(NON-FOLLOWERS: Skip below the second divider for an explanation of what Lobertale is before reading the first two parts!)

Lobertale has obviously not has as much progress as anyone had hoped, but at the same time, I have notably been avoiding saying "Lobertale is done". This is probably confusing to a non-insider (even the insiders don't know whats going on).

Lobertale is a huge game, and there are two people who are active workers with one extra contributor. The "team" is exvlusively:
@calilee (Director, Lead Artist, Lead Musician, Writer)
@CORTHONtwenone (Secondary Artist, Main Promotional Artist, Contributing Writer)
@Shoe3880 (Contributing Musician)

The game was much more than you saw in the last post, and the team has gotten smaller. The team has gotten *so* small that you may have noticed I literally removed the team members from the game description, because I found it redundant to have a whole section for two people excluding myself. On top of that, we don't even have a real developer, and we haven't for over a year. (While some of you may know that I have experience with modding and reverse engineering games, I cannot make a full game myself).

Not to repeat myself, but this game is really large. Most would say its 'foolishly ambitious', or something.
From what I had planned, a casual playthrough of any given route would 'only' be an hour or two longer than Undertale (still a huge amount longer), however even this is a misleading metric. I have never intended to copy Undertale's pacing, meaning that there is probably a lot more game and a lot less dancing in Hotland exploiting a flawed encounter system.

It may seem obvious to downsize the game, however, I have always had a huge issue with doing that. A lot of games that need to be cut down in content suffer from feature creep, but I haven't added a feature to Lobertale in about two years. The stuff I add is usually something that you will encounter in a normal playthrough, there currently aren't a lot of work-intensive events in the game that are optional things.
(^ I apologize if this section is worded poorly, I rewrote it multiple times and it still turned out kinda shitty. ^)

There are some other setbacks that I could talk about, but they aren't particularly worth talking about, as they are unrelated to the game.

TLDR: I don't want Lobertale to be dead, and I do think that eventually it could be completed.
However, I obviously have totally butchered the management of the game to an unforgivable degree, but I apologize anyways.

However, summer is coming up.

Summer has, historically, been the season of Lobertale. Summer is usually when the most progress is made, and not-so-coincidentally, the same season that every Lobertale relaunch has started in.

On May 23rd, 2023, I will be launching the third (and a half?) Lobertale initiative.
This will include development progress, a Discord server, and possibly more forms of community participation here on Gamejolt.

This initiative will be handled differently than prior attempts, with my newfound maturity (two years in the making!).
In the past I had directed development in a way that made followers lose interest, and eventually the developers retired as a result.

At the bottom of the post there is a poll for me to gauge where people interested in Lobertale are.
PLEASE DO NOT VOTE "I AM NOT INTERESTED" IF YOU DON'T MEAN IT. IT WILL SWAY THE POLL. That option is for people who are interested in Lobertale but will not join the 'community'.
But before you answer the poll, I will include a slightly updated synopsis of Lobertale below, to update and/or refresh you on what Lobertale is.

Lobertale is a fangame of Undertale made by @calilee in 2020. She often describes it as a "Mistelling of Undertale", meaning that all the characters, areas, and minor plot points are entirely replaced with new ones, but is overall a parallel to Undertale.

Lobertale is set in the Underground, a realm where monsters were banished after war broke out with humans. The game stars silent protagonist Dae after falling underground. Dae meets various 'monsters' during the journey back to the surface, choosing whether to FIGHT or ACT in the new twist on the Undertale battling system.

The player quickly discovers that this version of the Underground is not like the one they knew. Upon encountering the Royal Patrol, Dae is narrowly saved by Caldi, a fire monster who, ironically, resides in New Valle: a city overrun with expansive rivers instead of roads.
In the midst of running errands and socializing with monsters, the player learns about the rules of this world.
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‌ "You have a second chance to play the game where nobody has to die."

I apologize if this post doesnt have the content for Lobertale you wanted. Lobertale returning was a surprise for everyone, and I didn't have enough time to prepare any content for you to chew on. When Lobertale officially starts development again on May 23rd, I will be pumping out as much as I can.

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‌ See you soon,

‌ - Cali Lee 🂽