Howdy, everyone!

Welcome to the May 2025 Mini Status Update!

In this post, I'd like to talk to you about some of the progress that has been made on v2.8.0 since our last post back in February! (There's a lot to cover!)

But before we dive into the new stuff, I'd like to say a few things about...

DONTFORGET's 9th Anniversary

Today, DONTFORGET has turned 9 years old.

It's a surreal feeling that a project I started when I was in high school is still being enjoyed by people around the world, even after nine years. I'm truly thankful to all of you for being here, and for giving me the opportunity to work on a game like this.

But man... nine years, huh? I can already feel the wrinkles and gray hair coming in...

Looking back, when I first started working on DF, I had no clue what I was doing LOL. I just knew that Undertale meant a hell of a lot to me, and I wanted to make something to channel that passion and inspiration into.

In the years since, DF has always been there for me as a creative outlet. As I gained more experience and evolved as a developer, DF evolved right alongside me. This led to the multiple distinct "eras" that DF has had throughout its life.

Having a project evolve multiple times like this isn't really a good way to develop a game LOL... but, with each of DF's "eras", not only was I able to grow as a game developer, but as a person, thanks to all of the amazing people I was able to meet because of this project. So, even if it wasn't a typical development cycle, I wouldn't change anything about it!

I am especially grateful to all of you - everyone who has played this silly little game over the years. If it weren't for you, DONTFORGET simply couldn't exist. You've made all of this possible, and have changed my life for the better. So, from the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of the entire team, thank you all so much for playing!

Looking ahead, the team and I are really excited about the future of DONTFORGET. With v2.8.0, we're setting essential groundwork for the remainder of the project's development, which will enable us to hit the ground running for its next era. We know that the wait for v2.8.0 has been long, and we sincerely appreciate your patience. It's been a long road, but we're nearly there...!

Until then, let's talk about the latest development progress on v2.8.0 - there's quite a bit we'd like to show you!

Status Update on DONTFORGET v2.8.0

Since our last status update, there has been some exciting progress made on v2.8.0! This includes the following:

• Finished implementation of all 90 spells and skills!

• Finished implementation of all 15 status ailments!

  

• Reached a major milestone in the overworld revamp. More on this below!

• Implemented a new mechanic related to progression. More on this in the next section!

• Implemented a new mechanic related to battles. More on this in the following section!

• Began implementation of the new intro cutscene.

• Redesigned the appearance of the overworld corruption effect, making it look more like a video game glitch that's eating away at the world.

  

• Added a tracker for how many "points" are needed to reach the next Bond Level (previously "Party Bond") on the spell/skill screen in the STAT menu, making it easier to track progress towards learning a new spell/skill.

  

• Added new methods for increasing the Bond Levels of party members, and rewrote the calculation for how many points are needed to reach the next Bond Level. This makes it faster for party members to learn new spells/skills as you progress with them!

There's even more that we've been working on as well, but we're saving a few big things for a future progress report, so keep an eye out for that!

In the meantime, let's talk about the overworld revamp, which has made significant progress since it was last shown!

Overworld Revamp

In the December 2024 Progress Report, we introduced the overworld revamp that's coming in v2.8.0.

If you haven't heard, the overworld is being completely redesigned from the ground up for v2.8.0, turning the game into a much fuller multiplayer Undertale experience - complete with new puzzles to solve, new equipment to discover, new NPCs to talk to and receive quests from, new secrets to uncover, and more!

Now, back in that report, we confirmed that the revamp had been finished up to Waterfall, and that work on Hotland was underway.

Since then, we're happy to say that the entire Underground has been completed! All of the new rooms for Hotland, the CORE, and New Home are now implemented!!

Let's talk a bit more about these areas, starting with Hotland! Like in the original game, this area begins near the Royal Lab. Normally, you'd need to go through the lab to proceed into the rest of Hotland, but inside you'll find that the exit is blocked off by a strange corruption...

So, you'll need to head down to the dock and hitch a ride on Riverperson's boat, leading to an alternate route in a previously unseen section of Hotland called... East Hotland. (This is a temporary name LOL)

Once you arrive in East Hotland, your goal is to find an elevator that can take you back on the main path leading to the CORE. You'll need to make your way past new puzzles, obstacles, and corruption battles to get there!

