Hey, welcome back!

Sorry for the delay. You know the story by now. College homework ramping up, personal biz, yadda yadda yadda. But you're not here to hear excuses! You're here to see a little bit of what we've been cooking up!

...So, remember when I said in regard to the first WIP Showcase Video, "The contents of this video are HIGHLY subject to change! This is still INCREDIBLY early on in development...I made this moreso to show what I'm working on as a brief showcase..."

Well, that should give you a pretty good idea of what you're about to see in this devlog, huh?

THE REVISIONS

That's right! The Haven location redesign is in a state where I think it's presentable enough to the audience.

THE REVISIONS - HAVEN REDESIGN

A brief glimpse at the planned new Haven tileset. Of course, I'm posting this here because I wanna get y'all's thoughts on it.

Here, we have a screenshot from a quick test room just showing off the new tiles. Also, you can see a new mechanic being featured as well: Water-wading! (Well, technically it's not new because there were water-wading sections in Undertale, but they didn't actually have a gameplay mechanic purpose and were mainly just for aesthetic, so it's technically new) Doesn't seem like much at the moment, but trust me, if combined with Deltarune-styled Overworld Bullet-Dodging, they could be really tricky to navigate around.

The current biggest problem with the tileset is the water elevation inconsistency, which will need to be rectified in the future. But as for now, I'm personally really happy with the new look of the area.

I wanted to really lean into an autumn-esque color palette and vibe, and really try to do something different for the first area. The original Haven tileset and design suffered from being essentially just "The Ruins but beige and green," which did not really help the "VT doesn't conform to traditional Undertale roles and locations" goal. This one feels much more fitting for the story's purposes... of which, I can't really show (obviously), but trust me on this, it makes way more sense than the "Abandoned centuries-old labyrinth" angle. The restructuring also makes way more sense for how the inhabitants of Haven can survive. Speaking of the inhabitants...

THE REVISIONS - HERALD (AGAIN) (AGAIN)

It's kinda funny how, by this point, Herald has made his way to one of the most redesigned characters of the current planned cast for all of Versotale. But, here's a quick brief snippet of him in the middle of the new first cutscene in the Underground!

As well as his front-facing sprites so you can get a better look at the main man himself:

A huge thanks goes out to two of the new artists on the team: Daymations for redesigning Herald (And the other main Haven Angel members you haven't quite met yet), and SnowyBoi for making the new Herald sprites.

(Oh, and by the way, if you miss Herald's previous look with the jacket wrapped around his waist, don't worry! That kind of outfit has been transferred over to another character you have yet to see, also redesigned by Daymations!)

THE CHANNEL

One last thing before the conclusion: I mentioned this in an earlier devlog about posting more to the channel than just Versotale showcase videos. Well, there's a chance I might finally be going forward with that a bit more... relatively soon-ish.

Wanna start just posting some fun gameplay videos and/or series about, well, games I like, games that are nostalgic to me, etc. Maybe drawing videos or programming videos as well, who knows! I certainly don't yet!

So, if you happen to see one or more videos popping up from the Verstamech channel that isn't Versotale-related, don't worry, that DOESN'T mean I've stopped posting updates! Just means I'm posting more stuff on my channel.

THE CONCLUSION

I'm curious to hear what y'all think of the new aesthetic for Haven. I didn't wanna make TOO much progress just in case there was substantial pushback. But hopefully y'all like it overall! It's been an absolute blast working with the team to come up with these new designs and story concepts, and I'm super excited for you all to actually witness the revised story in place for Haven!

See you all next time!

-Verstamech