It's Autumn! You know what that means...!

Newsletter art and sprites by Temmie!

It's UNDERTALE's 8th Anniversary!

Sadly, I don't have much energy for a wild and crazy event this year. Doing a newsletter every three months is a bit like celebrating the anniversary all year.

In other words, this year, I just want to go to sleep!

In celebration of this, Fangamer has created commemorative UNDERTALE sleepy-themed goods.

20% of each shirt or blanket preorder goes to charity, benefiting AbleGamers. I'm sure you need another T-shirt to use as pajamas, don't you?

On a more serious note, thank you all very much everyone who's reading this! It means an immense amount that so many people have continued to care about this series over the years.

We are continuing to work on Chapter 3! The Chapter got playable from beginning to end. After some restructuring and reshuffling of different parts, it's feeling quite good to go through. Can't say it's finished yet, but the unfinished parts are certainly seeming less and less numerous. That's good because try as I might to sleep, until the game is finished, I'll see nothing but nightmares...

Earlier, we were considering having a stealth-focused section in the game where you would slowly, slowly sneak around certain areas.

After developing some concepts, we realized a mechanic which basically just makes you move slower isn't necessarily fun.

So, we didn't do that...

Anyway, feel free to listen to this song since it's now unused.

So, it's been announced...!

ZUN, the creator of TOUHOU PROJECT and I have created a musical track together! Our track will appear in the officially sanctioned Touhou series fan-game, Touhou Danmaku Kagura: Phantasia Lost!

If you didn't see my official announcement video about it, feel free to check it out here!

If you're not aware, Touhou is a game series where anime girls shoot gorgeous bullet patterns at each other while extremely beautiful Eurobeat-inspired Japanese music plays in the background. This great series has been a huge inspiration to me even since I was in Elementary school. It's no exaggeration to say that the Touhou series is the sole reason that UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE have a bullet-based battle system.

Not only that, but the instruments in Undyne's music are a direct reference to the game as well! Which... makes it kind of amazing that more than half of the track ended up being a remix of Undyne's music by ZUN himself! Talk about a dream come true!

This announcement video aired on a live Touhou Danmaku Kagura stream! The stream was actually quite cool, featuring live performances by many famous Touhou fan musicians, and even featuring ZUN himself as an MC!

Also… I was there in the audience!

(WARNING: The following story is unrelated to UNDERTALE/DELTARUNE.

Therefore, it's exclusive for TRUCK FREAKS...!)

As a thanks for working on the track, the Danmaku Kagura team invited me to go to Japan and watch the livestream in person.

After reaching the location, the staff brought me inside to a backstage area. We went past rooms where various performers were relaxing, with their names written on the outside. "ZUN-sama" "Marasy-sama" "COOL&CREATE-sama"... And finally, "Toby Fox-sama". Yes, I don't know why, but I had my own room, even though I wasn't doing anything...

After a while, ZUN appeared and I managed to talk to him for a bit. I had met him a couple times before, but it was so long ago that I lost all of my ZUN-type EXP and had to start over from zero.

Toby: ...

ZUN: ...

Toby: So, if I play TOUHOU too much, I start to think of everything in terms of danmaku. Like, if there's a crowd of people, I have to dodge all of them carefully while moving through them... Or, if I'm driving a car, and there's a bunch of traffic, I start to see all the other cars like they're bullets...

ZUN: (laughs) That's dangerous!

Toby: Since you make the games, don't you think that way all the time?

ZUN: I guess... I do tend to think of everything in relation to Touhou. It can't be helped.

ZUN was really really really kind and helped to introduce me to the other people playing in the bands. I was able to meet many cool and creative people, such as COOL&CREATE.

