Howdy, everyone!

Welcome to the December 2025 Mini Status Update!

The team and I hope that all of you have been having a wonderful holiday season, and we're wishing you all a happy new year ahead!

In this post, I'd like to talk to you all about some of the progress that we've made on v2.8.0 since we released v2.7.15 during the summer, as well as what our plans are going into the new year!

Before we delve into that, however, I want to apologize for how long it's been since my last post here on GameJolt.

A lot has happened between the release of 2.7.15 and now, both with the game's development and in my personal life. Between juggling the development of 2.8, maintaining 2.7, and keeping up with my new university course and other commitments, I'll be honest that I was feeling a bit overwhelmed during the past few months.

I took some time to focus on things at my own pace, working on 2.8 where I could alongside my university work, and thankfully I've been feeling a lot better lately! I've been getting back into a more consistent routine with DF's development, and I'm really excited to show you what the team and I have been working on!

Still, my communication could have been a lot better during this period, so I apologize for the gap between this post and the previous. I want to avoid long gaps like this one from happening again, so going into 2026, I'll be changing how I share development progress here on GameJolt to help maintain a more consistent schedule.

This will officially be the last "Mini Status Update", and going forward, "Progress Reports" will have varying lengths to enable them to be released more consistently (ideally bi-monthly), rather than trying to maintain a distinction between larger posts and smaller posts. Whether there's a lot of news to share at once, or just a short post to keep you guys in the loop, I'll make sure to stay as consistent as possible with progress reports in 2026!

With that said, thank you all so much for your continued patience, and without further ado, let's dive into the last status update of 2025!

Status Update on DONTFORGET v2.8.0

Since our last status update, we've been hard at work implementing some of 2.8's remaining important features (not many left now!), as well as some exciting changes to improve the gameplay even further!

These include the following:

• Finished all main rooms of the overworld revamp! More on this below!

• Finished implementing all of the new combined attack patterns for every enemy formation!

  
  
  
  
  

• Implemented more enemy formations to have a wider variety of encounters!

  
  
  

• Implemented a new launch menu! More on this below!

• Implemented a new character class system for party members, known as "Party Roles"! More on this below!

• Added a range of new spells to the game, and rebalanced existing spells!

• Finished implementing new shops throughout the overworld, and began implementing new NPC vendors! More on this below!

• Implemented a new equipment menu, to make managing your party's equipment even easier! Weapons and armors are now separated into their own lists, and the menu now functions similarly to Deltarune's!

  

• Made further progress on the new Trial Questline!

• Began implementation of a new way to play online! More on this below!

Before we talk about the larger features mentioned here in their own sections, let's go over some of the smaller bits of news first!

Overworld Revamp Progress

In the previous status update, we announced that the overworld revamp had been completed up to the end of the Underground, and that we would be working on revamping the Closet Dark World and Card Kingdom next.

Well, I'm happy to share that the new Closet Dark World and Card Kingdom have been completed!

When you first enter the closet in Hometown's school, you'll arrive in the strange area seen at the start of Deltarune Chapter 1! This area only had two rooms in previous versions of DF, but now it's been recreated in full for you to explore!

Once you reach the end of the area, you'll slide down into Castle Town, which is based on its appearance from Deltarune Chapter 2!

After reaching Castle Town, the closet door back in the Light World will automatically take you there instead of the starting area from that point on. However, if you want to go back to the starting area, you can climb the cliff back up at any time!

To the east of Castle Town, the Great Door will take you to the Card Kingdom. This area has been completely rebuilt from the ground up, and is now 55 rooms long, which is nearly double the size of the area in 2.7!

With these areas completed, all of the main rooms of the overworld revamp are now finished!

All that's left at this stage is to finish adding more secret rooms like I mentioned in the previous status update. I probably won't be adding too many of these for v2.8.0, but I do have plans for more in future versions!

I hope you'll enjoy exploring the new overworld and hunting for secrets together with other players in v2.8.0!

New Launch Menu (and name change!)

To us, 2.8 marks a major turning point in DF's development. Our intention with this update is to bring the project much closer to our vision of the full game, preparing for what's to come in v3.0!

As part of this, we want to cement the game's identity and goals, as newer players may understandably not know what our plans are!

For starters, the game's title, "DF CONNECTED"... it's a bit strange, isn't it? The name of the project here on GameJolt is "DONTFORGET", but then when you download the game, it's called "DF CONNECTED". What's up with that?

