A Critique of Deltarune

I should preface what you are about to read with the fact that I played Undertale extremely early. It would not be an exaggeration or hyperbole to say I played Undertale before it was generally well-known, and as such, I was able to view Undertale through a different lens than someone who played Undertale after it entered our shared cultural consciousness.

I did not really like Undertale. My perspective on it was, generally, unfocused. I couldn't really nail down as to why I didn't like it. I thought it had some great moments, but I couldn't articulate what my core issue with it was. Only in recent years has it become clear to me what my issue is. It’s that Toby Fox makes games for people who don't like video games. And more importantly to the topic of this review, Deltarune is a game that is fandom first and video game last.

That may sound hyperbolic or even ludicrous, but now that Deltarune is over halfway completed, I have been able to finally identify what about his work does not jive with my taste. Deltarune as it stands is a nearly depthless simulacrum of a video game, presenting simple ideas and mechanics that are almost immediately discarded without being expanded or explored further. It is consistently so averse to letting the player fail in any way that it feels as though the “playing” of the game is a customary gesture.


Before talking about Toby Fox's approach to design, I have to discuss his writing, which I have many, many issues with.


Undertale sold itself on quirky post-ironic humor with jokes that mostly poke at already explored punching bag topics, like the otaku anime-obsessed Alphys who is engrossed with obscure anime, and that being the entire extent of the joke. Toby Fox will frequently write jokes in ways that do not ever provide any original commentary. Only surface level observations already made by people repeatedly online for many, many years. The end result of this is telling Undyne "anime is real", a popular meme during the time Undertale was developed that serves to mirror a sect of online humor that has completely passed the world by. Or Temmie, who speaks with an annoying "PeNgU1N oF d00m" style of typing quirk that was already outdated when Undertale came out. Too much of Undertale features caricatures instead of characters; characters with singular defining traits reheated and dropped into contexts in which they more or less behave and act exactly the same and exactly in line with their single character directive - to be infatuated with anime. To be an unembellished nerd. This approach to character writing made it very difficult to look at Undertale's mawkish writing and find any poignant messaging.

Deltarune was a way to prove that Toby Fox could write outside of his comfort zone, and that his writing skills had improved in reflection of his time spent writing Undertale and releasing it. The first chapter firmly establishes that Toby Fox will be trying a different approach to his writing, but by Chapter 2, he has completely regressed into his safe space. Chapter 1 is a solid JRPG setup that is a clear response to the discussion that surrounded Undertale. Prompted to create a character, during which the player browses strange customization choices that read as almost identical or garbage, which are all immediately discarded under the pretense that choice does not matter in this world. The first conflict the player sees resolves in a character literally saying "If you haven't gotten it by now, your choices don't matter." Undertale sold itself on that level of choice; the idea that there was a non-violent approach the player could take that would result in differing splinters to the story. But perhaps the more pressing response Toby makes to Undertale’s reception is the tone of the first chapter, which, outside of having real jokes that are set up (interspliced with the occasional eye-rolling Toby Fox tumblr gag), has a real antagonist. The joke character of the chapter begins to let his demeanor slip the closer our heroes come to their objective because he truly believes that if they fight, then either the heroes or his father will have to die. This level of depth from walking gag caricatures is almost entirely unheard of in Undertale. When the player character makes it to their objective, the antagonist threatens to kill his son in front of them unless they submit themselves to be executed. Undertale doesn't allow itself to have antagonists actually be threatening or even truly hostile because the underlining design memo in that game is that the player should be able to save anyone. As such, its antagonists fall into two camps, a joke character that poses no true threat to the player (Papyrus, Mettaton) or a character that is misunderstood at heart or is operating under the assumption there is no other way than to fight (Flowey, Asgore, Undyne). The King cannot be put into either of those two camps. He is just evil, and seeks to kill the heroes because they stand in opposition. When the fight is over, Ralsei heals the King under the belief that they can come to an understanding, and the King’s first choice immediately after is to attack them again. It fundamentally challenges the premise that Undertale proposed - being able to reason with or save everyone. The talk dialogue with Ralsei spells it out as obviously as possible. Choosing to talk to the King as Ralsei has Ralsei proclaim "You might not realize it, but... This is a world where you don't have to fight." to which the King replies, "Such simple-minded platitudes... A shame you will not live to realize your naivety.” It could not be clearer the direct response to the question proposed near the beginning of Undertale: "You didn't kill anybody this time. But what will you do if you meet a relentless killer?"