Once you've found the elevator, you can freely use it to travel between MTT Hotel, the Royal Lab, and East Hotland!

After visiting MTT Hotel, you'll arrive in the CORE. This area has been significantly expanded from its appearance in 2.7 and prior. There are plenty of new rooms to explore, with a boss corruption to face at the end!

The CORE has also received new border artwork!

Once you've defeated the CORE's boss corruption, you can take the final elevator to New Home. The layout of this area has been updated to be 1:1 with the original game!

With these areas finished, you may be curious to know how much bigger the overworld has become. Well, here are the room counts of v2.7.14 and v2.8.0 for comparison:

The overworld has nearly DOUBLED in size! This isn't even counting Hometown, Card Kingdom, and Cyber World - which will bring the total room number to well over 300!

Now, although the Underground has been completed, there's still a little bit left to do for the overworld. Currently, I'm working on revamping the Closet Dark World and Card Kingdom.

Originally, I wasn't planning to change the Chapter 1 areas too much (outside of Castle Town), but they just felt completely different from the rest of the game as they were, and I felt they needed an upgrade to be up to par.

I'm currently half-way into revamping Scarlet Forest, and it shouldn't take too much longer to finish off the area!

Alongside this, I'm also working on adding many secret rooms throughout the overworld. These secret rooms will contain hidden treasure, like rare items and bags of gold, to reward players for exploring every nook and cranny.

My hope is that the hunt for these secrets will harken back to the days of DF Classic, where it felt like nearly every wall contained a secret leading somewhere new. I also hope that these secrets will encourage player cooperation to find them all, so players will want to go exploring with their friends!

Well, that's all I have to say about the overworld revamp for now. I hope you're all looking forward to exploring everything that the new overworld has to offer in v2.8.0!

Release Plans

Now, before we move on to the remaining announcements, I want to share some news with you regarding our release plans for v2.8.0.

Although v2.8.0 has been making excellent progress in the past few months, I'm sorry to say that we're still not ready to give a concrete release date.

Earlier this year, we were really hoping that we could get v2.8.0 released before Deltarune Chapters 3 and 4. However, we've unfortunately experienced a few setbacks since then, and with Deltarune's imminent release in under two weeks, it just isn't feasible to release it before then.

As such, we are officially aiming for a release after Deltarune Chapters 3 and 4. We are planning to continue development throughout June, and work towards a release sometime this summer.

I know that this may be disappointing to hear, and I apologize for the continued wait.

To make up for v2.8.0 not releasing before Deltarune, we'll aim to include a few costumes from Chapters 3 and 4 at launch, as I promised over on the DF Discord. I hope you'll enjoy using them!

Until then, thank you all so much for your patience. I know how difficult waiting can be, but we're working hard to ensure that 2.8 is the best possible experience for you.

In the meantime, let's get back to more development news! We have two more announcements to share with you in this post, so let's get to it!

Introducing "Rifts"

Back in the April 2024 Progress Report, I first introduced a major change coming to the genocide route in v2.8.0: population counters.

With population counters, each area of the Underground now has a limited number of enemies you can kill, just like in Undertale. Once you've exhausted the population counter, you'll stop encountering enemies there entirely - with only the chilling "but nobody came" message remaining.

This is a pretty important change for the game, as it gives the genocide route a clearer sense of progression than in previous versions, and allows the route to feel more grounded in the world - your actions now have clear consequences.

With that said, there are still reasons that players would want endless encounters, such as farming for gold, raising up newly-recruited party members, and hunting for rare gold/diamond variants of enemies. For these players, what are they supposed to do? Is pacifism the only way to keep endless encounters?

The answer to that last question is no! Another change coming in v2.8.0 is that, like in Undertale, encounters will now stop in an area automatically after you've defeated the boss of the area. The purpose of this is to "lock in" your choices - so if you were pacifist, you can't go back to an old area and start a genocide route, as that would break the flow of the narrative. You'll now only get encounters in an area if you haven't killed every enemy yet, and the boss has yet to be defeated.

So what then? How can you get encounters back in a previous area, without affecting the story? Well, that's where this new mechanic comes in: introducing rifts!

As you may already know, the storyline of DF's Online Mode revolves around the space-time continuum becoming unstable, resulting in its many timelines twisting and merging. The worlds and characters of these timelines have become scrambled and corrupted, and it's up to the player and their recruited party to restore order across space and time!

