The Last Sanctum - Dragon Survival Game
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lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
The Last Sanctum - Dragon Survival Game
@lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
1.9K followers 1.3K following 210 posts
We're Lindwyrm Studios, the indie team behind The Last Sanctum, an upcoming dragon survival game! See our pinned posts for links.
Send a DM for inquiries :)
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lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
The Last Sanctum - Dragon Survival Game @lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social · Nov 21
Welcome, current and prospective followers! #TheLastSanctum is an upcoming survival game where you play as dragons. Our current goal is to complete a free demo. When the demo is done, we'll release a #Kickstarter campaign! We're all volunteers working in our free time, so no estimate at the moment.
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Happy Valentine's Day! Levin finally got Scoria to agree to that date. Including two versions of this picture so you can use it as a valentine if you'd like ♥️
#TheLastSanctum #tls #valentine #valentinesday #dragon #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #celebrate #3dart
February 14, 2026 at 9:58 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
As part of working on combat, we've gotten the UI hooked up to damage and stamina for testing! The visual is still WIP, and the drain values are higher than normal for testing.
#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #dragon #dragons #dragongame #ue5 #unrealengine #flight #stylized
February 14, 2026 at 3:33 AM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter February 06/2026 (1 image, 1 link)

VFX Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfrR...

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #Blender #3dart #pretty #flight #vfx
Coding Looked into multiple potential systems for combat interactions, particularly in how to interface locational damage and melee attacks with networking. (Sorry for not much progress here! We've been busy.) Models & Misc Finished the T2 Dragon's Broadcast call. This was a pretty simple adjustment since it's the same as the T3 call with adjusted pitch to make T2 sound younger. Updated animations for Scoria's sprint flap and tap flap. Updated flight smacks and animated skims for all flying wyrms (except T3 Dragon). Updated and added sockets to the T3 Dragon. The sockets are placed near the wingtips and chest so trail VFX and dive wind can be attached. Tweaked the setup of our wing trail VFX to adjust the appearance while still keeping performance in mind. Implemented our existing flight VFX! These include wing trails, speedlines, dive wind, and a camera zoom. Each VFX can activate and scale according to different velocity. Players will be able to disable effects in case of motion sickness. We have some very adjustable parameters, so we still might tweak the look and feel! The wing trails especially have some potential for future cosmetics, with changing the colour and emissives.
February 6, 2026 at 9:24 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
We just implemented speed lines and a small camera zoom for diving!
(Note: we plan to allow players to disable camera movement in case it makes them nauseous!)
#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #dragon #dragons #dragongame #ue5 #unrealengine #flight #stylized #dragonartists
January 30, 2026 at 9:40 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter January 23/2026 (2 images, 1 link)

Collision Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oukY...

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #Blender #3dart #pretty #flight
Models & Misc Animated the T2/T3 Dragon's Skim animation, and edited its Smack. These are both flight animations related to colliding with obstacles. We'll be doing this for the other wyrms as well! Worked on some NPC and menu UI concepts. Coding Implemented basic flight crashes. Hooked up multiple modes per ray-casting logic with scaling based on angle/speed. Added smooth rotation from crashes. Fixed issues with the user losing control during a crash. Added crash animation logic depending on side/severity of crash. Cleaned up raycast logic per-wyrm You might remember the wing raycasts from last newsletter. Now we've put them to work with implemented crashing! In case you forgot, the raycasts help the game see where the wyrm's wings are. A collision with the green line will be less severe than a collision with the red line. Now that collisions are implemented, we have several types of crashes: Adjustments, Skims, Smacks, Crashes. These are in order of severity and have different effects on the wyrm. Check the video below to see for yourself! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oukYReTdLmU Updated flight crashes based on testing feedback. Reworked crash angle and speed loss. Updated state logic for handling crash modes and severity. Hooked up crash animations. Fixed some bugs around animations playing multiple times. Fixed an issue where the wyrm would enter uncontrolled fall state during a stall (rather than the intended fall brake state). Fixed some issues around wing flap periodicity, particularly with Levin. Fixed some issues around falling and fall brakes (though they still need some work). Expanded options related to air resistance to help avoid excessive momentum preservation. Added in some basic scripts to help with wyrm stat fiddling. Now, we'll be able to adjust wyrm stats in a spreadsheet and import/export them to and from the game. This is particularly helpful with maintaining experimental versions of the physics for each wyrm! With the addition of crashes, all the main points of the flight system are done on the coding side! We'll still be doing number value tweaking and a couple more bug fixes in the background, but with this we're going to mostly move on from flight and switch to working on the combat system.
January 23, 2026 at 9:39 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Here's a closer look at our player HUD: top to bottom it's armour, HP, stamina, and anima (breath attacks), then hunger and thirst. The portrait changes depending on the wyrm you're playing, and body parts fade out as corresponding locational damage is taken.
#TheLastSanctum #dragon #2dart #indiedev
January 16, 2026 at 4:04 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter January 09/2026 (1 image, 1 video link)