What is present in Chapter 1 is a more interesting reality proposed; that kindness may not simply be the way forward at all times, and that the distinction between when to fight and when you let your guard down is going to be blurrier. That there will be foes you will face along the way that there is perhaps no avoiding confrontation with, and you will simply have to actually fight your way through them. I was extremely on board with this storytelling approach, and was very excited to see what would come next. Unfortunately, Chapter 2 is Toby Fox at his worst, and the majority of new material in Chapter 2 is significantly worse than anything present even in Undertale.

Before getting into the bulk of Chapter 2's writing, it has to be pointed out that Toby Fox immediately retconned the fact that the King was evil. In fact, Toby Fox has spent seven years desperately running away from the fact he wrote an actual villain in a video game. At the beginning of Chapter 2, you can return to Castle Town and speak to the King, who is confined in a jail cell fashioned like a hamster enclosure. 

 

Restraint is not in Toby Fox's vocabulary.

Even with this very lame visual “comedy” notwithstanding, the game also immediately retcons the previously presented fact he was willing to kill his son because, "I was bluffing," and that when if he were to throw his son from the top of the castle, "he would've bounced.” Keep in mind, this suggestion isn’t particularly “out of character” for Lancer, but it’s very clear that more interesting material for the King is being discarded by this, and stakes are retroactively made much lower by it to assassinate this character for literally no benefit to the storytelling. It only serves to make it all matter less now that his scenes are over. More recently than Chapter 2, in a Deltarune playthrough livestream, Toby Fox has said the only reason the King acted the way he did was because of his proximity to the Dark Fountain. This is utterly preposterous, and incongruent with any other characters and their proximity to the Fountain(s). Toby is actually just embarrassed that he wrote something compelling and interesting. The idea of a villain character not having an understandable, easily digested backstory, and/or being irreconcilably ideologically opposed to the party seems completely lost on Toby, unless it's a literal animal that cannot comprehend the idea of evil. This is the most disappointing aspect to me because coming from Undertale, this sickly sentimentality towards antagonists grew extremely tiring.


Chapter 2's tone is not only a complete departure from the tone present in Chapter 1, but it is completely unbearable. Quirky Tumblr-esque writing is everywhere. Chapter 2 is smeared in Undertale's exhausting post-ironic writing that deeply poisons the well that was filled during Chapter 1. Characters in Chapter 2 are embarrassingly and overtly ‘terminally online’ in humor, and are mostly walking caricatures to a degree worse than the worst of Undertale. Berdly is introduced and given a heavy spotlight, but repeatedly only ever demonstrated to be a character that insists on his purported intelligence for annoying gags in which every character grows tired of him, complete with a saccharine backstory that completely falls flat since the game has spent four hours beating it into your head that this character is annoying and awful. His scenes do not create a character that you love to see pester the cast, but a character that pesters the player, by dragging sequences far beyond their welcome and never presenting anything particularly novel or amusing during any of them. Berdly’s annoying writing would maybe be fine if he was not written the same after having given his nauseatingly sappy backstory, but the game intends for you to care about him as much as the rest of the cast after he explains his background. Only a couple of minutes later he is under attack and put under mind control by the Queen, and it’s intended to be a sequence in which you are supposed to care about the wellbeing of him. It's difficult to be invested in a character that the game only ever presents as an irritating nuisance, not only in the game world, but to the player. On the other hand, the game intends for the player to like the Queen, the newly introduced antagonist that establishes herself counter to the King, who is nothing more than a joke from the start of the chapter to the finish. Her plan revolves around kidnapping a new character that is established in this chapter - seeing as she has next to zero build-up in the previous chapter - and turning her into a peon to create Dark Fountains by transforming her into a robot. If this sounds interesting, don't worry, it's entirely thrown out the window. Because this exhausting “joke character” antagonist does nothing and has zero real plans across the entire chapter besides to run around and create sequences of hilarity. Any semblance of tension carried over from Chapter 1 is completely destroyed the moment this character is on screen, because they act as a Twitter screenshot generator for reaction memes. It cannot be stated enough how utterly exhausting this character is, doing the exact same style of joke, the exact same style of dialogue and even the exact same punchlines over and over again. For four hours straight. This character is intended to be the reason our characters are pushing forward and yet there’s absolutely zero semblance of any stakes. The number of times they re-use the low quality explosion gag is nine times throughout the chapter by my count, which should illustrate this problem the most clearly. They use it nine times in this four hour chapter. The writing on the whole sees a considerable step down in terms of quality in Chapter 2, and leans toward very contemporary and bleeding with unearned levity. The nerd character, Berdly, brings up things like "wavedashing" as “cheating,” for example. Not only is this immediately striking as completely out of place, significantly too-online and not very funny - CinemaSins ding - why would the nerd character view wavedashing as cheating? Wouldn't the nerd character utilize wavedashing? Wavedashing is not exactly a technique that the average player understands or even knows of. The exact type of person that would use a wavedash is Berdly. Jokes like this are fairly common in Chapter 2: poorly thought out references to vague online internet culture or gaming culture in general, seemingly just for the sake of making them. Another standout example is a hacker character that has a sidequest featuring hunting down the “blue checkmarks" that spends his free time building towns in "Minecrap.” Characters all throughout Chapter 2 very frequently speak in annoying online slang, with lines that are obviously intended to be screenshotted and posted online. One could easily argue this happens because of the ‘internet’ setting of the chapter, but as discussed, this is just how Toby Fox writes “jokes” more often than not, and I believe it has no real impact on what is present.

