Hey everyone, hope you're having a great April Fools!

Todays development update isn't a joke, however, as today marks the 1st Anniversary of Kasssm and Jevilhumor's Underswap!

Its a huge day for us, and I don't think a year ago I'd have expected us to have made such a great concept into (mostly) a reality.

Hoping that this devlog can be a chunky one! We've gotten a ton of progress done over the past few months, so let's hop on in.

Overall Progress

For the most part, the Demo has recieved a ton of much-needed reworking and overall progress.

Programming:

• Cutscenes haven't recieved much love

• Puzzles are complete

• Basically every room (Outside of HappstaTheater) is complete

• Enemy encounters nearing completion

• Story encounters beginning development

• Rennovated/added rooms

Writing:

• Most of the dialog for the demo seen through interactions are completed

• Story mostly drafted out

• Story dialog nearing 1/3 completion

Music:

• All tracks with the exception of one in-development is complete (Demo)

• Next area songs began development

Overall, we have made a substantial amount of progress. Even though in the Underevent devlog I said that we would've had development builds ready for the team, but since the scope of the demo has gotten bigger, we actually haven't gotten there yet! We are approaching, however.

The last few rooms are to be implemented, and once they are, development builds will be pushed out to team members, and we will be taking the final steps towards the demos completion.

I hope you're as excited as we are.

Understanding the Concept

The title of this devlog. We decided to review and change up some of the initial things our AU was grounded on. We looked over and altered our swaps, put characters in different situations, and made a great effort to make our take stand out.

The biggest change regards Flowey. Flowey in an Underswap AU is a rather odd thing, and you'd be surprised as to how generic it is in practice. Many people say that it was a good thing to keep Flowey, however that ended up making our team spend too long to try and figure out how not to tread on what Undertale already did, so we simply decided to...

Introduce Temmie

[Art by Doorknob]

We decided to go back to the roots of our take and brought back Temmie, and while I cannot show too much, you and them and going to have so much fun together.

Temmie is fundamentally Flowey, but we took an entirely different approach: giving them a unique personality, making them seem a bit more threatening, and more.

I hope you look forward to what they have in store for you.

Engine updates

I want to keep this segment brief, as it mostly involves more quality of life improvements.

Japanese has been fully implemented. Aside from a few alignment issues, all in-engine text is completed and written.

Also present in this screenshot is our new naming system. It isn't a huge change, but we think overall it's much cleaner-looking.

Gamepad support is mostly implemented. Aside from a few bugs, and a lack of testing, it appears to work.

There's a lot of other engine updates that we've added that are a bit too minor to discuss, but hopefully you'll be able to see them for yourself in-game!

Chutes and Ladders

While we want to be true to Undertale, we also really wanted to make the gameplay a bit more interesting.

While almost doubling the amount of puzzles in Old Home, I realized the sinkholes from Undertale felt really dated. Therefore, we added slides and ladders in order to make more complex level designs. These will persist throughout your journey, as well as many other new mechanics we add.

While we'd love to go more in-depth with some of the other mechanics we have, those will have to wait until the game comes out. We do not want to spoil anything, do understand.

Brief update: Borders?!

[Border art by Salami-Dono]

With the introduction of a new artist not too long ago, we decided to keep borders as a part of the game. This lovely piece is but one of the many that are featured throughout the demo.

Notes about borders:

• Borders are unlocked as you progress (play with the "Dynamic" border for the best experience.)

• Borders are only viewable/equippable when fullscreen is enabled.

• Borders are off by default and can be turned on in the settings.

Any news on the music?

Recently we have begun work on the last song in the Demo Soundtrack, and we have even started work on the next updates OST.

A ton of people are still wondering what exactly we meant by "overhauling Happstablook's character and plot" back in our Underevent devlog. While I'd rather not go too into detail, I do belive y'all will enjoy a smaller taste of whats to come later on in your journey...

The Demo will feature a good few songs relating to Asgore, this being one of them. Where is it used? That's up to you to find out...

I don't think we have released our Game Over theme yet, but here it is. It's a rather somber song, but hopefully you won't have to hear it too often in-game...

What the...?! Looks like our SoundCloud account must've been hacked by someone, because I don't remember uploading this. I suppose you can give it a listen anyways...?

How's the team?

Our team has gone through a few changes since our last devlog, if you haven't noticed by the ever-changing description on our game page.

New team members:

• RattPoizon - Artist

• Salami-Dono - Artist

• R.V. Pine - Musician

• Depresso - Writer

Departed team members:

• Bastian076

• Chloe / CyberStar

• Segoe

• SynthMints

• Pixel-Icon15

• Sage

All departed team members will still be properly credited for all of their contributions. They may even contribute to future releases of the game as well, you never know!

Thanks are in order

[Art by Jevilhumor, does not feature every team member]

From the bottom of our hearts, we all thank you for your support! We couldn't have gotten this far without you guys, and for that, we are deeply appreciative.

We're so excited to get this game out to you guys as soon as we can, and we hope that y'all are just as excited!

Thank you for reading this devlog.

- Kasssm, jevilhumor, and the Underswap 2022 team,
4 / 1 / 2023