Hey there, guys!
It's been a good while since our April 2025 "Spring Cleaning" devlog -- life has continued to be pretty busy for all of us, and so major development has been slower. However, enough time has passed by now, and we're finally kicking off the new year with a Dev Update!
Lengthy Catch-Up!
First and foremost, let's go back a bit and recap our previous devlogs -- given that much of this material will be relevant for everything we're covering today.
Discussed how Crystal Springs is organized into three sub-areas (Mines, Springs, and a "third act" with different areas depending on the route.)
Achieved barebones implementation of most planned Crystal Mines rooms.
Fleshed out in-game mechanics for Crystal Mines
Crystal Mines mostly outlined for all routes with a room-by-room structure.
Crystal Springs mostly outlined for all routes (excluding some Evacuation Neutral-specific details) with a more rough room-by-room structure.
Showcased concept art of Boreal Bluffs, lightly touched on each of its sub-areas (Lab Complex, Bluffs, District, NEXUS), and reported that the area was roughly outlined with all major areas and most major events defined.
The City of New, endgame events, and multiple game endings were fleshed out more.
Progress Report - September 2024:
Improvements to the game's outline (routes, endings, per-area content & bosses.)
Refined character backstories for Alphys and Undyne, and review of others' (i.e. Ser Scratch) for potential improvements.
Identified potential improvements to existing content for consistency with later material.
Outlining and restructuring work for Crystal Springs writing.
Creation of re-styled Boogiemen sprites (now finished and implemented.)
10 completed music tracks for Crystal Springs.
15 in-progress music tracks for Boreal Bluffs.
Refined gameplay mechanics for Crystal Mines (incl. Set of introductory puzzles.)
New Crystal Mines music track: "Benevolent Interrogation" by DashingToadie!
Further development on certain character backstories, evaluated route plans to keep them within reasonable scope, and proposed rewrites of Ruined Home content for better consistency with current plans.
Some completed battle assets and concept art for Crystal Springs enemies.
As part of a huge collaborative effort, the Boogiemen's re-styled battle sprites were nearing completion and being implemented in-game.
Further work on "Boogie Beatdown" ("Let's Boogie!" v3) and "Kountdown" v3, as well as an almost-finished Crystal Springs track ("Dreamer" by philiplol.)
Implementation of some Crystal Mines puzzles and rooms, slight polish to Starlight Isles content, minor improvements to a few Ruined Home puzzles (including some screenshot examples thereof), and some side work on Spep Mode.
The project was updated to the latest GameMaker version, which required figuring out what needed fixing due to changes between updates.
A few screenshots of the Crystal Mines -- all of which are entirely subject to change, and do not fully represent what the area will look like in the end.
Updated Papyrus dialogue portraits and battle heads.
Completely remade Temmie overworld and dialogue/battle sprites.
Status on re-styled Boogiemen battle sprites.
Updated battle button icons (including new empty ITEMs variant.)
New Muffet dialogue SFX.
Reworks and polish to various assets we mentioned but did not showcase (i.e. Bugerpant overworld sprites, Mad Dummy battle sprites, Flowey dialogue portraits, etc.)
Alongside our past few update changelogs (v2.0.8, v2.0.9, v2.0.10), we've provided some smaller updates & showcases here and there. These included the following:
The Boogiemen's new battle sprites are finished and implemented in-game -- only needing some polish, fixes, and backporting to Demo v2.0's development branch. Alongside this, we're still awaiting on the final versions of "Kountdown" v3 and "Boogie Beatdown" (Let's Boogie v3) before we're able to put together a Demo v2.1.0 update for release.
We celebrated UNDERTALE's 10th Anniversary by showcasing one of Demo v3.0's upcoming random encounter enemies: Moulder!
Originally, we planned to have a longer Crystal Mines teaser, but needed more time than anticipated to get everything polished enough for us to preview. We'll eventually post a longer video once we properly figure out what we do and don't want to showcase, and finish up some further refinements we've taken this extra time to work on.
We also made small improvements to our website's FAQ page to better detail what's listed on our Support page (i.e. info on Mac support ending, etc.), and updated localization support information -- including new guidelines and resources for having community localizations added to the game, and a list of languages either currently-supported or planned / in-development.
PHEW! That was a lot covered. As for our progress since...
