Howdy, everyone!

Welcome to the April 2026 Progress Report!

In this post, we'd like to share some of the progress that we've made on v2.8.0's development over the past few months!

We'll start by talking a bit about what we're currently focusing on, taking a look at some of the new features that have been implemented, and then wrap up with a collection of new music tracks from 2.8 for you to listen to!

Before we get started, however, I'd like to quickly apologize for this progress report taking a bit longer to get out than I had hoped. This past trimester on my university course has been a really busy period for me, and I've been needing to prioritize my studies during this time.

However, I've still been doing as much work on the game as I can whenever I have the chance, and the team has been making great progress on the remaining artwork and music for this update, which we're really excited for you to see! Some members of the team have even been able to work on more of the content that we have planned for future updates, so once 2.8 releases, we hope to be able to release subsequent updates at a quicker pace!

Thank you all so much for your patience with this update, and without further ado, let's dive into the status update!

Status Update on DONTFORGET v2.8.0

Since our last post, we've been working hard to chip away at our to-do list for 2.8, which is getting smaller by the day!

Some of the progress that we've been able to make includes:

• Writing for the Trial Questline, doing another pass on the intro sequence and working on more cutscenes in the Ruins!

• Working on a new cutscene system for the game, which will help us to implement them faster going forward!

• Finished implementing new rooms for the rifts in Snowdin, Waterfall, Hotland, and the CORE!

  
  
  
  

• Updated enemy abilities following changes to the magic system when Party Roles were introduced, and added a new action that enemies can perform during battles (more on this below)!

• Added a new type of enemy encounter! (More on this below!)

• Implemented the Party Dojo! (More on this below!)

• New overworld and local chat sprites have been made for some of the game's vessels, as well as new overworld NPC sprites, and some new battle sprites!

• New music tracks for certain areas, boss corruption battles, and PvP battles have been added! (More on this below!)

• Added some new spells/skills to flesh out certain party members' skillsets which felt lacking, along with some spell rebalancing and an update to the "Clouded" status ailment!

  
  
  
  

• Polishing work that's been on the to-do for a while, such as:

  • Improvements to the Party Management menu, making it possible to view party members' stats and spells directly within the menu while deciding on party formations.

  
  
  

  • Made the warp menu scrollable to make room for the rift warps, and so that it's easier to add more warps to the game in the future.

  

  • Added visible mercy meters during ACTs, so that the effectiveness of ACTs as they're happening are more clear.

  

We're also excited to share that development has reached a point where we're making arrangements to begin team-wide playtesting of the update very soon!

Our current priority is getting the Trial Questline fully playable from start to finish, which as I mentioned above we're actively working on more of the writing and cutscene implementation to achieve this!

Unlike previous updates where we've usually tried to test everything all at once towards the end, we're planning for there to be three stages to our playtesting process this time around, due to the sheer size of the update. The first stage will focus on testing the game's new progression systems (i.e. quests, party members, magic, equipment, battles, etc.), while the second stage will focus on the game's new multiplayer features (i.e. revamped PvP, private servers, LAN play, Undernet v2, etc.). The third and final stage will be the last push to playtest everything thoroughly before release; going through the fully-completed questline, and retesting anything that may have been updated following the previous stages.

We're really excited to begin team-wide playtesting soon, and we'll keep you posted on our progress when we can! For now, though, let's move on to the rest of this report!

New Battle System Features

As mentioned above, there have been a few additions to the battle system that we'd like to show you guys!

Held Items

The first of these is that the enemy abilities feature has been expanded, adding a new type of action that enemies can take during battles: item usage!

Enemies now have a chance to spawn with held items that they can use at opportune moments during battles, such as healing items when they're low on HP, or battle items such as the Tense Shard/Crystal when they're low on TP!

This addition is intended to add even more variety to battles, giving enemies another method of turning the tide of battle and encouraging players to adapt on the fly to complete battles efficiently! To help with this, the "ensnared" status effect now also works on enemies to prevent them from using items while they're afflicted with it, so you could choose to inflict this ailment on foes that you know may have good items at their disposal!

Multi-Round Encounters

The second addition I'd like to show you is a new type of battle, which are designed to test players' knowledge of the battle system in order to complete them as efficiently as possible... multi-round encounters!

Found exclusively inside of rifts and Gold Shrines (plus one other place that we'll talk about shortly), you can randomly come across a battle where there are multiple rounds of enemies that you'll need to defeat in a row!

These battles are inspired by the "Ch2 All Stars" battle found in Deltarune Chapter 2's Party Dojo, acting as a way to mix things up inside of rifts to make them feel more unique, and to challenge players on their knowledge of the area's enemies after they've completed the main area! These battles also provide a good opportunity to get the most out of the magic system, as longer battles means more chances to build up TP and use spells to your advantage!

I hope you'll have fun forming your own strategies to complete these encounters in v2.8.0!

Introducing the Party Dojo

After having been planned for quite some time, we're happy to share that the Party Dojo in Castle Town has been fully implemented!

Inside of the dojo, players can take on multiple new battle challenges to help train up their parties! Completing battle challenges will give your party members boosted bond points compared to regular battles, so for players who enjoy the battle system, the dojo is a great place to go for training up parties in the post-game!

There are two types of challenges that you can play here, the first being Corruption Rematches - a new way to replay corruption battles that you've already completed, including the boss corruption battles exclusive to the Trial Questline!

The second type of battle challenge are the All-Star battles, based on the "Ch2 All Stars" battle from Deltarune! There's an All-Stars battle for each major area of the game, where you'll face five rounds of enemies from that respective area in a row! For completing these, you'll earn a reward listed on the challenge menu!

Once you're finished training, you can head over to the nearby café to rest up and hang out with other players! The café has also been recently implemented alongside the Party Dojo, and features a layout combining its appearances from Deltarune Chapters 2 and 3 to ensure there's plenty of room to meet up here!

I wonder what kind of music they've got on that jukebox... speaking of music, that leads us into our next section!

New Music Tracks

For the final section of this report, we'd like to share some of the new music coming to the game in v2.8.0!

Since we've just been talking about Castle Town, let's start with our first track, "lo-fi beats to make or seal dark fountains to", arranged by 398utubzyt!

Next, here's the new arrangement of Pandora's Palace that'll play in Queen's Mansion, "Malicious Manor", by Pendulium!

Additionally, there's an alternate version of the track that will play in Queen's Mansion during the events of Spamton's side quest! Here's "Malicious Manor (Infected Version)", also by Pendulium!

That's not all for the Dark Worlds, though! We also have a new cover of TV WORLD's area theme, "Changing Channels", by 398utubzyt!

Let's switch over to some of the new battle tracks, starting with Mettaton's new boss corruption/PvP theme, "Drama! Romance! Bloodshed!", by 398utubzyt!

Next up, we have a new cover that'll be used by the Earthbound cast when battling against them in PvP, "Battle Against a Weirder Opponent" by 3DSquare!

The last track that we'll be sharing in this post is a new cover of "Gravity", the first boss theme in Cave Story, which will be used by Quote during PvP battles! Here's "Mean Killer Robot" by 398utubzyt!

We hope that you'll enjoy listening to these tracks! There are still a few tracks that we haven't revealed yet, and some that are currently in the works, so we can't wait for you to hear them all when 2.8 releases!

Conclusion

Alrighty, that brings our first progress report of 2026 to a close!

Thank you all so much again for your patience with us since our last post. It's been a pretty busy year so far, but we hope to have more news to share with you much sooner!!

Until next time, thank you for reading, and as always, stay determined!