DevBlog 65 for The Isle is live on Steam and it reads like a month of polish plus a handful of systems that change how some species play. The update covers UI panel work, new mutations (including a gender change and a female-only egg laying mutation), a theme-driven skin system, fresh pteranodon controls, a massive above-ground lab location, audio pass notes, and a long list of QA fixes and balance adjustments planned for the hordetest branch.
UI and mutations – Lead programmer Filipe says the team spent time updating remaining UI panels and squashing the bugs that came with that work. New mutations include one that swaps a character’s gender and another that lets a female lay eggs without a mate so nests can form more often. A few legacy mutations received balance tweaks and some bug fixes ahead of wider testing. Filipe also described a new skin system that uses themes to offer different color palettes per creature, for example a Forest theme skewing toward greens, letting the art team avoid clashing combinations while giving players more variety.
Pteranodon handling changes – Ariel spent most of the month on the pteranodon. The dive roll was reworked so it no longer triggers on every downward flight input; it now activates when players double-tap Ctrl for crouch, which prevents accidental dives. Turning has also been rethought: sharp turns are now tied to air braking so players use the same input to brake and make tighter turns instead of feeling the animal snap abruptly. That pteranodon work follows the flight rework and texture cleanup covered in our earlier analysis of DevBlog 64’s pteranodon flight rework and texture upgrades, and this entry feels like the natural follow up where the team polishes those systems.
Art and environments – VisualTech48 focused on a new above-ground labs facility that spans roughly 110 meters and contains a dozen room types including a lab hub, armory, offices, containment areas, and multiple access points so players are less likely to get trapped. The artist also built two habitation buildings with kitchens, bedrooms, and lounges. Below are several screenshots provided by the team.
Art team palette work – 2D artist Tapwing has been narrowing base palettes to stop wildly clashing color combos and creating alternate color sets so creatures like Tenontosaurus or Omniraptor can have believable green or yellow themes without ending up eye-wrenching.
Audio – Wedge finished final touches on Allosaurus audio and worked heavily on Kentrosaurus, landing a cohesive set of adult and juvenile sounds. Austroraptor final vocal batches are in with new vocal animations, and the audio team replaced older footstep sounds and started a new footstep system to scale properly as creatures grow.
QA, bugs, and balance – QA lead hypno outlined a long list of issues being tracked and fixed for the hordetest builds. Notable items include a Tyrannosaurus bug that allowed it to crush burrows and eat occupants, sparring replication issues between Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, and a fix underway for entombing which sometimes reset player skins and swapped sex. The team also removed diet-driven increased growth speed for elders so adult and elder characters last longer before entombment.
QA added that server queuing will return to all servers for the evrima update after a trial on one hordetest server, and Don has been tuning damage, knockdown thresholds, fracture modifiers, and stamina values for many large species to make encounters feel fairer. Allosaurus saw bleed values toned down and a bug that kicked it from servers when pouncing at prime elder status is targeted for the next hordetest patch.
Small playable characters received a quality of life change: Beipiaosaurus, Dryosaurus, Hypsilophodon, and Troodon will no longer become infertile at 100 percent growth so they have time to form nests, a change already present in the latest hordetest builds.
There are a few short example clips in the post showing odd AI behavior and other quirks; the team included canonical video links for quick reference.
The developer stresses that feedback is critical right now as these changes are being validated on hordetest before any move to the evrima branch, and players are encouraged to report anything odd so those edge cases get fixed.
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The Isle
Developed by Afterthought Games