Progress Updates
As we've talked about in the past, a great deal of work has gone into improving our workflow and plans for the whole game -- whether that's gameplay mechanics and pacing, story outline and structure, or keeping our scope in check.
Writing & Outlining:
Refinements to Crystal Mines room-by-room outline.
New writing for Mines battles, including unique variants for specific enemy combos.
Springs room-by-room outline for Compassion / Neutral, and general area layout, was restructured approximately 3-4 times. The current rough Evacuation Neutral / Ruthless outline needs to be updated to account for this, and further fleshed out.
Further refinements made to plans for future areas and endgame events / endings.
Further work on implementing narrative scenes with Alphys & Sgt Splosion.
Art & Visual Design:
Creation of reusable NPC sprites for use as environmental design.
Created new assets for enemy attacks & Royal Navy soldiers.
Assets for environment and puzzles made.
Music & Sound Design:
Implemented dynamic music for dodging sections (this will be showcased eventually.)
Further work on "Kountdown" v3 and "Boogie Beatdown" ("Let's Boogie!" v3), which mostly require final touches and polish until they're done.
Reworks to plans for Crystal Springs soundtrack & reordering of tracks.
Gameplay Design:
Reworks to existing mechanics and how they're introduced & presented.
Initial implementation of a brand new random encounter enemy.
Two new puzzle mechanics were added and polished.
General polish to area visual design using new assets.
Sometimes we take a look at earlier material, compare it with our more recent work, and identify ways we could make potential low-scope improvements down the line. An example of this is a possible "Ruined Home refresh" we're considering for either Demo v3.0 or sometime after.
Mettalot Encounter -- updated script for pre-fight and post-fight scenes to better set up his character for Crystal Springs and overall arc. (Considering touchups to his battle to allow more ACT paths, unsure of this.)
Asgore Battle -- rewrote script with small ACT additions to add complexity, serving as a better end for Ruined Home, and properly setting up aspects of his backstory. (Considering revisiting attack patterns to give them general polish, more variety, and combine various attacks together later in the fight -- bringing these up to par with how we're now designing boss fights, by introducing patterns then expanding on them / combining them later on.)
Puzzle Gauntlet -- tweaks to gauntlet hints (flavor text & Asgore phone hints), including a potential redesign to the Pirate puzzle to have 4 switches representing cardinal directions.
Previews
In lieu of content we'll eventually do a teaser video with, here's some new previews!
"Riveting (Pronounced Ribbitting)" by DashingToadie is a track that will play for an unrevealed cameo character, and their corresponding location.
"Heatriser" by DashingToadie is a track that will play within an unrevealed location.
"Dreamer" by philiplol is a track that will play for a major character, and although it's probably obvious who this is, we'll pretend it's a secret so people can guess for themselves.
And finally, the current concept for our Grillby design, drawn by PixelatedEngie! We showed these off in our Discord server at one point, but haven't anywhere else until now. Being the head of a company like Grillby's Backyard Barbecue, something that's exponentially grown past its humble origins, is bound to be stressful -- Grillby here is in desperate need of a vacation.
Dev Diary: Too Many Paths!
Prior to this devlog being written and posted, I actually talked about the restructuring work I've been doing for the Crystal Springs outline on Bluesky!
Originally the section followed a more semi-nonlinear approach, where you'd have 2 paths you could do in either order, followed up by a third. The way this was laid out was a bit of a slog pacing-wise, though, and some work needed to be done to ensure things flowed organically.
Initially, I tried having the player go down the third path, get derailed down a side path, then complete 3 objectives, then go through paths 1 and 2 in any order before returning to the third.
Suffice to say, this was greatly overcomplicating things. At first, I tried redistributing path 3's objectives across paths 1, 2, and the side path -- but due to the area's structure, this raised issues with pacing and other objectives. Because of this, I ended up changing the side path to a side area, which led back up to the start of path 3, and redistributed its objectives across paths 1 and 2. This still presented some issues in regards to the area's pacing, and its semi-nonlinear didn't work well with it.
Thus, I ended up getting rid of the nonlinear aspect altogether, moved path 3's objectives to path 1, and redistributed the objectives of path 1 and 2 over to path 2.
Now, you start with the third path, get derailed into a side area, complete objectives in path 1, then complete objectives in path 2 to regain access to path 3, and finally go through path 3. This might sound pretty complex, but should be much better-paced than the original plan would have been in-game. Time will tell, however, and we may end up making changes in response to eventual playtesting feedback.