Threaten Call: imgur.com/a/RupV7bS

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #Blender #3dart #scary #roar
This newsletter is pretty short, we're sleepy from the holidays! **Code & Animations** * Refactored player stats (such as health and stamina) to fit them in with movement logic rewrite. * Updated stamina logic to permit more per-wyrm control in movement. * Stamina use now is able to react to external events (such as enemy attacks or artefacts). * Cleaned up clutter that had developed around player controls and some outdated debugging logic. * Reimplemented the hooks for the UI. - Animated T3 Juvi Dragon's Friendly, Threaten and Surrender calls. Here's the Threaten call! Again, we're keeping the juvenile calls pretty short and simple so that the adult T4 wyrms shine.
January 10, 2026 at 2:11 AM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Takeoff has improved- no more weird-lookin boost! And it works well on inclines too!
#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #dragon #dragons #dragongame #ue5 #unrealengine #flight
January 3, 2026 at 6:24 AM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter December 27/2025 (2 images, 1 link)

Wing Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNwv...

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #Blender #3dart #pretty #flight
Coding & Misc Finished polishing the Broadcast, Threaten, Friendly, and Surrender calls for T3 Fire Dragon. Animated the animation for T3 Fire Dragon's Broadcast. You saw this on Bluesky last week! Generally improved takeoff logic and interactions. These changes all work together to make takeoff feel less clunky. Moved the end of takeoff to be while still on the ground rather than in flight. Extended the initial boost of takeoff over a period of time rather than on the first frame. Implemented various utility functions to help with fixed-length impulses (such as flapping and takeoff boosts). Adjusted the "vertical push" of takeoff to help with feel when taking off from a lower point. Added in logic and animations for stationary takeoff (the only revealed wyrm who uses this is Levin). Introduced basic raycasting logic for flight collisions. Implemented a straightforward algorithm for deterministic raycasting based on player state. Raycasting depends on tucking, diving, and flapping, but not braking Added in wyrm-specific logic for selecting ray angles and variations to help with different wing shapes. Will likely be adjusted depending on the wyrm and testing results. Implemented basic collision modes detection depending on hit point, angle, and speed. The effects of collisions are still WIP. Flight crashes still work as intended, and the player can now crash with a fast-enough wing clip. Implemented injured fall behavior for hard flight crashes. Raycasts essentially help the game "see" where your wings are during flight. We've visually represented these raycasts with red, yellow, and green lines (this is of course just for testing and not gameplay). Collisions with these lines will have different results. Green: Softer hit, likely a clip. Yellow: Harder hit. Red: Hardest hit, possibly a crash. As you can see, this allows players to pull off interesting maneuvers such as wing tucking in tight spaces to avoid wing collision. The space between the lines and the body is somewhat exaggerated for demonstration. This is intended to be synchronized across machines, so the traces may not perfectly match animations. The key difference is that we can calculate the raytrace angle based on clock time rather than frame count or other actions, so the result on the server will be exactly the same regardless of the client animations or calculations. This ensures the raytrace timing is consistent on all machines. This is very work in progress and not finalized.
December 27, 2025 at 9:33 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Fire Dragon's Broadcast call and accompanying animation is done! With the juveniles like Fire Dragon, we're keeping the calls much simpler and shorter to allow the calls of the unique adult wyrms to shine.
#TheLastSanctum #dragon #dragons #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #dragonartists #3dart
December 20, 2025 at 2:42 AM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
This is Iceclaw's Crescent Strike skin. Subtle but beautiful!