Chapter 2 is also the first real instance of new characters regressing their dialogue style back to a style more present in Undertale, in which they have identifiable typing quirks in place of a personality. The Queen speaks in ironically detached social media posts (think @dril) with next to no punctuation, while the highly marketable Spamton speaks in all uppercase, interspersed with square bracketed words and placeholders that function as punchlines. He’s done it plenty of times before, and Chapter 2 carries it in spades - at this point, it has become clear that Toby Fox has identified typing quirks as an acceptable substitute for character.

Aside from the overwhelming failings of these newly introduced characters with explicit spotlight put on them, the side characters of Chapter 2 are no better.

Characters that are exceptionally obviously external designer characters are given an uncomfortable amount of spotlight, resulting in pretty wide gameplay chunks that make you feel like you are playing a modded version that inserts someone's OC, as is so popular with the Undertale playerbase. The Sweet Cap'n Cakes (the trio of hip-hop-based designs) present in Chapter 2 are given extraneous mandatory screentime that drags on for an extraordinarily long amount of time. Not only can these characters not be killed (or forced to flee, in Deltarune’s case), these characters get multiple sequences in which they attack you in the overworld, multiple sequences in the overworld in which they fly around in player view, multiple shops throughout the chapter with full screen graphics, AND they are forced into the final sequence before the Queen fight. This would maybe sound bearable in a game with other characters between their screentime, but because Deltarune's chapter system revolves around a strict, limited number of named characters, these instances stick out like a sore thumb. It's clear that there isn't any pipeline these designs go through in which they are redesigned to fit the aesthetic of the game better. This is explicitly not a Chapter 2 issue, and is instead a game-wide issue - because this also occurs in Chapter 3. It speaks to Toby Fox's refusal to put his foot down, blindly accepting what is handed in without any further refinement. It would be foolish to advocate for Toby Fox to design every single thing in Deltarune, but there are characters not designed by Toby Fox that do not stand out as much as these. But if the Sweet Cap'n Cakes characters were redesigned to better fit Deltarune, they still would stick out in the script, because the overt presence of these characters is the primary problem. Their ‘look-at-me!’ designs in a completely different art style are only icing on the cake.

As mentioned, Chapter 3 has a similar issue with the characters "Elnina,” a weather channel themed cloud, and "Lanino,” a weather channel themed moon. These are, funnily enough, designed by the same person that designed the Sweet Cap'n Cakes, and given nearly the same amount of spotlight without any real merit to their appearances. But, it becomes more apparent the issue with this designer when these characters are on screen with Toby Fox designed characters, who lack the extensive design detailing that the two mentioned characters feature. Putting these two next to the simplified dice pip characters, who have an extremely simple concept executed well compared to Elnina and Lanino.

Spot the guest designed character.

Honestly, these characters, frankly, do not even really get the visual design of "weather channel" across succinctly. As it stands, they do not look like weather reporters, nor do they look like icons present on a weather channel's infographic. But this gripe is neither really here nor there; the issue of the fundamentally incompatible contrast between designs arises from the fact that Toby Fox's design language is more literal when it comes to object interpretation.


