hello!! its been a while :0

i've decided that, instead of doing a normal devlog for reasons i'll get into, i want to do a overview of the past year and talk about everything thats happened, along with plans for going forward into 2024!!

this post is a lot more word instead of awesome gameplay, so i apologise in advance...

First Quarter of 2023 / Post-UNDEREVENT 2022

we came into 2023 right off of the success that was our showcase in Underevent 2022!! we were so happy to see everyone love the project and especially Frank, as we did have our initial doubts about reception...

however, a problem that arose with our debut was the project being labelled as primarily a 'fangame', which it wasn't at the time. our original plan was to animate the main fight before getting into game development!

from this we came to realise that our idea was pretty stupid and generally a waste of time, so we decided to make the full switch to being a fangame!

we made tons of progress initially, as most projects do, though things slowly started to happen and, well... yeah. i'll dive into current game stuff soon

Second & Third Quarter of 2023 / UNDEREVENT 2023 Plans

now here's something i've only briefly brought up in my discord server; belief was originally going to be present in Underevent 2023!

we were one of the first projects to get accepted and, again, made a ton of initial progress on our trailer, getting our entire basis edited.

alongside this, we also fully established something else that only recently became public information...

"Papyrus's Belief"'s involvement with Green Sans's "The Shopping List Arc"

earlier in the year me and @goinks decided on adding Belief to Green Sans's collab effort, The Shopping List Arc, as a result of a slot opening up!

The Shopping List Arc is a line-up of five different projects that all feature Green Sans in them one way or another, with characters from the respective projects also being present within the Green Sans game itself!

Each Green Sans encounter varies from the last, with Belief taking a very different swing at it... you'll just have to wait and see, though!!

Why we weren't in Underevent 2023

as time went on and the months passed, we realised that the speed of game progress wasn't going to reach the deadline we needed to meet for our final trailer.

we talked about resorting to animating mockups to fill in what we didn't have, but i decided against it; i wanted this year to be an authentic display of how far belief had developed since our 2022 showcase and even potentially drop some sort of release window, not to build more hype for something with no clear path.

so, inevitably, we dropped out around October.

as to not let things go completely to waste, i'm going to showcase some of the things that were going to be within the trailer below!

a lot of things we did have made for the trailer were just re-made undertale segments, but with some beliefisms! this was before we decided on having custom overworld sprites.

The trailer was planned to open with Sans encounter, introducing a new gimmick the fight has!

since this, though, we've began to completely rework the sans fight from the ground up to make it more worth your while; i think what we have planned is great so far!

Final Quarter of 2023

after all the underevent stuff was out of the way, the project began to lose steam and things slowed down

i was personally in the midst of dealing with a ton of personal stuff which, if you've known of me since around 2020, might be evident throughout my persona now...

safe to say belief wasn't really top priority, though. i ended up getting to a point where i was paranoid that we weren't doing enough, which lead to me announcing a hiatus abruptly.

...i then proceeded to lift said hiatus pretty soon after, making it pretty redundant and stupid.

this is where i finally want to talk about the game's actual progress since the start of 2023

Game Progress & Development

as i said earlier, game progress started out really great! we were very motivated after the hype of our trailer and wanted to work as much as we could.

then we began to slow down more and more, reasonably so. then i began to hate working in the program we used to make the game, clickteam fusion. then we all just fell completely out of it.

since the final quarter of the year, little to no substantial progress has been made on the game. our last final burst was sans encounter being done quickly, which is now an unused version of the fight.

as for everything else development-wise (sprites, writing, art, music, etc) we've made tons of progress, though without the game its all just kinda... there.

we've been struggling to figure out how we're going to progress from here, but as for right now i've come to at least one definitive decision

We're Going Silent

i've decided that going forward we won't be making any more devlogs or showcase videos until we approach the completion of the game.

during belief's short-lived hiatus i came to the realisation that i struggle to enjoy working on the project as a result of having to juggle the public image alongside development. this is completely on me for making a game page so early on and building up so much hype, though. i should've waited until i was confident we were actually going somewhere.

i've also struggled a lot with the "self-fulfilment" aspect of working on belief, and i feel like i haven't done enough to make this my own special thing. of course i cant do everything but I want to make this project a reality through my own terms, not kick back and let others do nearly everything for me.

for the next few months, i will be focusing primarily on developing my coding skills so i can get to a point where i feel comfortable enough to spearhead the project's game going forward.

so, until im positive we're ready to deliver, i wont be making any further updates. so if anyone asks, no, we aren't dead, just extremely quiet until then.

this also isn't to say we're going to say absolutely nothing; i might drop some small things here and there!

sorry if this was a lot more of a ramble instead of a proper update, or if that final section was a bit of a downer. I assure you that belief will keep pushing forward until we finally have something to give to you all!! :D

we want to make this special and have so many ideas to do just that, we just need the time to ourselves to figure this all out!

the support from everyone over the past year is more than enough to keep me going personally and i cannot express how much i appreciate all of it <33

until then, we'll be seeing you all later! please dont forget about us in the meantime!!

-Masked INC