It's that time of the year,
where everyone spreads laughs and cheer.

Families gather far and wide, our towns covered in snow piling way up high.

W-what? What do you mean it isn't Christmas?
It's always Christmas! Haven't you seen the website?

Anyways, Happy New Years!! Crazy that it's already January 1st of 2024!

Oh... It seems like I've missed that deadline by a few days.

January 10th may work. We could probably finish Wave 2 by then, right?

What do you mean it's almost March? Our plans have expanded a stupid amount?
No they haven't! What are you talking about?!?

Anyways, Happy President's day... What? I missed that one too? Whatever. I'm making a new holiday.
That should be coming up in 4-5 business days.

Well, here's what you all are probably looking for.

Wave 2 is making pretty good progress as of right now.
In terms of the website portion, I'd say we've reached around the 85%-90% completion range.

We've been spending most of our time juggling around concepts for what we want to actually be in Wave 2 or not,
and this also includes expanding what we had initially planned (by a lot, honestly)

But don't worry, we are making great progress!
Wave 2 is probably way more than what anyone is expecting. Including us.

While the ARG itself has been hard work, part of the work involved
has to do with how we are planning out our story.

There have been points in time where we felt like "Yeah! We could release this in a week!"
but then, what's that? A plothole? We gotta fix that!

Often times, things like this are what is taking up the majority of the wait.
Features have been planned, scrapped, planned, and scrapped again.

It's all part of the process though! All of this extra time we spend on the story and such
is what will end up making this an enjoyable experience for not only you guys, but ourselves.

What? You were expecting more? Oh yeah, me too... I seem to have forgotten what I wanted to say. Oh well!

On a somewhat related note, there are other things we have been working on outside the ARG!

For anyone who doesn't know, DELTARUNE FORECASTED and Hometown Incidents are 2 sides of the same coin.
2 different ways to tell the same story.

Hometown Incidents deals with the more meta-elements of the story,
handling some of the in terms of chapters, Chapter 6-ish stuff.

DELTARUNE FORECASTED is the more traditional side of the DELTARUNE take, being presented more as gameplay,
while still sharing the story that Hometown Incidents presents, albeit later on.

Later down the line, we plan to make DELTARUNE FORECASTED a Youtube Web-series,
in which we release episodes and cutscenes of in-game events,
similar to what you know of the Elevator cutscene.

It may be a little bit before you start seeing full episodes.
We need to get more of the specifics figured out before we can start doing that, but we do plan to release
a few more shorts of similar quality to Elevator before doing that. Keep your eyes out!

Ough... It's feeling a little cold in here... A little cool...

A little... "Oftome" cool? Anybody?

Nobody?

Whatever. Here is a teaser of Oftome Cool!

While we can't go too deep into what this song is for quite yet, I hope you enjoy this little snippet. Quite (oftome)cool isn't it?

That's all in terms of DELTARUNE FORECASTED news. Before you go, take this Corder.

(Animated by Snom!)

I suppose it's about time we talk about Chapter 0.

There's something to admit. Our plans for Hometown Incidents have grown quite a lot.

It's been suspected, it's been teased.
A large part of Wave 2, yep, you guessed it. PLAYABLE!

And the crowd goes wild... Right?

Well, as I know some people have been suspecting, the website part of the ARG
isn't what has been occupying most of our time.

It started as a simple Python script
that would be used to add some immersion and solve some puzzles,
but it quickly expanded into an in-game thing, and then we thought...
"Hey, if we are making it an in game thing, why not add more!"
It continued from there...
"One area seems weak. We could add another to flesh it out more!"
Of course that wasn't enough,
"How about we add a little fighting minigame to the Device?"
But no... Then it was "Hey, maybe we could add another area?
Give a proper conclusion?"

And now we are here. Here is some information on Chapter 0:

Delve deep into the story of the Vessel in our upcoming fan-game DELTARUNE: Chapter 0!

The events of the "Googer" interactions are not completely accurate and minor decisions will not carry over into this fan-game.

While we can't go into too much grave detail, we can show off a few in-game teasers.

Everything you see following this disclaimer is in an early and unfinished state. Many things are subject to change.

Chapter 0 is a LARGE part of Wave 2. It'll be required to solve quite a few of the larger puzzles in the end.

Keep in mind that most if not all of this is VERY work in progress. (Mainly the visuals in these examples.)

We aren't quite ready to start showing it off too in depth. It may be a while before that is the case.

Time will be needed to make sure that this is the ideal experience for everybody.
The time specified we don't know, but I estimate around 4-5 business days... As per usual.
We plan to release cutscenes for Forecasted and other things in the interim.

That's all we can show of Chapter 0 for now, but keep your eyes peeled.
There may be a trailer for it coming out sooner or later.

Final Notes

Hometown Incidents started off so small. It was initially an advertising plan for Forecasted. But as it grew, it gained much more of it's own identity.

That's when we decided to continue and make it the flip side of the Forecasted story, eventually meeting in the middle to create one big one.

The amount of support we have gotten from this community we've gathered is AMAZING! Never did we imagine we would get this far.
Every single one of you means so much to us.

I apologise for the long wait for Wave 2. We don't plan to leave you with no content up until then, though.
We will do teasers as usual, and even have some larger things planned.

To show our appreciation, here is a thank you letter from each team member.

Fizz: I joined this project because I was bored, honestly. But ever since I started the Hometown Incidents side of it,
seeing everyone's undying support for our project has given me so much motivation to keep working on it.
I have a hard time finding motivation usually, but the support from you guys has meant the world to me.

That3DFella: Heyo my fellas, thanks for following the development of the cool shit we've been cooking.
It really means alot to me that we have some king of fanbase now.

Crimson: Hey everyone, thanks for waiting out these painfully long 4-5 business days.
I appreciate that you all have cared about our silly lil fan project thing. It's been a blast doing this :)

Oftome:
im am now making a statement
so hear me loud and hear me clear
you all helped me face the world with heart and soul
instead of fear
giving me the strength to persevere
on this day and age
i swear when im famous
i´ll write your names on my wikipedia page
i cant thank everyone enough
for all their love and all their deeds
but theres one name i need to mention
shoutout to juand

Godlikk: I never truly expected the project to get this big, it started as just a passion project amongst friends,
motivated purely out of boredom, but over time it has changed and grown beyond my wildest dreams!
Thank you for the amazing and supportive community,
we have so much to offer that I cannot wait to show you!
Thanks to your patience we could make something polished that we are truly proud of!
And of course…thank you to team forecasted for being such amazing friends :3

Snom: it’s been really nice seeing the community grow and all that stuff!
i remember when i was a wee lass and i infiltrated the team by guessing the knight almost instantly,
and now im am honorary team member!!
even tho I mess around with the team with my SINISTER PLOT i love these guys,
so thank YOU for letting their vision come to life!!

Did someone drop this?