Toby Fox’s Deltarune / November 1st, 2018

to be completely honest.
There’s not a whole lot to say.

Toby Fox is at it again and he’s thrown us a little work in progress demo on Halloween night to drum up interest in his upcoming game DELTARUNE.

Alright… article over. Information dispensed. Nap time, now.

…

Alright, that OBVIOUSLY wasn’t it but a bit of what I have to say about the game has some minor spoilers. I’m not going to reveal major plotpoints or character dynamics but if you want to go in completely dark there are two things I must say.

1. Play the demo already! The download Toby has graced us with isn’t that long and can be knocked out leisurely in a few hours if even that long.

2. Why are you here reading a DELTARUNE article if you didn’t want any spoilers?

Alright, now with that housekeeping out of the way. What’s the deal with Deltarune?

Other than it being a rather obvious anagram of Undertale, Deltarune takes place in the same world as Undertale and you’ll even see some recurring characters. As a game is carries in tone, style and mechanic just like the original Undertale. The 16-bit style Fox employs pretty well shines again even in this quick demo with admittedly rough edges. (I encountered some minor bugs and some people have reported the game erasing everything in a directory when using the uninstaller). That being said, this isn’t simply more Undertale with a cool name. There are some interesting changes here and there that exhibit some good thought and care by adding nuance to the original formula.

For one, fighting works pretty much the same except for the fact that you now have actual party members! I didn’t have a problem with the old system but this new take is definitely welcome.

You can also be damaged outside of battle.

This makes it seem as if it’s lot more combat focused and to an extent that is true. However, and this is probably the most important detail, Fox seems to be taking this game in a more nuanced direction than the last. Undertale’s message of pacifism stood out especially as it was in a medium where killing the bad guy is just second nature. It probably seemed a bit heavy handed to some, and maybe it was a bit too blunt as it was trying to specifically target tropes within gaming. Deltarune, on the other hand is taking a more subtle approach to the same message of pacifism.

And that’s all I’ll say about that. I honestly do want to talk about it a bit more but it only came out yesterday and I feel giving more time for people to play can foster better discussion.

One more thing. I’m not going to say where in Deltarune but there’s a dog who is working really hard on an incomplete game at a computer.

Maybe he should have been a fox but that might have been too on the nose.