Well, for those of you who don't know, the DF project is actually comprised of two experiences: a singleplayer Story Mode, and a multiplayer Online Mode! DF actually got its start as a singleplayer-only game, and it's always been the plan to have two modes since online multiplayer was first added. However, as the project grew, our plans for Story Mode changed. It was decided that Story Mode would work best as a Deltarune-styled experience, while Online Mode would continue to work best as an Undertale-styled experience!

Due to having different gameplay systems, the two modes would need to be developed independently from each other. As such, we originally expected to release them as separate downloads, because GameMaker didn't natively support packaging multiple games together as one executable at the time. Story Mode would have been released as a standalone game titled "DF PERPETUAL", while Online Mode would be released as a standalone game titled "DF CONNECTED" (which is what it's currently available as now).

However, this plan changed when GameMaker added a new function, game_change, which made it possible to make a launcher application to package multiple GameMaker games together (just like how Deltarune's chapters are actually separate games packaged together as one game)!

Once we settled on using this function, it was only a matter of time until the game would be renamed back to just "DONTFORGET". We expected that this would happen in either v2.9.0 or v3.0.0, but with v2.8.0 becoming such a major turning point for the project, this update feels like the right time to do it.

So, starting with v2.8.0, the game's name will officially be just "DONTFORGET", without the "Connected"!

That's not all that will be changing, of course! More importantly, we want newer/returning players to know that a Story Mode is still planned, as that hasn't been readily apparent in the game itself for some time. As such, in preparation for v3.0 (when Story Mode will be introduced), v2.8.0 adds a new launch menu!

From now on, when you start the game you'll be greeted with this new launch menu, where you can select either "Story Mode" or "Online Mode". You'll also be able to configure global settings across both modes, view some extras, and access a support page with links to our GameJolt community, Discord server, and support e-mail.

When you select "Story Mode", you'll be taken to the chapter select screen. There are four chapters planned for Story Mode. As of now, you can't select any of these chapters yet, as Chapter 1 will be releasing in v3.0.0, with Chapters 2-4 releasing in subsequent updates.

The purpose of adding this menu before Chapter 1's release is to help establish that Story Mode is still planned, and to have a launch menu ready to go when it comes time to release it!

Over in the "Online Mode" menu, you'll be presented with three options to play online.

You can play on the official server, powered by GameMaker Server, or you can play on private servers, or you can play local multiplayer with nearby friends on the same network, or you can play offline!

Wait... private servers?

That's right, this is the new way to play online that I mentioned earlier! In the next section, I'd like to talk a bit about them!

Introducing Private Servers

In v2.8.0, we'll be introducing another way to play the game online with your friends: private servers!

With this option, players will be able to host their very own private servers in DF Online Mode, allowing up to 12 players to play together over the internet!

Private servers use a peer-to-peer connection, and can be started directly from in-game! To do so, you'll first need to select "Private Servers" from the Online Mode menu. This'll take you to a menu with the options to either join or host a private server.

When you select "Host Server", you'll be prompted to enter your desired server port (or leave it as the default), and the nickname that you would like to use on the server. Once you've done so, you can select "Host Game" to start the server!

However, for other players be to able to connect to it, you'll either need to port forward, or you and your friends can use a VPN application of your choice (such as LogMeIn Hamachi or Radmin)!

If you'd like to join a private server, you can select "Join Server" and enter the server's IP address, port, and the nickname that you would like to use on the server. If the server host is using a VPN application, you'll need to use the same one as well to join the host's network before you'll be able to connect to the server.

Once you've done that, you can play on your very own server together with your friends! You'll be able to do everything you can do on the official server - you can chat, form guilds, use Undernet, and PvP! In the future, it's also planned to be possible to join each other in battles via "co-op parties"! You'll be able to form guilds (and in the future start a "co-op party") from the new dedicated "Guilds" menu in the CELL!

This new private server system was developed by Landimizer, who was also the programmer for the new LAN Play option! We're really excited for you guys to be able to create your own servers to play with friends in v2.8.0!

Now, you may be wondering about the community server system that we've previously announced for v2.8.0, which is a different system from private servers. Unfortunately, it needs a bit more time before we'll be ready to release it, so we're no longer planning to have it be available in early access in 2.8. We apologize for any disappointment this may cause, but rest assured that it is still our plan to add the ability to host dedicated community servers in 2.9!

Until then, we hope you'll continue to enjoy playing the game on the official server, private servers, and/or with LAN Play!

Introducing "Party Roles"

Next up, I'd like to go over some significant improvements that have been made to the game's magic system!