As part of this destabilization, "rifts" in the space-time continuum have opened up throughout the overworld. There is one rift in each area, which start out too small for you to enter...

But once you've defeated all of the corruption battles in an area, including the boss corruption, you can backtrack to that area's rift and it'll now be large enough to enter!

Each rift will lead to a small sub-area outside of the bounds of your timeline. In here, you can get endless enemy encounters again, allowing you to farm gold, earn more EXP for you and your party members, and hunt for rare enemy variants, even after exhausting all encounters in the main area!

Now, you might be thinking, "Earn more EXP? But wouldn't that make me over-leveled for the next area?"

Nope! Each rift has a specified "LV cap", based on the maximum LV that can be gained in the main area. For example, the Ruins' rift allows characters to earn EXP up to LV 8, after which they cannot earn EXP there anymore. They can still continue to get encounters to farm gold and hunt for rare enemy variants - they just won't earn any EXP. In-universe, you can think of it like the character growing strong enough to view these enemies as worthless, resulting in no EXP gain after a certain point.

This way, for players who want to raise themselves and their party members up to the maximum possible LV before proceeding to the next area, they can do so! For players who don't want to grind, or prefer being a bit under-leveled for a challenge, they can totally skip it!

As for players who want to hunt for gold/diamond enemies, rifts are now the new home of the "Gold Shrines"! Returning from 2.7, Gold Shrines are special golden doors that you can unlock by paying a certain amount of gold. Inside these Gold Shrines are rooms where gold enemies (and by extension diamond enemies) are more common to encounter!

These are the perfect places to farm for gold, or hunt for elusive diamond enemies to complete your bestiary!

Overall, I think this is a much better approach to grinding in Online Mode: giving players the choice if they want to do it or not. In previous versions, grinding was an essential part of the gameplay, but now, the game has been redesigned into a more traditional Undertale experience, with optional further grinding for those who want it!

I hope that this new mechanic will help to improve the experience for you all in v2.8.0; whether you like grinding or want as little of it as possible, DF can soon accommodate both preferences!

If you have any thoughts or questions about this addition, let me know in the comments below!

Introducing ENEMY ABILITIES

For the last announcement of this post, I want to reveal a new mechanic related to the magic system coming in v2.8.0!

During the process of designing the game's spells, I replayed Deltarune Chapter 1 for a bit of inspiration. When I got to the K. Round fight, something in particular caught my attention: every few turns (after Susie had hit them enough), K. Round would use an ability called "Self-Care" at the start of their turn, which healed them.

As far as I can recall, no other enemy in Deltarune has a mechanic like this. While Deltarune introduced spells for party members, no other enemy except K. Round can cast their own. This got me thinking... with all of the new spells being added to DF in v2.8.0, what if enemies could use them too?

So, I'm excited to announce that enemy abilities are a new mechanic coming in v2.8.0!

From now on, enemies have the ability to cast their own spells every few turns! When they do so, they'll cast it at the start of their turn, and they'll glow so you can tell which enemy did it. Each enemy has 1-3 spells at their disposal, with their set of spells suiting their theme or personality!

For example, Vegetoid is a vegetable monster associated with being healthy, so naturally, they have access to "Heal Wish", one of the game's healing spells!

With enemy abilities, you may want to choose which enemy to target first based on their spells. For example, healers should be dealt with as soon as possible!

Now, while most of the spells that enemies can use are the same spells that your party members can have, there are a few spells exclusively for enemies. For example, there's a new type of spell that increases your chance of being afflicted with a certain status ailment - so make sure you have items on hand that can cure status ailments, or have a spell that can counteract the effect!

That's all I can share for now! I hope that you'll enjoy discovering all of the new abilities that your foes now have, and strategizing around them in v2.8.0!

Conclusion

Well, that about wraps it up for this status update! I hope that you've enjoyed reading about some of the progress that we've made on v2.8.0!

There's still plenty more that we want to share in the upcoming Progress Report, which we're still planning to release right before v2.8.0 to announce its release date. It's still too early to say when exactly this post will drop, but keep an eye out on our GameJolt page and the DF Discord to stay in the loop!

Alrighty, that's all for now! Thank you all so much for reading, and as always, stay determined!