CASE STUDY
SCALING GAMEPLAY ANIMATION
FROM EARLY PRODUCTION TO OPEN BETA
Wolfpack Games needed more than extra hands for HavenHold.
They needed a partner who understood how every animation would work inside the game.
Wolfpack Games
HavenHold
Aug 2023 to Dec 2025
Creature and character
gameplay animation
THE CHALLENGE
HavenHold was early in production, and the number of creatures and characters needing gameplay-ready animation kept growing as the game moved towards open beta.
Wolfpack’s internal animation team needed extra capacity, but any external partner had to do more than follow an animation brief. They had to understand how each animation would behave in the game itself.
Character movement and combat had to work together, including cases where upper and lower body animation run independently, so a character can keep running while performing an attack. Wolfpack also wanted experienced animators without adding another layer of production management for their own team.
OUR APPROACH
DARK SANDWICH joined the project in August 2023 and became an extension of
Wolfpack’s animation team, providing creature and character gameplay animation throughout production.
SCALED TO EACH BATCH
1 animator, rising to 5 when deadlines required, so Wolfpack never carried a larger team than it needed.
TECHNICAL INPUT
We worked with Wolfpack on the technical side of the animation, including advice on upper and lower body separation so movement and combat could be combined.
DAILY SUBMISSIONS
A steady flow of work to review, delivered every day.
QUESTIONS UP FRONT
Regular communication and proactive technical questions helped spot issues before they became delivery problems.
THE RESULTS
What began as extra capacity became a partnership of more than 2 years.
DARK SANDWICH is Wolfpack’s sole external animation partner on HavenHold.
Gameplay Animations
Production Batches
Animators per Batch
Submissions
Every batch ran on a production model built for predictable capacity and turnaround, without compromising the quality or gameplay requirements of the animation. Wolfpack gained a dependable animation capability that grew and shrank with the project, and its internal team stayed free to focus on other areas of development.
MORE THAN ADDITIONAL CAPACITY
External development works best when the external team
stops behaving like an external supplier.
Our work grew around an understanding of the game, its production needs and the technical demands behind its animation. The result was an external animation pipeline Wolfpack could rely on, not just a set of finished animations.