Hello, and good evening from the East Coast! We have a good bit of news to share with you from while we were gone. I hope you're as excited as we are! We have news from pretty much the entire game as a whole.

What you may not know about how we're releasing our product is that there's going to be a stage prior to the full demo. What we're working on right now is more of a preview, otherwise known as the "Proof of Concept Demo". In this version of the demo, you as the player will be able to experience the intro sequences and play through the short but decently sized tutorial area, with lots of new gameplay features to play with in the environment.
Why is our tutorial area so robust? Considering UTTO follows a very different formula than UT in terms of gameplay, we wanted to put all of our cards on the table.

The video above shows a quick run-through of an early version of the tutorial area prior to texturing it, running in a new engine crafted with love by the programming team to be more efficient, easy to use, and powerful. It's funny seeing the place using the "generic texture" tileset I threw together a while back!

ART

For a while now, Louis has been able to do many new things some more professional RPG characters have done, and I'm excited to finally officially release this outside of Discord! As almost all seen below, I gave Louis and his friends the ability to walk and run in 8 directions, leap from open ledges, crawl in dedicated crawlspaces, and most recently slide down slopes like in Deltarune! With these new abilities come changes to the standard Undertale terrain and puzzle design, so I really hope you enjoy playing with these new skills in the future!

Moving on, I also created a new UI based on the style of the Dialogue and Battle boxes I made and released a long time ago, seen above the battle example. Previously, we struggled with a placeholder Deltarune UI that wouldn't fit 4 characters on screen at once. Thus, it only made sense we used a new UI. With the addition of this UI, we've been able to restore the DEFEND button, and change SPELL to SKILL, giving each individual character a unique ability they can use in battle to turn the tables.

This was edited in after the post was made, but I forgot we never announced the addition of ambient creatures! These little guys will be littered throughout Mongale, and these are just some of the creatures you can find in the first area! Their purpose is to make Mongale feel more like a living place beyond its monsters, and for safe measure, it's not possible to kill these things in the uncertainty of their soul type in the Undertale universe- monster, or something else?

ART (CONT.)

We also have some released mockups/sneak peeks for Area 0: The Crash Site, otherwise known as the tutorial area. It shares a very close style with Area 1, which we'll get into later, but for now, we'll talk about this. The Crash Site is where you first arrive on Mongale, where it's apparent other people have come before you. Despite this, nobody's around... I think?

And just for fun, here's a mockup of Room 3a, the only currently complete room in the video above. Room 2 will need some work before its finished. Wait, there's food on the floor. Isn't that kinda weird?

This isn't any ordinary hot dog. While American-style hot dogs are Louis' favorite food, he can't help but look at this one strange. That's because this is a Rock Dog, a rock candy sausage tucked away in a plus, marshmallow bun. How sweet!

Finally, I'll show off the last (likely) completed room, Room 3b. Here, you'll pick out your first fight, if you want. The fight with this raggedy dummy is entirely optional, so as not to bore veterans or reckless lunatics. However, for those who take the time to practice, they'll be rewarded with a small helping of CROWNS (small, flat, crown-shaped silver coins that serve as Mongale's currency) for their troubles. This is also where we get to experience the shop UI, but there's no shopkeep! Things just keep getting weirder and weirder...

MUSIC

Let's talk about soundtrack. We have lots of it, especially, recently, as we picked up TheRadGuy as our second composer. Like stated in the previous devlog, UTTO has a Soundcloud playlist now, where we store all of our released OST, so now I can just embed the new songs here for you to listen to and check out later if you'd like!

Here's all the content made with love by TheRadGuy:

This even includes a bonus song he made for fun!

Lastly, Ethan made a quick melody. It's something very special to the characters in UTTO- a pure 17 seconds of goodness.

Who's Rofen, anyway? His little sister, even? Time will tell...

Hope you enjoy this absolute onslaught of new songs! Everyone in every department has been working diligently to create the best content we can, and I hope you appreciate them as much as we appreciate you fans!

PROGRAMMING

As seen above, programming has been going excellently! Most people may be wondering when a demo is coming out, but that will certainly be much later. Currently, though, we are working on a "Proof of Concept" Demo, which will contain the beginning scenes of the game and the extensive tutorial area we've created. It's almost like the "alpha builds" you see other fan games post as proof they're working, though we wanted to portray our proof in a little more professional way. I hope you understand because it's certainly more fun playing a slice of the demo as opposed to a bare-bones build. Thank you for your patience!

As of now, we're mostly remodeling room designs, but the programmers are working on little details here and there like Louis being able to walk in shallow water without stepping on top the water's surface. With this new engine finished, the programmers are feeling more confident than ever to get the job done, and done well!

Other than details, we just recently began work on revamping the void vessel scene, since we have to remake it in the new engine. Why not, y'know? I wanted to give it much creepier vibes, as opposed to how they appeared before just floating. I wanted to show how much we really affect these vessels as players, and I wanted to portray that better in our first interaction with them.

Here's a small, rough concept for how the taken vessels will appear on the screen, and how ours will look when we've taken them. They will sway back and forth, and some will struggle against what we've made them: puppets. We may be determined, but they are too, and I really wanted you to be able to see that.

I hope this excites you as much as it excites me! I can't wait for players to experience this in the proof of concept demo, so I'll work as hard as I can to make this happen!

EVENT

Finally, I get to talk about the contest!

From April 23rd to the 30th, we will be holding a contest on our Discord server!

We really want to community to be able to contribute to this project, too, so we've decided that we'll pick 3 enemies based on the theme of Area 1: Bulwark Bogs. What are the Bulwark Bogs, anyway? It's a haunted swamp, full of lumpy, clumpy mud; ghastly purple sludge, and piercing white eyes that follow you from the shadows.

Below you'll see a small mockup of how it should look. Do be mindful that it's going to see a huge facelift, but will overall be the same style. The colors may change a little, but not too much. We're mostly focusing on texture revamps, especially with the mud. We're also focusing on lighting and mood, like more shadows and a light mist to float around the screen!

With that said, feel free to submit a contestant if you think you have what it takes to win the Bulwark Bog enemy contest! Try to go for those spooky vibes- could be wholesome scary or genuinely scary. If you don't win this time, don't worry. You may just win a different contest down the line! See you on Discord!

CONCLUSION

Thank you all so much for your continued support and care toward this project! We're putting as much love into it as we can, and we hope what we deliver will be the up to your expectations of us! Alongside this, imagine almost 2k followers! We don't have to, thanks to all of you.

I'd also like to give a little personal bit before I head off. Soon, I'll be graduating, and to all of you in school during this quarantine, just know that I understand how you feel if your school's being as ridiculous as it can be at this point in time. To those that may be sick, I sincerely hope you recover, and it pains me to know literally anyone can fall under this virus and even die if not treated well enough. I want you all to be the determination this series preaches about, and never just give up! As to the rest of you, stay safe, wash your hands, and try to stay a safe distance away from strangers, or even people you know that don't live with you. We can all get through this if we just stay inside, and if that's maddening to you, find a hobby to keep you busy. I, personally, love to garden.

Finally, this long wait for a new devlog is over. I'm very sorry for being so late, but by the time you're reading this, I'll likely be asleep from staying up all night. Thank you for following the development of Undertale: The Otherground, and I'll be seeing you next log!