To quickly discuss visuals, I think Deltarune ranges from a good looking game to a bad looking game quite frequently. Undertale was constantly full of garish "mixels", two differing sized pixels that are combined in one singular sprite, and "rixels", when a sprite is rotated leaving gross after effects. The same is true of Deltarune. The heart icon is still a mess of differing pixel sizes, and visual effects like spotlighted lighting have obvious mixels as well. Presumably this is because of rendering lighting effects in engine, but there are also backgrounds with mixels in them that are jarring and immediately noticeable to anyone that has worked with pixel art. It is truly a shame, because some of the art is utterly fantastic, so it's shocking there has been no attention to detail to ensure that these issues are resolved and the rest of the game is kept in congruence with its best visuals. Various other sprites have been given no care to remain cohesive. Overworld objects stick out in contrast to the scene they're in, causing a disconnect. It often feels as though the assets do not belong together. This is most evident in sections of Chapter 4 that place you in a dimly lit blueish-hued environment, and you have regular objects that stand out due to them being fully lit by bright white light.

Nitpick? Maybe, but it's present far too often. Asset production seemingly has no sense of where everything goes. It's a failure of team management.

Shopkeepers have had three different sprite styles now, none of which have ever been settled on. Sweet Cap'n Cakes shop sprite is noticeably higher quality than anything else before it or after it, with strong anti-aliasing along with a completely different color palette than anything in the game prior. Seam is the closest in terms of quality, but the style is very different. Seam features a colored outline that runs along his sprite that makes him pop from the background, and features more intricate shading and volume work to accentuate his details. Then, there's Spamton, who features absolutely no shading whatsoever with more abrasive unfocused lineart and very simple colors. This issue applies to a majority of sprites in Deltarune. Various enemies are designed and shaded in ways that are deeply at odds with each other. This is due to the amount of artists on board, but a project with a talented, well-visioned director would be capable of ensuring all the assets are cohesive and flow together seamlessly. But Toby Fox does not seem capable of managing a project, considering the amount of inconsistent visual styles present in Deltarune alongside its ridiculous development time. Deltarune first released in 2018, it is now approaching the eight year mark of release. Deltarune is only now half-way complete. Toby Fox expressly stated early on in development that Deltarune had a team assembled for it because he didn’t want it to take so long developing a singular game, and yet Deltarune will absolutely not complete before it reaches its decade anniversary. Lack of planning, foresight and commitment has marred Deltarune and the fault can only come down on the project lead for failure to manage the project and the people onboard to ensure quick development speed.


On the topic of object interpretation - it's clear the rules as to how the Dark Worlds were formed has changed over the course of development of the game. In Chapter 1, when you exit the Dark World, you end up in a room with bits of clutter strewn about that have direct counterparts found in the Dark World. They directly mirror elements of what is present in the chapter. You have a doll that represents the character "Seam" quite literally with almost no actual differentiation in design. You have a large purple area with various red blocks that represents the "Field of Hopes and Dreams.” You have a checkerboard that represents the literal checkerboard area. You have cards thrown about to represent the playing-card-inspired enemies and NPCs. You even have things as small as speckles of dust to represent the beginning section in which there are large puffs of interactable dust. It's very clear that in Chapter 1, the Dark Worlds interpretation was very heavily intertwined to what was present in a room and what the room looked like. Following Chapter 1, the Dark Worlds became more abstract and significantly less impacted by what is present in the room. Chapter 2 takes place in a "cyber world" in which nearly none of what is present in the computer lab is there. The only thing that shows up besides plugs and vague allusions to computer software is a poster of a ferris wheel. Evidently designing rooms in which everything lined up with what was present in the Dark World became too complicated for Toby Fox, and as such, Dark Worlds barely represent what is even present in the real world outside of NPC or enemy designs.



