Welcome back! It's been a while since I've made such a "formal" progress report, I guess, so let's dive right in!
Story Progress
A TON of progress has been made on FAUXTALE's story and lore as of last devlog! I can't say much, I can tell you all that FAUXTALE will have 8 main Acts: Prologue, Acts 1-6, and Finale. Additionally, each Act of FAUXTALE has already been assigned its own individual area, except for Act 5 (for some reason). Here's the (spoiler-free) rundown of each Act.
Prologue:
FAUXTALE's Prologue Act is essentially just a cutscene, which has already been teased in past devlogs. In this Act, you meet the Yellow Man, FAUXTALE's antagonist. Something I didn't like about Undertale was that Asgore had very little screen time, even though he was the main antagonist of the game. Needless to say, I won't be repeating this trend in FAUXTALE.
The Prologue is actually totally finished, but I'm unsure about releasing it before any other Acts are complete. Only time will tell, though.
Act 1:
Act 1, as some of you may have assumed, is the Afterlife. This Act will be split into 2 sub-areas: Afterlife Apartments (shown above) and Afterlife City. These areas have two separate bosses (the Afterlife Analyst and Death, respectively), but I decided to group them into the same Act for story reasons. This is the section of the game I'm focusing most of my attention on as of right now, and I've made quite a bit of progress!
Act 2:
Act 2 of FAUXTALE will take place in the Caverns, a mockup of which is shown above. Not much has been planned for this area that I can share at the moment, so I can't say much on this topic.
Acts 3-6:
As mentioned before, I have plans for all 6 main Acts except for 5, which is actively being worked on. Without naming any specific areas, here are some of the ideas I've had (both used and unused):
Another city-like area, but larger and more open,
An underground tunnel system,
and a True Lab variant haunted by Memories (as opposed to Amalgamates).
Let me know if any of these areas sound interesting!
Finale:
While the final Act of FAUXTALE is technically its own distinct area, I felt it didn't have enough content to be considered a numbered Act like the rest. This Act is also when the final boss battles of each route will occur, which I have already planned out and begun conceptualizing.
Art Progress
Art for FAUXTALE is coming along quite nicely as of writing this! I'm still working on enemy and boss concepts for the Afterlife, and I have a few that I really like! Additionally, as I teased last week, I'm working on creating Death's battle sprite! Here's a better look:
I also have a (very tentative) design for the Afterlife Analyst! This is purely based off of a ChatGPT prompt and is very rough, but here it is anyway:
Unfortunately, though, I haven't made as much progress on other overworld sprites as I would have liked to. I'm making that a priority this month.
Coding Progress
Since I'm building FAUXTALE from the ground up, progress on the engine can sometimes be very slow. However, I've actually gotten a lot done on the engine since the last progress update! The battle system is nearly done, aside from tweaking a few pesky bugs and finishing the ITEM button.
I'd say that the engine overall is about 40-50% complete, since I still need to add Deltarune mechanics like overworld bullet segments and an entire new battle system. It’s getting there though!
Music Progress
I've been making lots of new songs for FAUXTALE's soundtrack recently, so here are some highlights and WIPs:
An area theme for the Caverns (inspired by the song Ruins from Undertale):
A theme for Sans:
A WIP battle theme for Death,
Additionally, here is an old prototype version of Field of Death and Despair!
This song went through many iterations, including this one, before becoming what it is today.
That concludes this devlog! I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my development process, and feel free to leave a comment giving me your thoughts on any of these topics.
Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time!
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