In 2012, game developer, voice actor and composer Robert F. “Toby” Fox, begun the creation of a game he had called “Deltarune.”
He’s claimed he’d dreamed it up in a fever dream but its development was cancelled/postponed before he even completed the first room. But after the success of his 2015 indie game “Undertale,” he had begun working on “Deltarune” once more.
The first part of the game came out on Oct. 31, 2018 as a demo and was later followed by chapter two in 2021. But, after four years, the third and fourth chapters of the game having finally come out, marking the technically official release of the game, with the remaining three unreleased chapters coming out as free updates as they are completed.
“Deltarune” you to the world and characters of the game, leading you through a tutorial of sorts, teaching you how to attack, defend, use items, act, and use magic through the characters which follow your avatar of sorts, a strange teen called Kris, the adopted human child of Asgore and Toriel, which, if you played the game “Undertale”, you know are important characters. Much like many other characters from “Undertale”, they have become background characters within this game.
The character you play as is not what you expect when you first open the game, which starts with a character creation sequence before discarding it and telling you that your choices in this world do not matter, a fact which is doubled down when you meet your first party member, a troublesome lizard-like monster from Kris’s class called Susie. Shortly after meeting Susie, you enter a strange realm called a “Dark World” and meet a lonely prince called Ralsei, who tells you the prophecy which places you, Ralsei, and Susie as the heroes destined to save the world from imminent destruction.
Within the second chapter of the game, you enter another dark world within the town library’s computer lab, where you can meet several new characters, many of which becoming fan-favorites, such as a spam-email which has come to life via the magic of the dark world called Spamton, or a laptop called Queen, who is the main antagonist of this chapter, but has good intentions and some funny scenes.
Now, in the newest two chapters, the game got a more story-heavy plot, learning more about the history of the character you play as, as well as the prophecy our party member Ralsei shared in chapter one.
In this game, you meet several characters which the fandom has taken as their favorites, from the two listed previously, but also this little card boy called Lancer, who you meet in chapter one, a strange card man called Rouxls Kaard (Pronounced: Rules Card) who has an obsession with being the 2nd in command to whoever he deems most important in any given dark world, though he is not found in chapter four, a living CRT television called Tenna, who has made a deal to keep Kris, Susie, and Ralsei in his dark world as long as he can to avoid becoming irrelevant, A sparkplug called Ramb who gives you items and is canonically british, which makes his character better most fans find, a halloween decoration called Jackenstein who is just a really goofy guy, he even gives you an item required to continue the game, and an elderly turtle man, which, if you were an “Undertale” fan, is very familiar. He is called Old Man through chapter four, and Hammer of Justice in his boss fight, but his name is Gerson Boom, a long-dead historian, teacher, and author within the “Deltarune” universe.
This game happens to have multiple routes you can go through during the game, most common being the pacifist route where you spare every enemy you come across to grow the population of your dark world, the first one where you find Ralsei, then the Snowgrave/Weird Route, where you manipulate one of your temporary allies.
The game challenges and sword route are both designed similar to the original “Legend of Zelda” game, and within the sword route, it hints at the snowgrave route, but cuts off the ability to do any puzzles within that dark world at the end, and grants a special item which is intended to be used during the chapter three final boss fight to make it easier.
There will not be a new chapter until some point in 2026, which the players are told in the end credits of chapter four, which many “Deltarune” fans are speculating about based on a hint given to us by Gerson in chapter four, calling chapter five “The Field of Pink and Gold, charred in an inferno of jealously”, and a prophecy tile with the words “The flower man, trapped in asylum”, hinting at the fifth chapter as well. Regardless, the game of “Deltarune” is still expanding, and the fans of the game don’t truly know the ending to this tale, but some fans speculate that there will be no true end, it will all be up to player interpretation, which is unlikely, but anything could happen, and we’ll just have to see where it leads as the game goes on.