Earlier this year, you may recall that the magic system was expanded to allow party members to have a full set of six ability slots, an increase from their original four slots. This change enabled me to try my hand at designing more unique skillsets for each character, and it also made it possible to have an upgrade system (Bond Levels) where they could unlock new abilities over time.

While this expansion was a positive change, it required the redistribution of spells across all 68 characters, and this time with a larger skillset for each of them. Trying to design unique skillsets for that many characters, while maintaining balance between them and staying true to their personalities, was admittedly a tough challenge for me, as I hadn't designed an RPG on that scale before!

Although I managed to get it done, and I thought that would be it for the magic system, I unfortunately found myself feeling dissatisfied with these skillsets over the following months.

One thing that I realized through playtesting is that while each party member had been given an "archetype" which informed their skillsets (such as offense-focused, healing-focused, buff-focused), it still seemed to be trickier than intended for players to build cohesive parties.

This was because the range of spells that each character could have was still quite broad, due to their archetypes being pretty loose. For example, there are many roles that could fall under "offense-focused", like warriors, tanks, or battle mages, but up to this point DF didn't really have any particular roles like that for party members.

I began to feel that redesigning each character's skillset with "classes" in mind, giving them a clearer role that they're intended to fulfil in the party, could make the party member system even better. It would enable players to make more informed decisions when picking their party members, give them the opportunity to form strategies around specific roles, while also helping to maintain the game's balance as more characters get added, as each "class" would be restricted to a more specific range of spells they could use.

So, the decision was reached to implement new character classes into DF's magic system, which have been fully implemented into the game as "Party Roles"!

Now, all 68 party members have been assigned a "Party Role", which are essentially like character classes in other RPGs! A party member's "Party Role" determines the types of spells they're able to have, their base stats, and how quickly they can unlock certain abilities.

The party role of each character is listed on their profile in the "Party" menu (shown above), so that players can easily see a character's role and take that into consideration when building their parties!

There are seven party roles in the game, which are:

Fighter

Skilled in one-on-one combat, fighters can deal moderate elemental damage to foes, and aid their allies with solo buffs (and later group buffs). However, they have average stats and no access to heavier elemental attacks.

Example characters: Harlow, Kris, Mew Mew...

Caster

Being proficient magic users, casters wield powerful elemental attacks that can target multiple foes, and they can support the party with buffs or debuffs. However, they have weaker physical attacks.

Example characters: Alphys, Napstablook, Noelle...

Tank

The muscle of the party, tanks can utilize their high HP to take on the brunt of damage taken, and can dish out heavy elemental attacks back at foes. However, this comes at the cost of higher TP consumption and a lower MAG stat.

Example characters: Undyne, Susie, Asgore...

Healer

Masters of healing and support, these characters can assist the party with valuable group healing, curing, and group buffs. However, they have weak attacking capabilities and lower HP, which makes them more vulnerable to being downed if not protected.

Example characters: Papyrus, Ralsei, Hathy...

Guardian

The protector of the party, guardians can cast both healing spells and magical attacks to fend off foes - but they're the best at neither, with only single-target healing and a moderate elemental attack, along with lower defense.

Example characters: Toriel, Ness, Reimu...

Mediator

Skilled in the art of communication, these characters specialize in higher mercy output, granting group debuffs to support the party, and a "Self-Defense" attack that never kills an enemy - but they have no healing spells and little or no MAG.

Example characters: Frisk, Jeff, Jigsawry...

Glass Cannon

A specialist role, glass cannons have access to the heaviest elemental attacks in the game, much sooner than other characters can, but at the cost of being very fragile. Being able to take only 1 hit when starting out, they'll need to focus on evading attacks while building up TP to deal devastating damage.

Example characters: Sans, Underswap Sans, Underfell Sans...

So, with these new party roles in place, I redesigned every character's skillset from the ground up to fit their respective roles, which included rebalancing existing spells and adding new ones!

A few of the new spells that have been added include:

• The new "curing" spells, Curing Wish and Restore. Both costing 32% TP, they can be used to cure one party member of an elemental status ailment ("Burned", "Soaked", "Shocked", etc.), or a physical status ailment ("ATK Down", "DEF Down") respectively.

  

• The new Tank-exclusive skill, Taunt, which causes the tank to be the enemy's only target next turn. This prevents their allies from being harmed, but at the cost of all of the damage being concentrated on the tank.

