#decibat

• It apparently took them FOREVER to solidify a design for Decibat. One of the early concepts was a literal baseball bat with wings and I enjoy this fact very much

• They originally had an idea that Dalv would accidentally try and move into Martlet’s house after leaving the Ruins LMAO

• They expanded on this piece of concept art that had been floating around: there were never really plans for the Feisty Five to be evil, they just made their own wanted posters to inflate their own egos LOL

• I didn’t really write any of the specifics down, but listening to them talk about the Flowey fight was so interesting because they were all chiming in about who worked on what parts and where the inspirations were from and where they sourced their materials. Some details I remember off the top of my head:

- Flowey’s voice lines were pulled from the same McDonald’s commercial as his canon ones

- The audio for the scene where Martlet melts before Meta Flowey was a combination of a stock laugh and a clip one of the devs just so happened to have, when they used to edit for a YouTube channel, and the file got corrupted and just randomly made that sound

- The heartbeat monitor sound that plays during the Organic speciman is taken from the frequency of an actual human heart. Don’t remember the story about how they acquired that one

- The graphics for the Polygonal speciman were inspired by PS1 horror, Ben Drowned and that meme that went around in the late 2010s of a gif of a bug that made it look like a bug was on your screen (in specific reference to the little Flowey gremlins that crawl down the screen)

- They originally had plans to include a spectrogram in the fight, but decided it would make them seem too tryhardy

• There were plans for an underwater segment that were scrapped extremely early in development, something about a bridge in Waterfall breaking

• The comment Starlo makes in the Wild East about there being a fourth mission that was scrapped from the regimen is a reference to a literal fourth mission that the devs cut because they felt like it killed the pacing, where Virgil would kidnap the Feisty Five and tie them up in places around town and you had to go rescue them and it was a stealth game type thing

• - The designs for the Feisty Five have a lot of funny inspirations

- Ed was originally designed to be a normal monster, but they liked his design so much they used it for something more important

- Initial concepts of Moray’s design had them in a fisherman’s cap or a paper boat hat, to show how unserious they were about this. Also, they weren’t originally designed to be Angie and Gillbert’s child, a playtester just made that assumption and they were like y’know what sure we’ll roll with it

- Mooch’s design originated from a Minecraft RP OC that one of the devs had that she never got to use. Which is iconic tbh

• Mo was inspired by this lil dude, who showed up and had babies in one of the devs’ attic. Additionally, while coding the game, there were little variables they put in for fun like a timer. One of them was a number that just incrementally increased, and was labelled “Crimes that Mo has committed”

• The fact that sparing Dalv doesn’t abort Geno, that everyone chalked up to being a genius narrative decision, was AN OVERSIGHT??????? It was a coding error caused by the fact that they were initially gonna make everything that happens in the Dark Ruins not count towards any route, like Flowey implies in his dialogue, but they went back on that decision and fixed it for everyone except Dalv. They made a comment on stream like “we should really fix that” and everyone in chat was like PLEASE don’t LOL

• There were never really concepts for a Geno Starlo fight. And a lot of it is the reasons the fandom talks about that he’s a coward before his character development and it makes more sense for him to back out in the face of real danger. But also because in terms of power level, it didn’t make sense for him to stand a chance. And also because they were making all the routes at once and designing the boss fights at equal times and this was the first chance they got to make a boss fight for Ceroba LOL. But the plan was already set by that point that it was gonna be her instead of him

• No one truly knows the origins of the super faded silhouette standing in the background of the UG Apartments shop in Geno. Apparently the dude who made the CG just. Put it there

• We got more insight into the Martlet transformation animation. It was made with SO much purpose. If you look closely, she starts to melt and the determination puddles underneath her, but then she gains control of it and the puddle ABSORBS BACK INTO HER, then shoots out in a burst when her first wing transforms. THAT’S SO COOL

• Additionally, they also canonized that Martlet took the determination before Alphys had any of the fallen-down bodies, and that she had no idea what it actually WAS, other than that it had something to do with the human SOULs. Which makes this even MORE impressive because she wasn’t intrinsically prepared to control determination, she just DID it

• Additionally, they also canonized that Martlet took the determination before Alphys had any of the fallen-down bodies, and that she had no idea what it actually WAS, other than that it had something to do with the human SOULs. Which makes this even MORE impressive because she wasn’t intrinsically prepared to control determination, she just DID it

• The dive-bomb attack Martlet does in her first-phase Zenith fight was inspired by Dyna Blade, as a Kirby fan that fact just made me happy lol

• Retribution was the last song made for the game, and was composed in just a couple days, which is WILD to me

• We got confirmation that Flowey is still in control of saves after defeating Axis in Geno, and Clover’s text in the overworld/after dying is just them being so focused on their mission that they’re drowning out everything else

• CANNOT forget The Jincident