The biggest hurdle was figuring out how to adapt specific character moments in the third path to every single path instead, and properly redistributing the objectives in a way that felt natural -- and even though there'll be some stuff to figure out scope-wise with having a character present in every path, as opposed to just one, I'm sure it'll be worth it for the value it'll bring to the section. Just need to make sure things are handled appropriately writing-wise.
All that really needs to be done now is fleshing out certain aspects of the new outline/structure, as well as properly ironing out everything for Ruthless and Evacuation Neutral. This shouldn't be too difficult, given there was already a rough outline for the area. After that, it's just taking a lot of the scattered notes on the old outline document and properly migrating them to the new format -- as well as fleshing out the outline for the area's per-route third act -- and then the outline as a whole should finally be squared away!
Dev Diary: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!
As a bonus bit of trivia, here's something we talked about in 2024 on Tumblr!
During the development of Demo v2.0, the area progression for Starlight Isles changed significantly from its initial concepts to what was finalized. Originally, you would have gone from the forest (Stardust Woods) to the town (Starstruck Village), and fought Crossbones at the end. If you spared him, part of the Compassion route would have required the two of you teaming up against Count Koffin-K, and infiltrating his base of operations in Koffin-K Island.
For this segment, Crossbones would have been a party member... except he would have been completely useless, instead serving purely as comic relief. In battles with Koffin-K's minions, he would have done nothing besides crack jokes. This wouldn't have lasted too long, ending in the two of you getting separated. Then, you would have discovered that Koffin-K (who used to have hypnosis magic) would have "hypnotized" Crossbones, with him becoming the supervillain minion "Mr. S" (inspired by Mr. L from Super Paper Mario.)
(These are the only sprites I could find.)
Some of the finer details are missing. Either you would have "snapped him out of it," or he wasn't actually hypnotized the whole time, and was just pretending to be.
Eventually, you and the non-hypnotized Crossbones would corner Koffin-K together in his cathedral -- and in a last-ditch effort, Koffin-K would try hypnotizing Crossbones a second time. This time, it'd be complete with a whole transformation into a Darkwing Duck-esque design, with Crossbones wearing Koffin-K. Sadly, I wasn't able to find these sprites.
The Koffin-K battle would have been with a "hypnotized Crossbones" wearing Koffin-K. At the end, Crossbones would reveal that he was never actually hypnotized, and was just screwing with you both. Koffin-K would have figured that this meant he could only control bats.
Suffice to say, this was a LOT in terms of scope -- an entire major area devoted to Koffin-K with multiple sections, minion battles, and an entire "hypnotized Crossbones" antagonist plot. This just wasn't going to be feasible in the long term, and would be going way too overboard in terms of original content versus the rest of the game.
We ended up making the following simplifications:
"Koffin-K Island" was reworked to "Koffin Keep" -- and changed from a larger, linear area to a smaller, self-contained, nonlinear area.
Koffin Keep was placed between Stardust Woods and Starstruck Village to better integrate it within the overall area progression, and make it less of an afterthought or something "tacked on."
Koffin-K having hypnosis magic was scrapped, as was "antagonist Crossbones," because it made no sense.
The "useless party member" role was given to Koffin-K -- with Chara wearing him to conceal his presence during the festival, and giving him a great deal of unique interactions and cutscenes / cutscene variants.
We did end up referencing the hypnosis concept as an easter egg in the final game, though! If you lose to Crossbones during his battle in normal routes, you get sent to his shack. Koffin-K is there on the coat rack, and has dialogue that initially implies he's realized that Crossbones and Sans are the same person... before completely missing the mark, and claiming that "Crossbones has HYPNOTIZED Sans!" That bit is always funny.
It's sad we ended up having to scrap some of these ideas, but ultimately we're really happy with what we accomplished with Koffin Keep -- laying a lot more into a Saturday morning cartoon villain feeling than a more serious superhero / supervillain conflict.
Bluesky QnA
Since this is our first proper devlog in quite some time, we asked our audience on Bluesky for non-spoiler questions mainly centered around our design philosophies and overall process. Here are the ones we selected!
MagicalFishing: How do you decide when and where to diverge from the original underswap?