• The new "Shield" spells, Fluffy Guard, Acid Shield, and Orb Shield. Each of these will create two shields that orbit around the SOUL, which can block three bullets each before being destroyed. There are only three characters who can unlock these, so it's a rare but valuable ability.

  

• A new fighting-elemental multi-target attack, Blade Swipe.

  

• A new PSI ability, PSI Thunder, which is now used by Poo.

  

• A new mercy buffing skill, Mercy Up, which can be used by the new "Mediator" role, as well as some Healers, to grant a temporary boost to mercy output for the whole party. It's essentially the pacifist's equivalent of an attack buff.

• Asriel's new Star Blazing attack.

  

• Undyne's new Spear Storm attack.

  

• New healing spells exclusive to Susie: UltraHeal, OKHeal, BetterHeal, and Heal. This is because Susie's UItimateHeal can now be upgraded over time as the player uses it more, like in Deltarune Ch3+4! Although technically, because she's the "Tank" role, she shouldn't have a healing ability at all... but it'd be a shame not to include it!

In total, there are now 99 spells/skills in the game! I hope you'll look forward to building parties in v2.8.0 to try them out!

New Shops and Items

After the magic system update was completed, the next thing that I worked on was finishing the remaining shops and implementing new items!

My priority was to get all of the shops necessary for progression implemented into the game, and I'm happy to say that they're all functional! There are now seven shops in the game, which are:

• Q.C's in Snowdin!

  

• Grillby's in Snowdin!

  

• Gerson's in Waterfall!

  

• Tem Shop in Tem Village!

  

• Bratty and Catty's in Hotland!

  

• Burgerpants' in MTT Resort!

  

• Seam's in Castle Town!

  

From these shops, players can buy valuable healing items, weapons, armors, and more!

As I mentioned in a previous status update, the shops being added in v2.8.0 aren't final! Most of them are still using their original assets from UT/DR, and in the future we intend to replace these. We also have plans to introduce brand-new shops in the future, featuring characters from DF Story Mode!

The shop system itself has also received some improved functionality. It is now possible for shops to contain more or less than four items, and selling is finally a feature in DF!

Got some items taking up space in your inventory/storage that you don't need anymore? Need some quick G and you're willing to part with some old equipment? Well, now you'll be able to sell them to certain shopkeepers in 2.8 onwards!

There are currently two shopkeepers who you'll be able to sell your items and equipment to: Temmie and Seam!

Speaking of equipment, I'd like to talk a bit about a change that has been made to how new equipment is obtained during a playthrough.

Buying Duplicate Equipment

In previous posts, I've talked about how part of the progression overhaul in v2.8.0 includes changing how equipment is obtained. Certain pieces of equipment will now be found directly in the overworld as item pick-ups, like in Undertale, while duplicates to equip to your party members and stronger equipment would be available at shops.

Previously, it was planned that shops would sell both the stronger/alternative equipment as well as the duplicates of the overworld equipment. This would have made it so when players reached a shop, they would have the choice of going straight for the stronger equipment at a higher price, or saving their G by buying the cheaper duplicates of the overworld equipment for their party instead, and coming back later for the upgrade if they wanted to.

However, through playtesting it became apparent that this setup wouldn't be ideal. It would just mean that players would have to make it all the way to the end of the area before being given the ability to buy more equipment, and most players will likely try to wrap up what they're doing in the area (i.e. exhausting the population counter on the no-mercy route) before moving on, so their party members would be stuck with weaker equipment until they reached the end of the area.

It would feel more natural for progression if you could purchase duplicates of the overworld equipment at the mid-point of each area, and then at the end of the area you would find the shop to buy the upgraded/alternate equipment.

However, it's not feasible to add entirely new shops within each area just yet... as I've mentioned above, more shops are planned to be added in the future, but we need another solution until then.

So for now, I came up with a different idea that I think can work just as well: NPC vendors!

Undertale already has a system where you can buy a particular item from certain NPCs, such as the Nice Cream Guy who you can buy nice creams from, so I think it makes sense to have some NPCs who you can buy duplicates of the overworld equipment from!

For example, this "cool cat" in Snowdin will sell you duplicates of the "Cozy Scarf" armor...

...and this friendly fellow will sell you duplicates of the "Dual Icicles" weapon!

There will be two NPC vendors found in each area, one to sell that area's weapon and one to sell its armor. You'll be able to identify that an NPC has something to sell by a green speech bubble that appears above them!