There's very little to discuss of Chapter 3 or 4 other than the fact Chapter 3 is just more of Chapter 2's tone. Chapter 3 focuses on a TV-World, in which the character "Tenna" acts as a TV host for a game show. The issue I have is that the actual game is entirely divorced from the idea of... a game show. The presentation wants to masquerade as a game show, but the actual game part is more in line with an old Nintendo game. The idea is clear, the television character encompasses what has happened on the television, and the idea of a video game as this representation isn't a bad idea. The issue is that this is the entire chapter outside of the very last twenty minutes. Over three hours of the exact same The Legend of Zelda 1 clone that doesn't ever innovate on itself gameplay-wise or even presentation-wise. Wouldn't it have made more sense to focus on various game show premises, working the concepts into the battle system or even just doing “microgame”-style challenges? Chapter 3 has some segments akin to microgames but they don't represent the ‘television’ motif very well. You have a vaguely cooking-themed minigame that isn't really about cooking at all; it's about catching plates on your head and throwing them at customers. You have a hollowed-out "Guitar Hero" minigame that isn't emblematic of anything that would ever play on TV, nor is it particularly in line with the presentation of“Guitar Hero”. There are sections in which the party are asked questions a la a trivia gameshow, but it doesn't actually function like a gameshow whatsoever. It follows a simple multiple choice format with no actual importance or impact. It probably would've been very easy to make these fit into a more conventional television-like structure. If I could spitball; make the food minigame about serving customers tied to a happiness mechanic, and your restaurant can fail like those kitchen cleanup shows. Make the "Guitar Hero" minigame have a presentation that is significantly more akin to MTV music videos or lean into the “Guitar Hero” level of visual grunge in addition to the presentation of having to please audience members. Make the quiz stuff function more akin to game shows like "Family Feud" where the player has to manually answer and points are doled out per party member depending on what they say. There was direct keyboard functionality in Undertale, and the context was even similar (being on live television). Make use of it here! Of course, these simple concepts all involve fail-states and consequences, which Toby Fox is deeply, deeply terrified of. All these minigames described do not feature fail-states, and if the player fails the game simply lets them retry it. Fail enough times and the game will either automatically progress or just let you win, regardless of if you are even inputting anything into the controller or not. Because gameplay is entirely ancillary in Deltarune to the poorly told story. Back to topic, the only real point is that it really would not have been hard to actually sell the idea of this being a television-themed world, but it is too far up its own ass with random frivolous material that's only tangentially related to TV. The idea was presumably that these minigames are indicative of things that were seen on TV... but why do all of these have to be inherently anti-television in terms of presentation and mechanics? They don’t actually ever go far enough to sell the idea that what you are playing is related to television. Chapter 3 attempts to make the point that the character and the world is by and large outdated and on its way out, but it fails to properly capture this in terms of actual gameplay. Maybe one of television's most notorious aspects, reruns, are not actually worked into the gameplay outside of doing the Zelda gameplay twice in a row. The Zelda gameplay isn't intended to feel like it's a repeat because it's intended to be a different, fresh experience. It does not get across the messaging when it could have been an extremely free slam dunk to have commentary on the game repeating with no differences. The gameplay could’ve been designed to facilitate replays that could be blitzed through with proper knowledge of the map and gameplay mechanics... like how The Legend of Zelda is actually structured.


Possibly the most insulting thing Toby has put into his game is real life merchandise. Yes, real life merchandise. Chapter 3 very frequently showcases Ralsei as a plush, which you can luckily buy right now from Fangamer! There is a point in which the Ralsei plush comes on screen during a quiz minigame and the price of it is asked for, and the answer is its real life price. Except it's not, because the price has been raised from 32 dollars to 36 dollars. Luckily Toby Fox has accounted for potential inflation and "higher" is a correct answer as well. I can't really communicate with words how much I utterly hate this. It is a blatant advertisement, bathed in irony so that it can be laundered into a “joke.” Toby Fox could have a character use a "Sony Vaio™" and have characters talk about how cool and helpful for work the "Sony Vaio™" is out loud and idiots would still laugh at it and say there's not a problem. Product placement is still product placement even if it is a self-related product that is being sold. Sony putting Sony products into their movies is still product placement. The Ralsei plush joke happens multiple times over the chapter, too, and not only is it just not funny, it is truly disgusting. There's no other word for it, besides maybe shameless. Because putting something like this into your video game requires you to have no shame.


Chapter 4's tone is closer to Chapter 1's, but it still gets in its own way too much for my taste. There is a very compelling section in Chapter 4 in which you enter a dark room and are told to go back, and continuing enters a boss fight where the main gameplay gimmick is similar to Atari's "Haunted House.” You control your heart through predetermined house designs and have to find a key, then return back to the start. It's a compelling and unique divergence from the regular gameplay, but it undermines itself basically immediately because the boss, Jackenstein, is a large pumpkinheaded enemy who talks in memes and appears in the gameplay sequence, chasing after the player only after making a joke, which deflates the entire sequence. I honestly think I wouldn't have even written anything about this because Deltarune undermining something interesting with Toby Fox’s exhausting humor isn't anything exceptional by this point, but he starts quoting fucking Link: The Faces of Evil lines.

