat restoration.
  • Research that builds knowledge through sightings, collars, surveys, samples, cameras, and long-term animal records.
  • Poaching and wildlife conflict modeled through pressure, opportunity, enforcement, economics, fear, and community response.
  • Several coexistence outcomes, from local collapse or separation to unstable compromise and durable shared landscapes.
  • An optional Conservation Mode that works on the same ecology while clearly separating human knowledge from what the animal can know.
Lion’s Life expansion06 · Stories of the SavannaThe game learns how to remember a life without forcing it into a scripted hero story.
  • Life, Lineage, Scenario, Ecosystem, Documentary, Custom World, Iron Life, and Story Life modes built from the same simulation rules.
  • Scenarios for survival, dispersal, drought, injury, pride conflict, parenting, migration, conservation pressure, and ecological change.
  • Dynamic events whose outcomes depend on place, timing, condition, relationships, and choices instead of a fixed quest chain.
  • A journal and emergent narrative record that distinguish observed facts, the animal’s knowledge, and uncertain interpretation.
  • Animal biographies, names, family records, deaths, important locations, discoveries, traditions, and player-controlled lineages.
  • An archive for completed and former lives, including timelines, relationships, maps, traits, causes of death, and the world they left behind.
  • A Field Guide that grows through play, observation, and discovery rather than revealing every system and species on the first visit.
  • Observation and documentary cameras, replay, timeline comparison, and a world chronicle assembled from recorded simulation events.
  • Museum displays, fossils where appropriate, family trees, dioramas, and shareable life stories built from a real saved history.
  • Achievements that encourage learning and unusual lives without replacing the open-ended survival simulation.
Future animal game07 · Hyena ClanA separate hyena life centered on rank, endurance, cooperation, cub dens, scavenging, and wearing stronger animals down.
  • A hyena body with its own gait, stamina, bite, senses, calls, needs, injuries, interface, growth, aging, and death.
  • Matriarchal clan rank, family lines, greeting ceremonies, alliances, rivalries, internal politics, and inherited social position.
  • Group hunting, long pursuits, carcass discovery, bone feeding, food theft, mob defense, and conflict over access.
  • Cub dens, nursing, guarding, learning, play, dispersal, and the risks faced away from the clan.
  • Lion rivalry, neighboring clans, territorial pressure, dangerous travel, drought, disease, and human encounters.
  • A separate browser game and save lineage, with deeper hyena lives also enriching Lion’s Life as neighboring animals.
Future animal game08 · Wild Dog PackA pack life built around endurance, group decisions, coordinated pursuit, and keeping vulnerable members alive.
  • Wild dog movement, heat management, stamina, scent, calls, pursuit hunting, injury, growth, aging, and death.
  • Pack roles, rallying, voting, route choice, territory, cooperation, and coordinated chase paths.
  • Den selection, breeding pairs, pups, guarding, teaching, regurgitated food, and care for sick or injured members.
  • Food sharing, separation, reunion, dispersal, pack collapse, and the cost of losing experienced adults.
  • Competition with lions and hyenas that rewards avoidance and cooperation instead of making every encounter a direct fight.
  • A separate browser game and save lineage, with wild dog packs joining the wider savanna once their simulation is ready.
Future animal game09 · Elephant HerdA long-lived herd story about memory, family knowledge, water, migration, grief, and protecting calves.
  • Elephant locomotion, feeding, drinking, trunk use, low-frequency calls, senses, defensive anatomy, growth, aging, and death.
  • Matriarchal leadership, family bonds, allomothering, calf learning, reunion, mourning, and collective decisions.
  • Remembered migration routes, seasonal water knowledge, drought choices, landscape familiarity, and long-distance travel.
  • Tree damage, trail creation, digging, water access, and the herd’s physical effect on other animals and vegetation.
  • Roads, farms, fences, vehicles, tourism, research, rescue, and conflict experienced from an elephant’s point of view.
  • A separate browser game and save lineage, with persistent elephant families also present in the shared savanna.
Future animal game10 · Leopard ShadowsA solitary life about remaining unseen, reading vertical space, protecting hidden young, and holding an overlapping range.
  • Leopard climbing, balancing, jumping, dragging prey, ambushing, tree caching, senses, growth, aging, and death.
  • Dense cover, branches, rocks, nocturnal hunting, vertical escape routes, and species-specific sight, hearing, and scent.
  • Solitary scent borders, overlapping ranges, courtship encounters, conflict, avoidance, and dispersal.
  • Hidden dens, vulnerable cubs, moving young between shelters, guarding, feeding, and teaching them to hunt.
