Hello, everyone! It's been a while! I'd like to welcome you all to the new era of this game, and what it's future will entail.

With the work of myself, a lot of new team members, and the new co-owner @goinks , we're proud to reveal a lot of new stuff you all might be interested in!

But before we get into the new stuff, why don't we go over something that just happened not too long ago?

[Beautiful art by goinks]

UNDEREVENT 2023

As many of you know, our project alongside UNDERTALE THANATOS was featured in UNDEREVENT 2023! It was a very fun experience, and all of us on the team are honored to have been part of it.

I recommend watching Underevent in it's fullest if you haven't already, there's many more things you wouldn't like to miss!

[You can watch our trailer by clicking here]

Now we'll go into detail about what exactly was going on in the trailer.

THE GAME

hey remember when we lied about papyrus encounter getting scrapped

Well...

We lied a bit more lol

That's right, more content is going to be added to the game! While we can't exactly say it's the same "Full Game" from before, most of the encounters have been brought back! In the trailer we showed off Hotland Encounter and the Napstaton Fight to start, but soon there'll be more to come.

However, not everything will be the same.

[Art by Kris]

TAKING A NEW DIRECTION

As you were able to see, Thanatos has drastically changed, and with UNDEREVENT happening, I believe this is the right time to finally announce what has really been going on with Thanatos.

It all started almost 8 months ago, while working on Papyrus Encounter. We experienced some serious performance issues, and decided to share a really rushed Papyrus Encounter build, pretending it to be a leak. This allowed regular people to playtest the game without wasting any development time.

It turns out 40% of people were experiencing performance issues as well, and since Thanatos kept expanding more and more, we decided it was finally time to switch engines.

(Also according to my fanbase DUSTBELIEF also had some performance issues, and the results were another factor in making this decision. (you should totally play it btw))

We no longer use Clickteam Fusion, and instead we use Godot.

Thanks to the engine switch, the game can now expand at its full potential!
We took the engine switch as a chance to fix all the issues we had with Thanatos, and rebooting it for one last time.
Because of that, Thanatos is way different now.

As you might've seen already, Sans has gotten a new design! We as a team have decided to stray away from the Pre-Leak design and format in favor of doing something more original.

[Art by Kris]

Sans himself and how he's characterized will be drastically different from anything you've seen, and any resemblance of how he was in Pre-Leak and Dusttrust as a whole have been removed.

This new design is meant to mirror Dustbelief Papyrus's design, and was made so Thanatos could actually stand out and be differenced among the million dust takes and AUs.

The UNDEREVENT trailer did show a little bit of the new Thanatos, but everything regarding the final Sans fight is completely outdated.

(For those concerned, Papyrus Encounter will be left unchanged, as it originated from Thanatos before Canon.)

We also have uploaded a teaser for a new theme on our official soundcloud account, and you can check it out here.

As it stands, we don't want to be affiliated with Dusttrust anymore.

Pre-Leak was a heavy limitation, and we couldn't even have fun working with it anymore. The final fight kept contradicting what we've been trying to establish through the game, and as soon as we got rid of it we were able to change many other things and improve the game greatly.

Now because most of you are like rabid dogs, I want to make something perfectly clear. WE WILL NOT TOLERATE HARASSMENT FROM THE COMMUNITY. Last time we made a big change to this game, a lot of the devs were harassed and we know that a lot of people are going to be upset about these changes.

IF WE ARE PUSHED ENOUGH, WE WILL BE INCLINED TO GO SILENT ABOUT THE GAME'S DEVELOPMENT FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME.

But hopefully that won't happen (it almost has before).

We're not being paid for any of this, and we don't owe any of you anything. This is being made purely out of passion, and your actions can make that passion fade. Please respect our decisions if you truly care about this project.

We've been working on this game for years now, and we're not going to release something we aren't proud of. However, that doesn't mean that all our past work has gone down the drain!

Introduction to [Project: Pre-Leak]

I know many of you started following Thanatos because it was supposed to be a finished Dusttrust game, and we're aware that all the new changes to the AU might make you lose interest in the project, so after thinking about it for a while, and lots of hard work, I'm very happy to announce "Project: Pre-Leak"!

This project is a remake of Dusttrust that stays true as much as possible to the original 2020 version of the AU

YES, THAT MEANS PHASE 4 AS WELL.

We've been working hard to finish it as soon as possible, and it will be ready before you know it!

You can take a little peek at some of the things we've done so far:

[Remastered Menu]

Just a generally nicer and cleaner version of the menu from the 2020 CTF Demo Build
I'm actually very happy with how it looks, the menu was able to improve a lot just by doing some color correction, and some other minor fixes!

[Remastered Phase 1]

This new version of phase 1 is meant to be a combination of the 2020 CTF Demo, the 2020 leak, and the 2020 CYF Demo
Along with a few other minor improvements and visuals taken from the now old version of Thanatos (which I'll now refer to as "Legacy Thanatos")

[Project: Pre-Leak] Music

To make things even better, we're using the original soundtrack as well. That means the 2020 soundtrack is being used once again!

[Project: Pre-Leak] Sprites

The battle sprites for Project: Pre-Leak are sprites made by myself, and they're meant to capture the original 2020 feeling.

[Spritesheets are going to be shared as soon as I'm done with them]

General Progress of [Project: Pre-Leak]

Even if the project just started, we already almost manage to finish the entirety of phase 3, stuff outside the battles, almost all the cutscenes, and even have done great progress on an Android export too! ((I wasn't lying when I said it will be done before you even know it))
Current objective is finishing phase 1, and don't worry, an announcement will be made whenever that happens (I estimate it to happen in ~10 days)

Now, moving on to the next section of the devlog...

green sans

[Art by Kris]

That's right! We've partnered with AWESOME GAMES to bring the infamous Green Sans into Thanatos, and vice versa as well!

Green Sans will be an additional encounter in Thanatos, meaning the rivalry of Green Sans vs. Dusttrust will finally come to an end in a climactic optional secret boss fight!

(this was made before the redesign so just pretend it's there)

But that's not all!

On the other side of things, we managed salvage something of the old game for you!

Since the final Sans fight in Thanatos will be completely different, we decided that the least we could do is repurpose some of it.

Don't be fooled, this isn't Thanatos. This is the Green Sans game itself!

Slaughter In The Spotlight will be handed over to AWESOME GAMES, and they'll finish it's development and include it as a bonus fight in Green Sans! The project file has already been shared to them, and they're continuing what we had. Be sure to check in on Green Sans every once in a while!

CONCLUSION

Things have been going smoothly, the changes to Thanatos made us have passion for this project once again and have fun with what we're doing!
Many, maaaany great things have been happening and I'm excited to share more of what we've been doing in a future!
But for now, this is more than enough.

Project: Pre-Leak is going great as well, it is currently the main focus, and my very last Clickteam Fusion project as well. I consider it as a love letter for all of you, and it is our way to say goodbye to Dusttrust. After we finish up with it, it's full steam ahead for Thanatos!

We're very excited to show you all what we're planning!

- Post written with love, by Ari and goinks