#TheLastSanctum #dragon #dragons #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #dragonartists #3dart #survival #survivalgame #creaturesurvival
December 5, 2025 at 10:46 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter November 28/2025 (2 images, 2 links)

Skin: imgur.com/a/pupsjU3
Flight Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTiw...

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #Blender #3dart #pretty #flight #texturepainting
Art & Misc Improved and expanded some game UI concepts. Updated our prospective control map (very subject to change of course). Finished painting the Bushfire skin. This is one of our favourites for Scoria so far, and we hope you like it even more than the preview last week! Coding This sprint was mostly spent bug-hunting! Improved ground logic to better handle momentum (especially when landing). Also includes some math-y fixes to help players slide less on turns. Improved ground collisions, especially with walls. You now slide off the wall instead of getting stuck to it. Fixed air collisions with walls to slide properly (though without friction until further testing for feel). Updated animation logic to include tap-flaps with transitions (which still needs some refinement). Fixed a silly bug where crouching would force you to move even if no other keys were pressed. Fixed a bug where the force from gravity was retained even after landing with tucked wings, making it impossible to get off the ground. With all these combined, we'd like to show you the improvements! Disclaimers: Transitions will be polished in general. Some of them are very snappy at the moment. The landing animation still needs to be added. Video breakdown: At the beginning it shows air to ground momentum preservation, where you'll be able to keep some of your air momentum if you land properly. Next, it shows tap flaps vs sprint flaps. Tap flaps are manual and consume more stamina in return for more power and control. Sprint flaps are from holding the button down and are more efficient. Note that for T3 Dragon in the video, its tap vs sprint is more subtle. Tap flap has a sharper and deeper wingbeat. Eventually, flap sounds will be different depending on flap vs sprint. Lastly, we finally implemented proper collisions for air and ground. Previously, colliding with something would get you stuck, needing to maneuver out of it. Now, you properly slide off the object. Keep in mind that for flight especially, this is missing a lot of crash-related animations! This video just shows the fact we got collisions working.
November 29, 2025 at 5:04 AM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
We've been working on painting a new Scoria skin called Bushfire. What do you think? It's still work in progress!
#TheLastSanctum #dragon #dragons #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #dragonartists #3dart #survival #survivalgame #creaturesurvival
November 21, 2025 at 11:58 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter November 14/2025 (1 image, 1 link)

Flight Demo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZGP...

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #Blender #3dart #wyvern #pretty #flight
November 14, 2025 at 9:57 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
We're not opposed to getting creative with environmental colours. Here's an example of how we can tweak the same water asset to take on different tints! (Make sure to click to see the full image!)

#TheLastSanctum #tls #dragon #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #swamp #leveldesign #survival #ue5
November 7, 2025 at 11:07 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
"Attention passengers, we're approaching some turbulence so please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts"

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #funny #glitch #dragon #dragons #dragongame #ue5 #unrealengine
November 5, 2025 at 8:30 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter October 31/2025 (1 image, 1 link)

Swamp: imgur.com/a/2wHPXZh

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #Blender #3dart #map #leveldesign
October 31, 2025 at 11:12 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Here's the Common Venna's most common eating animation!
#TheLastSanctum #tls #dragon #dragongame #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev #deer #animal #survival #survivalgame #cute
October 25, 2025 at 4:03 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Implemented the Levin Darter Wyvern into the game! Still pending adjusting its number values for ideal movement, and animation transitions need to be fixed. Using a WIP flight system and placeholder map.
#dragon #dragons #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #survivalgame #UE5 #unrealengine #videogame
October 20, 2025 at 11:55 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter October 17/2025 (2 images, 2 links)