A: By this point in development, we only loosely reference the original Underswap in regards to its major role swaps. Besides that, not much else is that comparable, to the extent we don't even consider this project an interpretation of Underswap anymore -- instead as more of a re-imagining of Undertale. We're constantly trying to find ways to break away from the original game's plot formula, without going too over the top and into scope creep territory.
colixx: Will there be any more revamps in certain areas, like the boogiemen sprites? Will the entire soundtrack be uploaded one day?
A: From time to time, we consider revamping earlier content to bring it up to par with more recent material -- you can check out our Spring Cleaning - April 2025 devlog for examples! As for the soundtrack, we have everything (including some preview tracks for Crystal Springs) uploaded on SoundCloud. Uploads on YouTube will resume in the future, since we've needed to recreate or migrate the template used for them in a different software. I originally used Adobe Premiere Pro, but cancelled my subscription after graduating in 2023, and this has been a lesser priority than focusing on development.
Bloom: Why did you decide to add a quest system to the game? Would you at some time be willing to do smth like the Undertale QnA with Papyrus from the newsletters with your characters?
A: We thought that quests would be a nice little addition that allows us to explore more aspects of the game's world with side objectives. While most quests are pretty rudimentary and revolve around fetch quests, we've been trying to get more creative and make them more interesting -- whether that's via gameplay, or story elements (including hints towards a greater narrative.) As for the QnA, we've actually answered character asks on our Tumblr in the past, though this is something we haven't prioritized for the longest time. Maybe in the future!
oibafzurc: What is the average time you guys expect will take you to develop a demo?
A: Unfortunately, it's impossible to tell. If we were an actual studio that made money and could sustain ourselves, developing a game would ideally take much less time -- however, since this is a volunteer fan project we make for free, there's way too many factors which come into play. Everything is driven solely by motivation, and ultimately we need to prioritize more important things in our lives (i.e. work, school, family, ourselves) when it comes down to it. As a result, development can really slow down at times, but also speed up when people have bursts of motivation. This is something we ran into with Starlight Isles, and is likely to continue.
Sonic Gamer: I'm interested in the team's design philosophy/thoughts when it comes to designing overworld exploration/story progression. I'd love seeing iterations of room layouts when it comes to finding treasures, or thoughts on balancing armour (so they're good but never required to beat the game.)
A: When designing an area, we put together a bullet point list that covers most of the major beats we want to cover. This starts out as something simpler, then gets developed to be more specific -- eventually evolving into a room-by-room structure, where everything is deliberately planned out. We use certain categories when figuring out gameplay pacing: puzzle, explore (areas with overworld interactions, exploration, random encounters), encounter (cutscenes with key characters), fight (scripted / miniboss / boss fights), dodge (overworld dodging sections), chase (overworld chase sections), rest (SAVE point rest areas), and two more introduced in Crystal Springs (one of which may be unique to the area.) This allows us to consider how the game will play, and how it will feel in regards to scene and encounter pacing. Ultimately, this may change once we reach a stage in development where everything is playable in-game, allowing us to make modifications depending on its feel -- such as adding additional rooms, or changing existing rooms' layouts, to better pace areas. This is something we did for Starlight Isles (i.e. the dogboard introduction / Crossmobile race room, Crossmobile parking hole, and some others.) Of course, there's also making sure that the narrative comes full circle and feels satisfying from start to finish.
Here's some examples of areas which evolved considerably from start to finish! You'll likely notice some key differences between these concepts, and their final iterations in-game.
At one point, we considered having the Crossbones fight on Stargaze Mountain! This was changed with the introduction of Memory Moments, and thankfully, nothing else has ever happened in this location except for that.
Solidus Cumcer: How do you guys operate? As in how do you communicate ideas and work that needs to be done, how do you pick who does what? I imagine you're all doing this in your free time, so it sounds interesting how you manage that.
A: We use "task handouts" per department, which list various tasks that need to be completed. Art task handouts are generally the most in-depth, given the importance of visual assets and the game's reliance on them for scenes, gameplay, etc. Those for music, writing, and coding have additional notes on their respective documents / resources. From there, team members can choose to pick up whichever task(s) they wish to complete, since everything is based solely on motivation and passion. This can present a roadblock when people are busy or burnt out, but that's ultimately the nature of a volunteer project.
MoReL70: Which parts of the 3rd demo do you think are the most challenging to make and implement in-game currently, and why?