There was an interesting guy called "Beat Mario". His young kid was there running around yelling stuff like "I wanna go home!" "I wanna go home!" Soon after meeting him for the first time, Beat Mario picked up his kid and pushed them into me, trying to get me to hold them, but I just sort of backed up repeatedly. His wife asked me if I was afraid of children, and I accidentally agreed because I misunderstood her Japanese and thought she asked if I was bad at holding kids. Then she picked up the child and started spinning them around and making them do flips and said "it's easy, once they aren't babies you can basically do whatever you want as long as you don't drop them." It was cool, it was essentially like a free circus performance. "Sorry, I know you're afraid of children..." Wait, I'm not! But it was too late to correct myself, so they probably still think that.

Afterwards, I met Marasy, an extremely talented piano player who posts many videos on YouTube of his performances. He was quite shocked to see I was there, and he showed me a video of him performing MEGALOVANIA like a virtuoso. ZUN and I watched the entire performance for about five minutes then applauded. It was surreal thinking that the song I made for a throwaway project when I was fifteen years old would eventually have a performance of it shown to me and the creator of Touhou...

Soon, the stream started. It was surreal and incredible to witness live performances of Touhou fansongs I had known since high school. I feel satisfied in life knowing I got to yell "Help me, Eirin!" in real life.

Marasy's piano performance was also extremely moving. The truth is, I learned how to make music by learning how to play various videogame songs by ear on the piano. And all of the first songs I learned how to play were Touhou music. Watching Marasy play Native Faith was like seeing an ultra perfected version of my youth… It was really beautiful.

At the end was a very brief wrap-up party with drinks. Though ZUN had already drunk six beers throughout the whole event, he continued to drink on here. Meanwhile, I don't really drink… So I slammed one beer, instantly became very drunk and started overexplaining how much I loved Touhou to COOL&CREATE, who politely stood there and nodded.

Afterwards, I drew on a large signing board along with ZUN. I had trouble remembering my signature, even though it's just a bunch of lines, and ZUN laughed and said "he's really drunk, isn't he."

Ironically, the signing started happening because I wanted ZUN to sign something for Temmie, but she doesn't know that. Don't read this Temmie.

A guy called Beat Mario randomly hugged me from behind. I made literally no reaction. Someone around me said "BL is beginning." It reminded me of being at an anime convention. (lol)

Afterwards, I signed many iPhones. Since I rarely make appearances, this is actually one of the only times I really felt like I was being seen as a celebrity. ... Though, I found it very ironic... "Hey, ZUN, isn't this supposed to be your event!?" I asked. But ZUN said "Hey, they're all used to me." So I guess I should appreciate the BL from behind while it still happens.

Thank you Danmaku Kagura staff and ZUN! I made many memories I'll never forget...

Hello! It's Nelnal, the character designer in charge of Sweet, Cap'n, K_K, and Tasque Manager in DELTARUNE Chapter 2. I can't contain my surprise at how quickly two years have passed since Chapter 2 released.

When DELTARUNE Chapter 1 was released, I was just one of the millions of fans of Toby's work. I still remember so clearly how completely dumbstruck I felt after receiving a work request from Toby…

I've been involved in a variety of design jobs, but the assignments I received for DELTARUNE were so much fun! It was the first time I've had work where, from the very moment I read the assignment, my mind became filled with ideas one after another.

I was asked to draw a character based on a "boom box" theme, so I gave Toby three designs to choose from. (The truth is I made other designs too, but that's a secret.)

To my surprise, in the end he decided to use all three...! I was so delighted!

And so...I'm proud to announce that I was tasked with illustrating some new merch for this upbeat trio!

Among the merch are some new stickers, so it'd be great if you could stick them on instruments, speakers, and other music-related gear and enjoy the sound together with them. More details will be announced later this month!

By the way, as a small side note, it seems like the trio's favorite musical genres are dubstep for Sweet, electro for K_K, and hip-hop for Cap'n.

A certain company we work with sent this as potential promotional text for some products of the characters from UNDERTALE

"[With these products in your collection], you'll never explore the underground again"!

... I'll… never explore it again?

What are they gonna do... to me?

Thanks, everyone! See you next year for the next UNDERTALE Anniversary!

Undertale physically came out for Xbox.