New Items

Moving on, I'd like to quickly cover some of the new items that have been added in 2.8! There are now 32 consumable items in the game, and these include:

• Nice Cream - Heals 12 HP to one ally. Sold by the Nice Cream Guy.

  

• Punch Card - Comes with every Nice Cream in Waterfall, you can exchange three of these for a free Nice Cream, or you can use them in-battle to make MASH-type weapons stronger for 2 turns.

  

• Cinnamon Bunny - Heals 15 HP to one ally. Sold by Q.C.

• Trisicle - Heals 8 HP to all allies. Items that heal the whole party can only heal party members that haven't been downed, unlike Deltarune, so if 1-2 party members are downed when the Trisicle is used, the player will receive either a Bisicle or Unisicle from what's left over. Sold by Q.C.

• Crab Apple - Heals 18 HP to one ally. Sold by Gerson.

• Golden Tea - Revives a downed party member to 50% of their maximum HP. There are many iconic revival items in RPGs, like Dragon Quest's "Yggdrasil Leaf", Final Fantasy's "Phoenix Down", or EarthBound's "Horn of Life", so when deciding what DF Online Mode's revival item should be, I thought that Asgore's favorite tea, Golden Flower Tea, would be the most fitting! It's sold by Gerson, but can also be earned from certain side quests or found in secret rooms!

• Starfait - Heals 22 HP to one ally. Sold by Burgerpants.

• Glamburger - Heals 30 HP to one ally. Sold by Burgerpants.

• Combo Meal - Heals 16 HP to all allies. Sold by Burgerpants.

• Ice Coffee - Heals 18 HP to one ally, and cures the "burned" status ailment.

• Tense Shard - When used in-battle, it grants an immediate +32% TP. It's the equivalent of the "Tension Bit" in Deltarune.

• Tense Crystal - When used in-battle, it grants an immediate +50% TP. It's the equivalent of the "Tension Gem" in Deltarune.

  

• Dark Candy - Heals 16 HP to one ally. Sold by Seam.

• Darkburger - Heals 25 HP to one ally. Sold by Seam.

I hope you'll look forward to visiting the new shops and trying out the new items when 2.8 releases!

What's Next?

To wrap up this last status update of 2025, I'd like to take some time to reflect a bit on the past year, and to talk about our plans going into the new year.

First and foremost, I want to apologize for the fact that v2.8.0 was unable to release in 2025. Earlier this year, we were hoping to release the update some time during the summer, but regrettably we weren't able to achieve this in time. As of now, I'm afraid that we still aren't able to announce a release date for v2.8.0 - not just yet.

I'm sorry for any disappointment that this may cause; I know that the wait for this update has been far too long, and the smaller updates in-between can only help with the wait so much.

Despite its lengthy development, I want to assure you that I'm still just as passionate and determined to finish v2.8.0 than ever. While I wish that 2.8 didn't take as long as it has, I also firmly believe that the extra time has made it a much better experience than it otherwise would have been. I'm incredibly proud of what that the team and I have been able to accomplish with 2.8, and I sincerely can't wait to get this game into your hands!

Although we weren't able to release 2.8 this year, we were still able to release v2.7.14 and v2.7.15 in the meantime. I'm really happy with how v2.7.15 came out, and it was a lot of fun to hang out with all of you in-game when it released! I think this version is a good send-off for 2.7 - there are no plans to make any further patches for 2.7, and I intend to keep it that way if I can help it!!

With that said, I think I'm ready to leave 2025 behind, and look forward to what's to come in 2026!

Going into the new year, we'll be doing everything we can to finish v2.8.0 as fast as possible, and this begins with completing our work on the new Trial Questline.

I've spoken a bit about it previously, but for those of you who may not know, 2.8 will be adding a brand-new questline to the game, which features a new (non-canon) story to experience; complete with new cutscenes, new bosses, and distinct routes!

While this story is non-canon due to the canon questline being planned for v3 (as it will share connections with Story Mode), the non-canon story does share the same premise as the canon story, so it'll still help to give you guys a better idea of what the full game will be like while development continues!

We'll have more to share with you regarding the new Trial Questline, and much more, in the next progress report. We hope you'll keep an eye out for its release!

Conclusion

Phew! That's it for the final status update of 2025!

Although it's been a turbulent year, I'm still very proud of what we've been able to accomplish, and I'm incredibly grateful to all of you for your continued patience and support throughout this past year. Thank you all so much, it genuinely means the world to me.

From all of us here on the DF team, we hope you have a happy and healthy new year ahead, and as always... stay determined!