A: Probably the gameplay itself, funny enough. There's new mechanics we're experimenting with and want to ensure we get just right. Additionally, much of the writing is reliant on the gameplay mechanics, and some of the gameplay mechanics are reliant on the writing -- so there's a lot of key details we need to flesh out. Combine that with a general lack of time due to personal responsibilities, our biggest roadblock by far, and things are bound to take more time as a result. If that wasn't enough -- given that Evacuation Neutral and Ruthless are so different in scope and concept from Compassion and Neutral, at times it's kind of like writing and developing two games alongside one another.
boisterousbutler: How do you decide whether or not you are going to use original undertale monsters in each area or new ones? For example, lots of original undertale monsters had battles in section 1, while in section 2 it is mostly original characters.
A: With Ruined Home, one of our main focuses was establishing a sense of familiarity with Undertale's world, then steadily diverging from and expanding upon it -- with subsequent areas taking this further, playing off of expectations and subverting them. It's for this reason that we reused many of Undertale's enemies here, although we definitely could have paced them better, and given some more unique ACTs / SPARE paths. We also want our enemies to represent the areas' swapped climates and overall feel, in addition to just experimenting with original concepts. You're likely to see more returning enemies in future areas in one shape or another, although some may return solely as NPCs.
ButterflyDreamr: How do you plan out random encounters? Because while this game is top notch, I haven't liked how (regardless of route) you'll likely never see the new ruins enemies (and team-ups) and while that isn't an issue in starlight, those enemies now feel easier than ruins.
A: Admittedly, the encounter design in Ruined Home is definitively indicative of our earliest gameplay design. There's way too many enemies, resulting in players missing certain ones and various combos. Since then, we've decided to limit our pool of random encounter enemies, allowing us to better focus on ways to make them interesting and distinct from one another -- and with Crystal Springs, we're experimenting with having ACTs and SPARE methods change depending on which enemies are paired together. Time will tell if this works out!
battae: Out of all the enemies from the current version of the game, which one was the hardest to design?
A: Off the top of my head, probably Muffet. We didn't want to completely retread her original battle from Undertale -- and while the progression is more or less the same (outlasting her attacks), we tried to rectify this through dialogue, ACTs, visual presentation, and attack design. A lot of thought and effort went into figuring out a proper length for the battle, designing the attacks themselves, and how to combine certain ones together. Besides that, each of the Crossbones (and Sans) fights took a decent chunk of time with figuring out the premise and progression of each. Originally, the Ruthless ("endurance") battle was going to involve using ACTs in unpredictable ways, distracting him enough to land hits on him. This ended up feeling too complex, and we revisited the idea for his Evacuation Neutral ("serious") battle.
crossbonesfan123: Who is Crossbones's secret identity?
A: Thank you everyone for the questions.
That's all for now! Thank you so much for sticking around with our project, and being patient as we continue to work on the game and put together these devlogs.
January 20th was the 2nd anniversary of TS!UNDERSWAP Demo v2.0's release! We asked on Bluesky what everyone's favorite moments from the game were so far -- go ahead and let us know what yours are in the comments below!
Also, February 16th will be the 10th anniversary of the project! Although its current incarnation began proper development in 2018, those two additional years were essential for building a rough foundation and better understanding how to create something like this. While there's still a long way to go, we're proud of what we've been able to accomplish in all this time. (Let's just hope it doesn't take another decade to finish it!)
Until next time!
- Beethovenus, Project Manager @ Team Switched
Demo v1.0 Release (Dec 2020)
Demo v2.0 Release (Jan 2024)
2021: Jan | Feb | March | May | June | July (cs) | Aug (cs) | Sept (cs) | Oct (cs) | Dec (cs)
2022: Jan (cs) | Feb (cs) | April (cs) | May (cs) | June (cs) | Aug (cs) | Sept | Nov | Dec (du/cs)
2023: Feb | March | May | June | July | Aug | Oct | Dec (du/cs)
2024: April (du/cs) | Sept | Dec (du/cs)
2025: April
2026: Feb
Community Spotlight (cs) | Dev Update (du)
Some bullshit here
I hope Beeth just copy pastes this thing without realizing I added this at the end. Comment "Hi Beeth Follow 4 Follow Pls" on the devlog if you see this lol
fuck you connor
Paws at you cutely >:3c who the fuck
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