Howdy!
We wanted to make this as a devlog as a follow-up to yesterday’s shenanigans, as well as a legitimate progress report of things we’ve gotten done for the ACTUAL demo.

Before anything else, we’d like to clarify that the “demo” we released yesterday was, indeed, an April Fool’s Day joke. We’re sorry to anyone who thought it would be the actual TS!Underswap demo, and we hope that we haven’t upset anyone in the process. “Team AAA Underswap™” now has a separate GameJolt page for archival purposes, and can be found here! Initially, we were planning on making a Doki Doki Literature Club-esque horror visual novel, called “TSUNDERESWAP,” but that didn’t end up happening due to the effort it would take.

Now, don’t you worry—working on the April Fools’ joke hasn’t interfered with TS!Underswap’s development in the slightest. The fake demo was solely developed by MrEpicIsHere777, one of our programmers. In the meantime, we’ve still been making steady progress on the demo thanks to the combined efforts of our programmers.

Which brings us to the main purpose of this devlog: we’d like to showcase some of the things we’ve been working on, as well as a general run-down of the things we’ve been focusing on during development.

For a while, our main focus was working on completely remaking the engine for TS!Underswap. This was due to the previous engine’s code being very cluttered and inefficient, and generally difficult for multiple coders to work with. Now that we’ve successfully implemented most major features and game mechanics, the engine itself is just about done—and because of this, we’ve been able to keep adding more and more content to the game itself!

First: the brand new inventory system! We decided to give an upgrade to Undertale’s inventory system due to dissatisfaction with how it originally works, as well as inspiration from Deltarune. Combining elements from both games, we’ve separated the ITEMs into three categories: ITEM, TOOL, and KEY.

ITEM consists of consumable items—things that restore health, temporarily change stats, etc.—and can be used in both the overworld and battle interface. TOOL consists of equipment items (weapons and armor), and can only be used in the overworld. KEY consists of items critical to the plot, or side quests—such as the brand new JOURNAL mechanic. They can only be used in the overworld, unless they have a specific use for a battle, and cannot be dropped.

Next up, we’d like to announce that eventually, we’ll be updating the GameJolt soundtrack with some brand new songs! The current list includes, but is not limited to:

• An updated “Our History” by PalodiaPrime and Grassinio

• A brand new menu theme! Name pending, and the theme itself.

• “Fuzzy Friend” by Grassinio—a brand new Temmie theme that we made to fit the current iteration of their cutscene much more than the old theme.

• “Enter! A Furious Foe!” by Trezzy—a theme for a certain angry pincushion.

• Music for a special cutscene! We still have no idea who’s going to make it.

Now, showing off art and music is fine—but it’s not the same as showing off actual gameplay. At some point, we plan to have a brand new teaser video showcasing gameplay of the demo—just like we did in the past! For now, though, we have some screenshots of what’s currently playable to make up for the lack of video footage.

And yes, those are actual in-game screenshots. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you—we’ve decided to add a special little feature present in the Switch (and PS4) ports for Undertale and Deltarune: in-game borders! These aren’t necessary for the game to function, but we thought people would enjoy having them for the sake of it.

That’s all we have for now! Again, we hope we haven’t upset or disappointed anyone with our April Fools’ Day joke. Despite the demo not being done, we wanted to put out something silly for people to enjoy in the meantime. As always, feel free to follow our progress on Discord, Tumblr, and Twitter for sneak previews, updates, and shenanigans.

• Beethovenus