This is the story behind Dodo Adventures.
In 2018, I travelled to Mauritius and Rodrigues Island, located about a two-hour flight east of Mauritius, on the eastern edge of Africa. These tropical islands were both exciting and deeply inspiring. Many areas—especially nature parks—were teeming with life. The heat was intense, and the tropical wind carried a distinctive oceanic scent. It truly felt like paradise.
Standing there, it was easy to imagine how rich these islands must once have been in endemic animal life.
Before this post, I wrote another article titled: “Mauritius spill affects fishermen – my experience at Mauritius part #1“. I recommend reading that first for context.
Meeting Giant Tortoises
On Rodrigues Island, I visited a conservation site where efforts were being made to reintroduce tortoise species similar to those that once inhabited islands across the Indian Ocean.
Seeing these modern conservation efforts made the history feel very real—and very fragile.
The original endemic tortoise species of Rodrigues are now extinct. Historically, sailors discovered that tortoises could survive for long periods on ships without much food or water, which tragically led to their exploitation and eventual disappearance from the island.
Visiting the Mauritius dodo museum
Back on Mauritius, I visited a museum displaying a full-size skeleton of the dodo bird. The skeleton looked so lifelike that it was easy to imagine dodos wandering freely around the island—chubby bodies, large beaks, and all.
Just outside the museum, there were trees and open, flat ground. I found myself thinking that a few hundred years ago, this area might have been filled with dodo nests. Of course, there is very little concrete information about the dodo’s natural habitat, and much of its disappearance remains unclear.
That lack of certainty sparked my imagination. I began wondering whether it might somehow be possible to experience the dodo again—not just as an illustration in Alice in Wonderland or as a cameo in Ice Age, but in a more immersive and believable way.
The Birth of the Dodo Adventures Experience
This was when the idea for Dodo Adventures was born.
After returning to Finland, I found myself surrounded by snow, darkness, and long winter days. Creating something tropical during that time felt especially meaningful. I returned to my old Unity3D sketches of tropical environments and began developing them further.
I received a 3D model of a dodo bird and placed it on the island. Somehow, it fit perfectly. The scene felt natural—almost real. I worked in an office, yet mentally travelled back to an ancient island multiple times a day. The experience felt calming, meditative, and deeply motivating.
That was when the story behind Dodo Adventures truly began to take shape.
After we received funding and started a company in early 2019, Dodo Adventures was in its early stages. It didn’t have anything interactive, just a “stand there” experience where people could take the VR headset and turn their head, see a dodo and the island. I realized that people liked the experience and it was a really good experience for the newcomers in VR. For people who had never tried VR before.
Story behind Dodo Adventures. Exhibition in Itoshima, Japan
In February 2019, an early version of the Dodo Adventures was asked to be as an exhibition in Itoshima, Japan. The exhibition was really exciting and many people passed by and tested the installation as well as going to see the other installations made by other artists. I remember that all the different artistic installations were really cool and they varied a lot based on the artist’s own medium. All of the artistic installations had some inspiration from Japanese art, environment, people or language. I was especially inspired by the mountains and wanted to use the mountains as part of the Dodo Adventures environment. Therefore, the experience became a hybrid of Mauritius and Japan.
The actual development started
After coming back to Europe from Japan, the actual development started and I remember working on Dodo Adventures about three days a week and two days a week with an European project also in the VR/AR field. As time went by, Dodo Adventures got it’s cave scene and made the transformation from human to animal and the realization of becoming something new to happen. Late 2019 Aune and Andres joined to be part of the TechLemon marketing team. Then Ella joined to make some 3D models. Gurunath prepared a logo for TechLemon and Elio started composing sounds for the experience. Aune started also working with the game development and Andres worked with TechLemon.io website. At this time, a place called “The Shortcut” provided a place where it was possible to conduct some beta tests to the Dodo Adventures experience. I remember that almost 50 people tried Dodo Experience and provided feedback to the development.
Finishing the game and the story behind Dodo Adventures continued
In early 2020, the game started to look like a finished product and we planned to start to distribute the game to different institutions, such as museums. However, suddenly the Corona pandemic arrived and we had to change our plan and directions. The plan was to create only one version of the game that would become an installation. Instead of having just one, we started working on a second version of Dodo Adventures, meant for “regular” end users, like gamers who play Virtual Reality games in their homes. We created and launched Dodo Adventures in Steam and Itch.io in August 2020!
So this was the story behind Dodo Adventures. Back to this very moment! The game is now launched on Steam. We still have our original idea of an installation and the project develops organically all the time. I see the importance of developing Dodo Adventures project more and more. I can assume that the root to this pandemic is quite a complex problem and might be also related to human activity, more or less. The most recent oil spill accident in the Indian Ocean reveals that we humans are big players on Planet Earth. We have the possibility to transform, realize, fix and imagine. This can happen, of course, to the good or bad. Human presence is inevitable and we are part of nature. Human activity puts biodiversity at risk. It is fundamental to preserve life and species in any part of the world. Perhaps this pandemic will force us to rethink the right schemes. Now it is urgent to find solutions to these problems!
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