Regarding the "Hiatus"

Bit of a cold open, but the more I've thought about it, the move I've come to question whether or not "hiatus" is the right word for what we're doing right now, given that people are working on the game. Because of that, I think I'm going to start phrasing things differently. So, instead of saying we're on hiatus, I'm just gonna say we're in "semi-active development."

What does this mean? Basically nothing. If you're in our Discord, you'll know this already, but the game is being worked on, although most of the team's not being asked to do very much right now while some of us try to make the game less painful to work on. I'll touch on that more in a little bit, but first, I think now's a decent time to address the elephant I let into the room a week or two ago.

Doesn't look very much like an elephant, does it?

If the question on your mind when this got posted a few weeks ago was anything along the lines of "Sabel but Gameboy Pokemon?," then I'm thrilled that my spriting is good enough in your eyes to draw comparison to a game that I was very intentionally trying to reference. As it turns out, this sprite does not belong to an artstyle change for Undertale Violet (although a discussion months back regarding such is largely to blame for this,) but instead an entirely new spinoff game. The name of which...

...will be revealed at a later date.

As much as I'd LOVE to talk about the game more, I don't think it's yet in a state that I should talk about it all too much. Although, I might as well talk about a few development-related things.

(Whether or not there's going to be a functional shop isn't something I'm certain about yet, so don't get your hopes up.)

Mainly, I think I should temper expectations a little bit. Crucially, this game is mostly (excluding Music and Sound stuff) being worked on by a single person: @lillbro64 (a.k.a. me hi hello that's meeeeeeee)

As for why I'm making this game:

1. Improve my skill as a developer (from "near zero" to "able to actually work on video games")
2. Give fans (hi all three of you) something to interact with while we work on Undertale Violet itself (without pulling to much developer focus away from it)
3. Reason I Will Not Be Explaining Because It Has To Do With Undertale Violet Stuff (or RIWNBEBIHTDWUVS if you love acronyms and hate yourself)

(I've got no clue where that image came from but it's been on my desktop for months so I decided to use it as a placeholder because WHOOOOOOO IS GONNA STOP ME?)

I don't currently have a great estimate for when the game is gonna come out. My initial plan was to do it alongside officially coming out of "hiatus," but I've decided it may be better to just release it when ready. My hope was within a month (probably not happening) or by the end of this month (super not happening,) but chances aren't great for either of those happening (this game has admittedly become bigger than initally planned.) On the bright side, most of the game's main mechanics have been implemented, and I'm planning to send out a test build to a few people within the next few days.

Once the game's further along, I'll likely talk more about the actual gameplay stuff, so look forward to that.

As for the main game...

It's probably best if I provide a quick summary of what's led us here in order to have better context for what our plans are.

So, hi, I'm @lillbro64 , the (as of writing) sole director of Undertale Violet. I won't talk about why that's the case right now (thankfully it doesn't involve any drama,) but I'll mention it now because I know people will ask: Yes, DeerSponge is still on the team (he initally stepped down as director to focus on real world stuff.) The direction the game's taken is probably different than the one he imagined, but the main characters (and some of the main story details) are still the ones he came up with.

I've been a director of the game for just over a year now, and the game unfortunately hasn't moved as much as it should've in that time. There's a few reasons for that, but above all else: irl things have wrestled a lot of the team's focus away. As you might be able to imagine, a lack of activity has led to things stagnating. It's because of that stagnation that the whole "hiatus" thing happened in the first place, which leads us to here and now.

So, what's the plan?

• Past the first area (the Underways,) story details aren't as fleshed out as they maybe should be. Once I've got the first test build of the new game ready, I'll switch focus for a few days to begin rectifying that problem (it'll likely be an outline for me and the other writers to work with that I'll be writing on and off until it gets done.)

• The Underways themselves have suffered from a bit of ambiguity as well. Once the new game is done, I'll work with a few others to fully map out the Underways (by which, I mean in-game layout, we've done just about everything else and it's about time the actual, in-game map gets done.)

• A major issue has been a lack of progress on the actual game part of the game itself. Most if not all of our coding team has been pulled away from working on it by life in one way or another, which is a large reason I wanted to become semi-decent at Godot (the game engine we're using.) Once the previous two points have been adequately addressed, I'll turn my full attention to getting the game to the point where it needs to be (once it's at that point I'll still work on it, but alongside other parts of the game, namely writing.)

• At some point within all of this, we'll likely get new team applications set up. (Somebody has access to the old applications, but I don't as of writing, and it'd probably be better to make new ones at this point regardless.) Notably, I don't want to post team applications until we have something to show off, new game and Undertale Violet itself. When that's going to be isn't entirely clear yet, but I plan to keep y'all updated.

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So, there you have it! Work is getting done, and I'm hoping there'll be a bit more to show off in a few weeks (for both projects!) Until then, enjoy your summer, and try to Persevere through whatever life throws at you!

(I STILL HAVE NO CLUE WHERE I GOT THIS IMAGE I JUST THINK IT'S FUNNY)