  • Avoiding lions, hyenas, people, and other pressures that can steal a kill or expose a den.
  • A separate browser game and save lineage, with leopards later added to the shared savanna ecology.
Future ecosystem collection11 · New Wild WorldsNew habitats become focused games with animals and controls built for those places, not reskinned versions of Lion’s Life.
  • North American forests with wolves, bears, deer, foxes, beavers, woodland seasons, rivers, and changing food webs.
  • Mountain country with cougars, eagles, mountain goats, altitude, cliffs, snow, shelter, and vertical travel.
  • Arctic tundra and sea ice with polar bears, caribou, Arctic foxes, seals, extreme seasons, and shifting coastlines.
  • Rainforests with jaguars, capybaras, harpy eagles, canopy routes, dense cover, flooding, and river systems.
  • Wetlands, coasts, and open ocean with crocodiles, herons, otters, orcas, dolphins, sharks, turtles, depth, currents, and acoustic senses.
  • Desert and outback lives built around heat, scarce water, burrows, nocturnal activity, fire, and large travel distances.
  • Avian flight, reptile thermoregulation, small-animal scale, burrow systems, and experimental invertebrate colonies.
  • Domestic dog and cat worlds covering family homes, work, shelters, streets, farms, feral lives, and relationships with people.
  • Each ecosystem delivered as a manageable game with its own species, save history, performance budget, and scientific boundaries.
Future platform expansion12 · Wildlife Without BordersFinished worlds may eventually connect through migration, records, and a shared player history without becoming one enormous download.
  • A global map linking completed ecosystem games while allowing each one to remain technically independent.
  • Animal and lineage transfers only when geography, species, biology, and save compatibility make them reasonable.
  • Meta-populations, migration between suitable worlds, regional populations, and changing conservation status.
  • Global climate, disease, development, habitat, and conservation events with different local consequences.
  • A documentary archive that can draw from finished worlds without rewriting or flattening their individual histories.
  • A persistent player profile for species knowledge, discoveries, completed lives, lineages, fossils, and museum records.
  • Long-lived worlds, optional content seasons, explicit versioning, and strict simulation rules across every connected game.
Distant-future collection13 · Prehistoric WildLivesDeep-time animal games organized around specific periods and fossil formations rather than a mixed dinosaur park.
  • Separate Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, pre-dinosaur, and post-dinosaur settings with no unexplained mixing of eras.
  • Period-appropriate plants, climates, coastlines, atmosphere, geography, species, and clearly labeled scientific uncertainty.
  • Focused worlds based on formations such as Hell Creek, Morrison, Nemegt, Yixian, and Kem Kem.
  • Theropods, ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, sauropods, armored dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles, early mammals, and other period animals.
  • Species-specific anatomy, scale, senses, digestion, feeding, locomotion, nesting, eggs, imprinting, and parental behavior.
  • Hatchling-to-adult body changes, changing diets, changing threats, growth rates, and age-based habitat use.
  • Prehistoric vegetation, carcass ecology, disease, parasites, volcanism, atmospheric conditions, and fossilization.
  • Continental change, climate transformation, species radiation, extinction events, asteroid survival, refuges, and extinction outcomes.
  • Optional alternate-history scenarios kept separate from the evidence-based worlds and labeled for what they are.
  • A Fossil Record, museums, documentaries, life histories, and scenario collections that preserve both evidence and uncertainty.
Long-term tools and online work14 · Creator and Shared WorldsCreation, mobile, and shared play remain later work, after the single-player simulation is stable enough to support them responsibly.
  • Species, behavior, scenario, world, climate, and food-web tools built on the same data-driven rules as the official games.
  • Validation for impossible anatomy, unstable ecosystems, missing credits, unsupported assets, and unmarked scientific uncertainty.
  • Supported art, audio, map, interface, and behavior mods with versions, attribution, dependencies, and compatibility records.
  • A moderated community library with reporting, ratings, update history, safety controls, and clear ownership boundaries.
  • Optional shared ecosystems, cooperative animal groups, shared lineages, and asynchronous worlds without human weapons or fantasy powers.
  • Private, family, and classroom worlds with host controls, educational settings, privacy safeguards, and limited communication.
  • Mobile conversion, touch controls, installable web builds, offline play, battery modes, cloud saves, and device testing when practical.
  • Deterministic simulation tools, AI inspection, population graphs, event logs, save fixtures, performance capture, and balance controls for creators.

This roadmap can change. Names, order, scope, and delivery are not final. The immediate goal is a stable Lion’s Life Version 1.0.