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Anomalies 22 September 2026 Updated 1 October 2026

The Wendigo: Beautiful Light's wall-crawling playable anomaly

The Wendigo is the anomaly Beautiful Light players control: it climbs walls and hunts operators. Everything Deep Worlds showed of it in 2026.

A pale, spined creature crouched on a forest floor, seen from an operator's point of view with gloved hands raised

For most of 2026, the only playable anomaly Deep Worlds had named was the Juggernaut. That changed over the summer. In a run of posts in the #leaks-wip channel of its official Discord, the studio's CEO Aherys showed a new creature built for players to control: the Wendigo, an anomaly that moves along walls and ceilings and drops on operators from above.

Everything below is work in progress footage. Deep Worlds repeats it in almost every post: animations, models, sounds and balance are all early.

A pale, spined creature crouched on a forest floor, seen from an operator's point of view with gloved hands raised — The Wendigo in a work in progress clip Aherys shared on 27 June 2026. Image by Deep Worlds.

How Deep Worlds revealed it

24 May 2026. Aherys posted a very early first person clip of what he was working on, a creature pulling itself through test geometry, with only a hint: "some people will understand what this is".
8 June 2026. The name arrived with a first person movement clip titled "Wendigo movement", and a list of notes on how it will play.
19 June 2026. A third person animation test by Deep Worlds' lead animator, showing the Wendigo clinging to the top of a wall.
21 and 27 June 2026. More movement tests, then "random dev moments" with the Wendigo in a bunker and in the forest.
3 July 2026. A Wendigo attack captured by a tester during a real playtest.
28 September 2026. Matavatar, Head Staff, showed the Wendigo's head control rig, the animated head the first person camera will use when you play the monster. The official X account @beautifullight shared the same showcase that day.

Nine seconds of the movement clip Aherys posted on 8 June 2026, without sound. The level is a blockout, the animations are early. Video by Deep Worlds.

The Wendigo clinging to the top of a stone wall in a grey test level, seen in third person — The third person animation test by Deep Worlds lead animator, 19 June 2026. Image by Deep Worlds.

What Aherys said about playing it

The 8 June post came with notes that read like a first design brief:

It climbs. Deep Worlds describes it as "spider wall movement", and says the team plays a lot of asymmetrical games with that kind of movement, naming Aliens versus Predator and Natural Selection 2.
No inverted camera. Crawling on a ceiling will not flip your view. Aherys said it looks cool but is not usable in real play.
Camera movement can be turned off, for players who find wall crawling hard on the stomach.
The first person view is crowded. Aherys said part of the creature can take up too much of the screen, that the team is working on it, and that it will probably offer an option to show only the arms. The head control rig shown on 28 September is part of that first person view, though Deep Worlds did not say whether the arms-only option is still planned.
Numbers are not final. The jump, for one, is overpowered in the clip.

In the same post, Aherys said development was going very smoothly, with no delays planned.

An operator aims a rifle down a yellow-walled bunker corridor while a pale creature clings to the wall high on the left — From the 27 June dev moments: the Wendigo on a bunker wall, above an operator's line of sight. Image by Deep Worlds.

First contact in a playtest

Deep Worlds put the Wendigo in front of real testers at the start of July. In his playtest report of 2 July 2026, Aherys wrote that the Wendigo is scary for operators and very fun for the people playing it, but maybe a bit too hard for early players. The same report listed a gap on the other side: operators are missing tools against anomaly players, which he said is planned.

The next day he shared an attack captured by a tester, warning that the speed, animations and sound were all heavily work in progress.

The attack captured by a tester during the playtest of 2 July 2026, shared by Aherys the next day. Speed, animation and sound were all early at that point. Video by Deep Worlds.

What this changes, and what it does not

The Steam page says players can invade other players' raids as an anomaly, that six of the 24 players in a raid are anomalies, and that Early Access ships with one playable anomaly. The Wendigo is the second playable anomaly Deep Worlds has shown, after the Juggernaut, which the studio's sound designer also described as a playable anomaly in April 2026.

What is still not confirmed:

Which anomaly is playable at launch. Deep Worlds has not said whether the one playable anomaly in Early Access is the Wendigo, the Juggernaut or another creature.
Whether it is the spider-like creature. Deep Worlds' January 2026 Steam post mentioned an unnamed creature that moves along walls. The Wendigo fits that description, but the studio has not linked the two.
Its abilities and counters, beyond wall movement and attacks.

For every other creature Deep Worlds has named, see the anomalies guide.

Sources

Deep Worlds' official Discord (discord.gg/project-bl), #leaks-wip: posts by Aherys, CEO, on 24 May, 8 June, 19 June, 21 June, 27 June, 2 July and 3 July 2026, and by Matavatar, Head Staff, on 20 April 2026 (anomaly sound design) and 28 September 2026 (Wendigo head control rig)
@beautifullight on X, 28 September 2026: "Showcasing the Wendigo First Person control rig!"
Beautiful Light on Steam: raid composition and the Early Access content list
Deep Worlds, "2025 in review & what's coming in 2026", 14 January 2026, on Steam

BL Guide, unofficial community coverage of Beautiful Light: how we check what we publish.