And here we are, again. It's been five years already, huh? Feels like we've been here forever.

Can you believe it? I can't, too. It's so strange to think about the beginning, when I was a teen, with everything happening around.

But not about that — today's the 5th UnderMate anniversary. A first interesting date to celebrate, I'd say. Wish I could show you more than what I've got for today, but alas. Hopefully what I have will bring you some joy!

In meantime, I want to thank everyone for your patience and support. Seeing that people are waiting for this project giving me some strength and determination to do things, even if it's not much left of it in me.

New character sprites ❥

Can you believe I was redrawing sprites FOUR times by now? Yeah, sometimes it's just like that... The reason was pretty obvious: the development was slow and my style was constantly changing, so I was just ending up unsatisfied with what I had.

But (hopefully) this time will be the final one, at least for a long period of time and for a few new demo releases as well. I've ended up with a style that I kind of wanted to see from the start. Something a bit more simple, but vibrant and kind of "standing out"? It's up for you to decide.

For now I am presenting you 5 sprites: Napstablook, Toriel, Asriel, Papyrus and Sans! All of our main characters that were shown in the first demo.

You've already noticed a big difference from the previous ones, right? All the sprites are drawn as a whole, not cut to the hips. There are some reasons for that:

• I want to have a complete design. It's easier to feel the character that way.

• It helps to measure the character height differences easier. It's also easier to draw different sprites for the same character keeping the anatomy in mind.

• I've already told about the (upcoming) character profiles section in extras. You will be able to see characters in full here, since they will still be cut throughout the regular game.

Whose sprite do you like the most? You can vote in the poll and leave your thoughts in the comments!

Future plans ❥

This section will be arranged as a FAQ!

Q: So what's about the UnderMate nearest future?

A: For now I am going to try releasing the new demo I was planning for a long time. I will also be rewriting the whole first demo a bit. I want to look through the text and fix some things here and there.

Four shades of Underground is still a thing! I haven't posted Ruins yet and that's my nearest goal for now.

I won't give any release dates. I am working on it whenever I have the time or feeling to it.

Another alternative option is to rework the first demo a bit and re-release it with the new graphics to have something up to date, while I am working on the second demo, but I am not sure if it's worth it or not.

Q: What about game translations?

A: For the translations part there are some global changes: I am removing the Russian translation and leaving English as a main language. It's still a demo and each new language to arrange is doubling my work. Maybe I will still add some more languages for the demo if I will look trough the translation option a bit deeply. Possible languages aside of English for the start will be Ukrainian and Polish.

All devlogs will also be in English only from now.

Q: Why removing Russian translation?

A: Personal reasons. I feel extra anxious and uncomfortable every time I think of myself working on Russian translation further. I have enough stress in my life right now for it to just make everything worse. I am sorry to everyone who is more comfortable with Russian over English but I won't be working on it against my comfort.

Q: {Your question can be here}

A: Right as it says. You can ask something you're curious about in the comments and I will try my best to give you the answer.

UnderMate is not the only thing I am working on. I draw a lot of personal stuff lately to cope with everything around. If you want to follow me and my artwork in general and not related to the game, you can visit my pages on Twitter, Instagram or DeviantArt.

If you'd like to know what's going on with UnderMate only — then just stay here for some more updates! I will try to come up with something in near future.

That's all I have for now. Thank you for taking your time to go through all of that!

Stay determined. And stay safe.