Size Charts: imgur.com/a/RBvAlMX
Levin Implementation: imgur.com/a/MUsda68

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #Blender #3dart #wyvern #flight #night #dragonartists
Models & Misc Finished the T3 Dragon's Friendly call. We're keeping those calls short and simple so the calls of the T4 wyrms shine! Reorganized and reimported all files for all currently completed wyrms (Scoria, Iceclaw, Levin, T2/T3 Dragon, T2/T3 Wyvern). This has been a fairly time-consuming slog, and we're happy to have it finished for the wyrms! Began organizing and reimporting files for NPCs. These took a lot of time to sort out, and included fixing errors or adding animations that were missed before, or would otherwise improve things. (Ex: Juvi Wyvern was missing Swim/Underwater Idles, Bellbat now has a Glide and Dive, Common Venna has idle-to-eat and vice-versa transitions.) Materials have been standardized and set up in preparation for the skin system, and LODs have been set up. Made a new Eat animation for the Common Venna, which will be used most of the time. Its old Eat animation will now be a rare alternate one. Remade the size comparison charts, so now you can see an up to date version! Cetapod is in a separate image because it's Too Large to be contained in the chart with all the other creatures. Coding Updated models in the animation graph logic. Implemented the Levin Darter as a playable! We mentioned this before when we added Iceclaw, but thanks to previous work done by us, implementing new wyrms is pretty quick! Adding the completed Levin and tweaking basic parameters in-game was a 20 minute task. Of course, we'll have to do much more in-depth tweaking to make the wyrm feel right, and add unique abilities in the future, but we're pleased that we can have a wyrm playable in a basic form so quickly! Here's your first glimpse of Levin in the game. There are some animation transitions to fix, so things might look janky. Levin still needs movement values tweaked, and the video is using a placeholder map and the very WIP new flight system, so there are many issues we're aware of. Hope you enjoy glowy Levin!
October 18, 2025 at 4:16 AM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
We thought you might like to see the design process of the Levin Darter, showing all the sketches until its final conception! Do you like how the design ended up?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC8_...

#TheLastSanctum #drawing #2dart #dragon #dragons #dragonart #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev
Levin Darter Art Timelapse (The Last Sanctum Development)
YouTube video by Lindwyrm Studios
www.youtube.com
October 10, 2025 at 5:18 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter October 03/2025 (2 images, 3 links)

Climbing Clip: imgur.com/a/6HqeOFE
Seaglow Skin: bsky.app/profile/lind...
Wiki: thelastsanctum.wiki.gg

