Hi! I'm Paled, the main developer of what used to be called "Shadowfell Saga".

It's been a while since I decided to announce this project's cancellation, something I have been kicking myself about for months. This project was probably one of my favorites I've worked on, so finally bringing the hammer down and cancelling hurt quite a bit.

With that being said, you might be wondering why there's a bit of activity on this page.

Let's talk about that!

Before getting into anything else, I wanted to clear up a few things about why exactly "Shadowfell Saga" was cancelled.

There's a misconception that THE main reason for cancellation was fear of copyright infringement. This is false. The main reason was a total lack of motivation and issues I had with project management. This is something I went over in my initial announcement, but I'll go over this in some bullet points:

• I have severe ADHD. At the time, I was unable to take meds after being on them for about a year due to an unrelated serious health problem.

• The project structure of the game was absolutely terrible, and I was working with a game engine that in hindsight I realize wasn't right for me. (Gamemaker Studio 2)

• Due to my poor directing skills, a lot of the team were pretty unmotivated and nothing was getting done.

• The game was having a bit of an identity crisis in general, with ideas being thrown around and things being fundamentally changed over and over. This is in part due to my perfectionism.

When Mario & Luigi: Brothership was announced, it was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back. However unlikely that it was that our final project would be struck down by Nintendo, there was still a tiny chance it COULD due to how superficially similar it was to Brothership (freely going between islands on a boat, a tropical theme and setting, music inspiration, bros attacks, etc). With that added to the laundry list of other problems, it just felt too overwhelming to be able to continue.

It was kind of a shock to me seeing so many people attached to this little half-joke project that never got off the ground. I still see "Shadowfell" being mentioned in some places, mostly by other Undertale fangame developers. It's a little heartwarming seeing people so fond of the idea...

Would it be so hard to deliver what these people wanted...?

PROJECT: SPAGHETTI WESTERN

(An early piece of concept art of the skelebros' new designs.)

I had some ideas recently for how I would do a "Shadowfell Saga" remake.

Keeping things simple, Post-Pacifist timeline. Papyrus & Sans are preparing to go on vacation, but disaster strikes when Toriel's butterscotch pie gets stolen by a certain annoying dog. As a last-minute favor, the skelebros team up to retrieve the pie, but then get pulled into a mysterious portal and end up in a desert made of lasagna...

This is a loose concept for now, but it's one that's been stuck in my head for a while. It's not without its issues, however, which I'll get into later on.

While drafting this in my head, one issue I had was how to fit a certain character into the story...

Toquelle was a character introduced to the original "Shadowfell" to fill the role of that little tutorial-fairy that you get in almost every Mario RPG. Starlow in most of the M&L games, Tippi in Super Paper Mario, Olivia in Origami King, etc.

The idea was that she was a darkner born from Papyrus' chef's hat (called a "toque"). She would have some form of amnesia, and would then have some kind of arc following her identity crisis and struggles to find purpose.

(Early concept art of Toquelle by Galaxy)

I liked the idea of Toquelle, but in practice she was quite difficult to write around. Papyrus and Sans already have quite a bit of natural banter whenever they're in a room together and it's difficult to just slot a third character into that dynamic when they're already talking to an outside fourth character. On top of that, I wasn't really sure how to write Toquelle. Being a character who was supposed to be a guide yet having amnesia made it impossible to figure out a solid personality for her, and in my draft scripts she just sort of ended up ditzy and confused without serving much of a purpose.

I was ruminating for a while about how to make this character work, when something quite obvious popped into my head. I'm actually quite amazed this isn't what I went with from the start.

Why write in a whole new character when FLOWEY already exists?!

With the context of this new project being set after a post-pacifist ending, Flowey would be the PERFECT tutorial fairy.

Not only is his character already a parody of that kind of archetype, but he has immense comedic potential for being an unlikely ally to the skelebros.

In top of that, Flowey has canon precedents in being wary and hiding himself from strangers. The writing problem with Toquelle, of every interaction becoming a 4-way dialogue, can be somewhat nullified by that.

This idea was heavily inspired by Dogs of Future Past, which has a similarly hilarious dynamic consisting of a Frisk, Flowey and Greater Dog teamup. Go read the comic, it's great!

Writing Flowey into my new story was quite trivial. Following the alarm clock dialogue, I had the idea that Flowey could be on the surface with the rest of the monsters, but a bit bored and hopeless. The annoying dog could show up and steal something important to him (let's say Chara's heart necklace), which gives him a common goal with the skelebros (to find the dog and get their stuff back!!!).

After a small dialogue test, I decided this was an idea that was funny enough to work.

Changing the name of the game wasn't a very hard decision. "Shadowfell Saga" only causes confusion with Underfell, and sounds quite edgy for what the title was actually supposed to mean ("Shadowfell" is a nod towards how characters fall into dark worlds).

I actually thought about naming the project "Michelin Star Saga" since food would be a major theme of this new silly story, but that was a bit too stupid for my tastes.

I settled on "Skelestar Saga" as it sort of tells you all you need to know about the game; It's a "Superstar Saga" inspired fangame featuring the skelebros and a bunch of skeleton OCs.

I want to stress that this isn't a concrete announcement.

I have plans to make this as a summer project, starting in May and hopefully having SOMETHING playable around September or so, but there are a few caveats:

• This would be a short project. Gameplay would probably be about 30 minutes max. The scope for an Undertale-sized RPG with these mechanics and this style is absolutely massive and it's not something I can pull off.

• I will be switching to a 3D engine. Programming Superstar-Saga style 2.5D platforming is an absolute nightmare. Godot, the engine I use nowadays, has good support for 3D platforming, and also has a lot of premade scripts for advanced functions that are a pain to program yourself.

• I NEED a team. Even after pulling back the scope quite a bit, this would be quite a large undertaking. Some things I will absolutely need assistance in are specifically Coding, 3D Rigging and Music Mixing, but it would also be nice to have some writers, composers and digital artists help with a few things too. I will be opening team applications in April.

I hope this clears things up a bit!

As a last minute announcement...

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1y39CU2C6M-89rkS5-ZCQHiHyiolEy3mu?usp=drive_link

This google drive folder contains FLP project files and high quality FLAC audio files of almost the entire Shadowfell Saga soundtrack!

This was previously paywalled content, but Patreon wasn't something I particularly enjoyed doing and since I shut my page down, I figured I might as well do this!

Feel free to use these for whatever you like! *within the terms and conditions

I think that's about everything. Thank you for reading!

-Paled