Hello again! It actually hasn’t been long since our last post, but things have been going pretty alright since January. We’ve gotten a good chunk of stuff done, most of which aren’t going to be shown at the moment, unfortunately, But this is *something*! I guess this’ll be somewhat of a mini-devlog. Right now, let’s start with...

New Team Members

After the last devlog, we opened team applications. Some new people ended up joining the team either from there and / or other team members already knew them. For now, we’ll be closing team applications. 

If you didn’t make it, we’re very sorry!! Even if a lot of the applicants seem good at what they do, we don’t want to get more than we need.

Here’s all of the people that joined this year!

• SnowBerri - Musician, Writer

• PixelToons - Artist

• Astronomical - Artist

• TEP - Musician

• WildPasta - Writer

• Daymations - Artist

You can see all of the credits listed on a document in the game’s description. These are really cool people!

Music

There are a few tracks that either weren’t completed, or still needed some changes, so we couldn’t upload them all before. But the musicians have been cooking, and now they’re ready to be uploaded!

“Onwards and Upwards” - by @the_flow

This is the main battle theme for the fangame! It’ll play. During BRAWLs! Pretty, crazy right?

This one was being worked on for a while, and it turns out the wait was entirely worth it.

“The Gardens” (V2) - by @mono_chrome

The Gardens’ theme was reworked due to a few problems we had with the previous version, and V2 ended up being a LOT better than just better. It fits very well in the area!

“Murky” - by @the_flow

A theme for a specific area in the game which actually literally appears in the trailer! It was finished for a bit, until it was changed a LOT to be longer and a lot better than it initially was.

Please give them all a listen!

Area & Enemy Progress

In the Underevent trailer from the last devlog, if you’ve seen it... We teased a new area that you’d come across in the Gardens, and we’ve actually gotten a lot of progress done for it since then.

Gloomy ruins lookalike? Practically scrapped. Disgusting swamp looking area that you can swim in?! It got a well-needed glow up!

Of course, everything is still subject to change, and the area might change as we continue to work on it.

Not too long ago, we planned out pretty much all of the rooms for it, so working on everything else for it will be a snap.

As for the “scrapped” area I mentioned, it was something pretty small, and we have something a lot more interesting to replace it, so you’re not missing much at all! But if I told you what it was now, that’d be boring. And don’t worry, this won’t halt progress on other stuff very much at all. Trust me when I say this is a good thing!

For other things:

• Battles haven’t been worked on TOO much. One enemy was 100% completed, and another unfinished one has 2 out of 3 of their attacks done, currently. We’ll get back to working more on them soon, but we’re mainly focusing on other important things at the moment.

• Floor 1’s cutscenes are still being worked on a bit, but they’re very close to completion! Right now, there are only 2 more small cutscenes left to finish up. They’ll be done very soon.

• Very recently, Day’s made some art for the game’s main menu. We’ll have quite a few different pieces here that’ll be displayed depending on where you are in the game’s story and such.

The Zaxento Room Size Optimizations

Some of the room sizes in the Gardens have been cut down to avoid sections that take an unnecessarily long time to walk or run through, especially worse when you consider backtracking...

One good example, is...

This room, seen in the trailer...

Had 2/3rds of it cut down due to unnecessary space.

Another room had a pretty bad long hallway which I only realized was bad *after* its size was reduced. And all of this has been worked on by @ZaxentoTheGreedy so far, which has been helping for the most part, considering there are multiple other things to be working on alongside this.

Some rooms still have yet to be edited, but this was something pretty significant to bring up.

Scrapped / Changed Game Content

After Underevent, some people probably would’ve expected us to have gotten into our rhythm and stopped scrapping things. We’ve gotten into an okay rhythm, but while finding it, we realized that Status Effects didn’t quite mesh well with the battle system despite our initial thoughts. This doesn’t mean that the battle system will be the same as in Undertale (as of now!), but it means that we’ve removed 80% of the status effects in favor of a new mechanic and a change to a beloved one.

This also means that PLAYSTYLES, another feature we were planning... are no longer a part of the Underswap: Echoed Extended Family.

There are a ton of interesting things we have planned for the game’s mechanics and areas, some which you might be seeing in the demo release.

End

It might be a while before the next devlog, but we'll probably still be posting small stuff every now and then, likely more often in our discord server. If you aren't already there, considering joining...

Anyhow, that's all you're getting from us for now!