Skip to main content

Wave0084 Studio: Year in Review 2025

· 2 min read
Hoang Nguyen
Hoang Nguyen
Creative Director

Year in Review

A Year of Shadows and Light​

As 2025 comes to a close, we at Wave0084 find ourselves looking back on a year of incredible growth, technical challenges, and significant milestones. It has been a year defined by the development of our flagship horror title, Lil Sis, and our commitment to pushing the boundaries of indie horror.

Major Milestones​

  • The Vertical Slice: In June, we completed the "Vertical Slice" of Lil Sis. This was a 15-minute playable segment that featured all our core systems: the Sanity-driven rendering, the Binaural audio, and the "Stalker" AI. This demo was instrumental in securing our latest round of funding.
  • Engine Transition: As discussed in our previous log, we made the bold decision to migrate to Unity 6. While it was a month of "technical debt" hell, the performance gains and new lighting features have already paid for themselves.
  • Community Growth: Our developer blog has seen a 300% increase in readership this year. Engaging with other developers and horror fans has provided us with invaluable feedback and motivation.

Lessons Learned (The Hard Way)​

No year is without its failures. Our initial attempt at a procedural level generation system for the "Dreamscape" sequences proved to be too "gamey" and broke the atmosphere. We had to scrap three months of work and pivot back to a hand-crafted, modular approach. It was a painful lesson in Pacing vs. Replayability.

The Path to 2026​

Our goals for the coming year are clear:

  1. Full Content Production: Moving from "systems" to "content." 2026 is about building out the remaining five chapters of Lil Sis.
  2. Voice and Motion Capture: Finalizing our performances using the budget-mocap pipeline we've refined this year.
  3. Public Beta: We aim to have a playable demo available for the public by late 2026.

We want to thank our community and our fellow developers for being part of this journey. The indie horror scene is more vibrant than ever, and we're proud to be a part of it. See you in the fog!