Hi, everyone! Welcome one & welcome all to the second devlog made since the creation of this page!
The banner art is a bit outdated, sorry for that - by the time the next devlog comes up we should have an better one!
I don't have a lot to add -- here's what we've been working on since last year!

Team updates

Before we get into that -- we have one new pixel artist: Veggie!

You, too, can become a pixel artist soon!
There will be a Lobertale character spriting event in the Discord, and whichever ones @calilee likes best have the opportunity to join the team! Make sure to join the server if you're interested in competing!

We also have two fantastic new programmers who have made these strides:

Mimer, @Mimer12345678910

Connor, @Shoe3880

They have been working separately on their own contributions to the project.
Everybody stick a clapping sticker on this post if there is one. They deserve it!

You, too, can become a developer!
No competition, just know how to use Godot and we can discuss it! @calilee 's discord is simply calilee, send a friend request or find her in the Lobertale Discord!

Lastly, while @Shoe3880 and @calilee are musicians, we will probably need more helping hands in the music department. See the instructions above on how to contact Cali and you may apply!

The development

The overworld

Mimer's contribution, the overworld is currently the more interesting of Lobertale's two aspects.

Unlike in all other fangames I've seen, I (cali lee) decided to revamp the entire overworlds movement.
In Undertale, you have one movement option: walking.
In Deltarune, you have three movement options: walking, running, and occasional dodging.

Personally, I found navigating the world of Undertale and Deltarune with just these options to be rather tedious. Undertale is about 40% walking, and you can't even walk that fast, leading to honestly getting bored while playing a videogame.

In Lobertale, I have elected to give the player much more fluid movement.
Walking is the same slow stiff movement you have in Undertale, but when you hold down the run button, you have acceleration, skidding, changing directions, and hopefully a much more fun system to play around with!
The actual acceleration when running is pretty complicated -- and we still need to refine it a lot -- so I will spare you the details until it's finalized.

In addition to running, I would like to add jumping, which will result in much more interesting environments to play around in.
(This hasn't yet been implemented, because it will probably be a nightmare to do so).

Other movement options like crouching, sliding, etc. are possible, but every addition becomes exponentially more spriting work. We could program all of these things in, but it would take a lot of effort for the few pixel artists we have. We'll see...

Character introductions + Spritework

You would normally expect these two seemingly unrelated sections to be separate... and you would be right. But the devlog flows better this way.

Firstly, Dae... What is even happening there?

Dae

No one really knows what Dae is meant to be, so this whole section exists to introduce them and their purpose.

Dae is your typical androgynous protagonist character. The player is supposed to view Dae as their point of entry into the Lobertale world, their self-insert.

Dae is their own character, but truthfully, that doesn't matter to Lobertale yet. In Lobertale, they are just a placeholder for the player.

Here is some spritework that the whole artist team came together to make:

Being the player character, Dae is the only character you see for the entirety of the game, and has been the absolute hardest character to sprite. In fact, some emergency changes were made just before uploading it here! This may not even be final...

Emma'lee

Introducing our first original character to the cast: the one and the only Emma!

As the resident bubbly dubiously-real young lady, she serves as your companion and mentor throughout the new, unfamiliar Underground.
Despite being eternally confined to a mirror, she is able to help you out via saving your progress and giving you useful insight from her library of knowledge, including information on areas, characters, and miscellaneous tidbits.
Why does she know these things? How? Anyways, moving on.

The obvious assumption to make is that Emma'lee is the Chara stand-in... and you are partially correct.
Turns out, Cali Lee had a super hard time making a "Flowey" interesting. Emma is the result of several headaches... and now she is the players headache!

She is different from most other characters, in that she has no perfect counterpart in Undertale. What that means for the story... who knows! Maybe she does, but she won't tell us.
And only Dae can see her.

Thank you for reading this devlog.

Truthfully, it was supposed to come out two days ago.
Truthfully, I wanted to have a lot more in it.

Much of the team has been very busy, including myself (Cali). I've started college, so it can sometimes be awkward to make time to direct a team while I'm juggling classes.

If you find the premise of Lobertale interesting, and want to see more progress, the best thing you can do is to share the AU with friends and just talk in the Discord. Having a net of supporters is the greatest way we will avoid losing motivation, which is what killed the game three times now.

Anyways, I hope you found this short devlog interesting. The next one will have some elements of what the game will be like, instead of just characters.

See you soon,

‌ - Cali Lee  🂽