Great feedback again, thank you! The remains of Rexxar's family can be found by a rock on route to the treasure. It's guarded by a Gobbler. It's quite hard to see, and I'm toying with the idea of adding quest locations to the minimap.
I thought I'd implemented removal of all living creatures from the minimap on death. I'll check that, may have done it on the Enemy class instead of the inherited one. Corpses are left intentionally, actually tagged as food, and I'm fine tuning a "needs" system for creatures and animals, including hunger and thirst. Good call on AI balance and behaviour - the stag AI is a bit over powered! The Timid Animal class is meant to be a bit more cautious, but needs tweaking, as I would like them to actively run at the first sight of trouble.
I'm currently focusing on UI for the next release, to flesh out a Quest Journal and Inventory system. Proving way harder than I'd anticipated, and more so as I'm not artistically inclined!
I must admit, trees and grass are handled by an asset called Gaia Pro 2021. It's amazing. I think most trees, rocks, etc have 3 LOD levels, and I think adding "billboards" as you describe is quite straight forward. I'm looking at having a parallel project targeting mobile devices / switch, with low poly assets, where fine tuning performance will be even more important.
I'd definitely set up a Discord - I think that's a great idea. I'm struggling to get interest on itch.io, though, really low number of views and downloads. I fear a Discord would be a very lonely place at present! Will look into it though, even if it means you and I can chat a bit easier! I'm really grateful for your help and feedback. In fact I've already added you in the "Special Thanks" section of the new credits scrolled in my current dev build. Hope that's okay!
First Feb release coming in a couple of weeks, if I can get the UI sorted. Your feedback is spurring me on!