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #Blender #3dart #drake
Models Continued work on foot twist fixes. Finished 3D painting the Seaglow skin! It was mostly painted by our new skin artist @BlizzzardWolf! It was posted on Bluesky last week, but we'll post it again here since it's so pretty: bafkreies7x5ttvbit4z3uxzyudgafriapzcx3ixcq2iznsolyjjbewqx3e40jpeg.png bafkreib3vrd3ly4unzrkrsgrjdyzzopuubp7mdefhr3zhe5qy7acgrk2si40jpeg.png Made fixes to a couple of Levin's animations and weight painting, improving on some issues around the neck, arms and hips. Cleaned up and prepped Iceclaw, Scoria, and Levin skin painting files. Stray marks were removed, regions were defined and filled in more cleanly, masks were included and labelled, file size was reduced, and toggleable underlying textures were added for clarity. This will help streamline the painting process going forward. Coding Fixed various bugs in flight as we continue to work on the new system. Briefly pivoted to implementing a very rough draft of the climbing system, which includes: Basic wall detection (breaks on corners currently). Basic movement around the wall. Climbing off and jumping off walls (still clunky). We'd like to show you the first draft! Of course, most aspects of this are very clunky and WIP. The video is also using the old version of the Iceclaw model and animations. Some climbing animations haven't been implemented yet. Hope you enjoy seeing the first iteration! Community https://thelastsanctum.wiki.gg/ TLS now has a Wiki! It doesn't really contain new info for those of you who monitor news, but would appreciate a click on the link to improve our SEO! Thank you to a couple community members for helping, and big appreciation for @Djinnet for helping set up a lot of the templates and CSS related things! Note that the wiki is set up, but missing a lot of information. The Skins page is still pending some formatting decisions. The wiki is intended to be mostly community run, so feel free to think of ways to improve it! Here are some things that come to mind: Add descriptions in the Appearance section of wyrm pages. In the Gallery section of wyrm and NPC pages, add alternate images that have been posted before, with captions. Make sure to use the <gallery> tag! Add a Trivia section to wyrm and NPC pages and add a couple points for each one. Help us keep information up to date as things are revealed!
October 4, 2025 at 5:07 AM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Our new skin painter has finished painting Levin's Seaglow skin! What do you think?
#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #dragon #survival #dragongame #UE5 #unrealengine #wyvern #3dmodel #Blender #substancepainter #3dart #dragonartists
September 27, 2025 at 4:07 PM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Biweekly Newsletter September 19/2025 (2 images, 2 links)

Flight Clip: imgur.com/a/mQwEA8o
Lichen Skins + Iceclaw Turn: imgur.com/a/V1WIt0B

#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #ue5 #dragon #dragonart #survival #survivalgame #dragongame #tls #Blender #BlenderArt #3dart #drake
Coding Implemented flight design changes: Iterated several times on initial feedback (which was positive even with the first rough draft!) Technical details of flight update: Implemented pitch and roll bounds to replace force-based lift/drag acceleration. Implemented momentum preservation for speed and "by mode" to permit acceleration mechanics, such as lift from flapping and tap-flapping. Implemented player controls (and limits on player controls) to smooth rotations while still feeling "snappy". Implemented speed-based smoothing of flight rotations (e.g. flying faster makes it harder to quickly turn). While we still have to work on a lot more polish for a proper showcase, we'd like to show you a brief clip of our new flight design! You can note how it's much easier now for a wyrm to be nimble (of course, not all wyrms will have this level of maneuverability). The video demonstrates that we can control rotations per submode (ex. turning faster while flapping vs gliding), how pitch/rotation scales according to speed, and the overall improved interpolation and dive transition. Overall, this flight change gives us more control over in-game maneuverability, and the number values behind it! Updated Scoria and Iceclaw to be playable with general physics updates (pending number-tweaking to make them feel right). Iceclaw demonstrates a working proof-of-concept of general software engineering updates done previously. Because of a lot of work we put in before, adding new wyrms to the game is trivial! Models & Animations Created transition animations from parachute fall brake to flight state for all flying wyrms. Added turning animations for new/adjusted flight/flap animations. Cleaned, separated, organized, and charted all existing skins into colour regions, in preparation for the skin system. Also set up some additional colour palettes for the Lichen skin; here it is with its four presets! New_Project41.png Currently in the process of fixing foot twisting on turning animations for all wyrms (Scoria and Iceclaw done, WIP on the rest). Polished various animations, including adding stronger wind effects to T3/T4 Wyvern and Scoria's flying animations, and reanimated Iceclaw's turn in place. Here's Iceclaw's very energetic turn in place animation!
September 20, 2025 at 2:43 AM
lindwyrmstudios.bsky.social
Iceclaw has been released and is having a fun time frolicking in the placeholder map!
(Note this is an outdated model and outdated animations, will replace with the new ones soon!)
#TheLastSanctum #indiedev #gamedev #indiegamedev #dragon #survival #dragongame #UE5 #unrealengine #drake
September 12, 2025 at 5:30 PM