This is intended to be the serious chapter.

His speech - and the out of place joke in the fight - are intended to be reminiscent of “Youtube Poops”, in which his speech is cut up and rearranged into different contexts as a joke. Maybe this would be fitting in the Chapter 2 world considering its Internet based humor, but as said before, Toby Fox just writes like this. Annoying online humor is not confined to the Internet world. At this point any good will Chapter 4 had built toward finally coming back to Chapter 1’s tone is completely shattered. Chapter 4 also introduces "Gerson Boom" who operates as Toby Fox's poorly disguised self insert. He's a writer who made "Lord of the Hammer,” the narrative stand-in for Deltarune, described as an epic work that eventually "consumed the author himself" due to its overwhelming volume. Despite Toby obviously speaking through the character about his thoughts on Deltarune, which does get tiring because it is very overt, I don’t think Gerson is actually a bad character. I could maybe overlook this self-insert situation being the case, but Gerson has a line in the chapter that reads, "irony, that's what poisons your story..." Ironic, considering Toby Fox has built a career off of irony-drenched storytelling - post-ironic memes inserted into a story that seemingly intends to take itself seriously at some point is perhaps Toby Fox's most consistent quality. This line plays mere MINUTES after the fight with Jackenstein. The fight entirely drenched in this ironic schtick Toby is oh-so familiar with. Maybe don't include a line talking about how irony ruins a story if you are going to immediately poison an interesting sequence with post-ironic memes. You really have to wonder how much of the ‘irony’ of this line was lost on Toby - any self-reflection at all would've stopped this line from appearing, but it seems he has zero idea that the call is coming from inside the house.


A takeaway from both of the chapters is that nearly nothing happens until the ending, and this revelation marks perhaps the best time to discuss the issue of Deltarune's pacing.

Chapter 1 is the chapter in which the most happens, primarily because it is designed as a standalone story in which every character present goes through their own arc. One of the more pressing issues that comes from this is the fact that characters have gone through developments too early as a result. Susie goes from the aggressive bully character to a more relaxed one that considers Kris her friend extremely quickly. This drastic jump in development is significantly worse in Chapter 2, in which, having known Kris for a single day, she begins to act like they have been best friends for their entire life. Chapter 2 takes place less than twenty four hours after Chapter 1. This can be chalked up to Susie having trauma-bonded with Kris through the series of events in Chapter 1, but she doesn’t. She’s absent from the main party for almost the entire chapter. This forced bonding that occurs as a result is something that could have easily taken place over the span of multiple chapters, as these two characters get to know each other better and begin to rely on one another. This is similar to Ralsei, who reveals his "true" design at the end of Chapter 1, something that probably should've happened much later. But since Chapter 1 had to work as a jumping off point to establish its characters and world, and sell the idea of future “sequel” chapters, subsequent chapters are forced into an awkward position, in which development that should be occurring NOW has already occurred way earlier in the story. Susie is truly the prime example of this. Her and Kris' friendship feels entirely staged, when it could have felt much more real with just proper pacing.


The character-driven aspects of Deltarune’s storytelling aren’t inherently an issue, but its story has ultimately progressed with such meandering sloth that effectively nothing has happened over its seven (nearly eight) year development period. Its story is a never-ending constantly multiplying mystery box that continues to delay answering any actual meaningful questions at every opportunity that presents itself to do so. Of Deltarune's currently twenty hour story, the amount of meaningful plot events that have happened could be explained in two or three sentences. The “substantive storytelling” of every chapter, aside from the establishing one, only ever amounts to vague gesturing at the idea of a plot with a resolution in mind, consisting of mysteries with no clear timeframe in which they will ever truly be resolved. Sans has been telling the player they will be meeting Papyrus "tomorrow" for seven years now. If Toby Fox didn't want to commit to showing the character, that could have been fine, but the episodic release has ensured it is something players now expect to see happen because of the very early assurance that it is just around the corner. You could also suggest this is merely a play on fan expectations, but this idea falls flat for me because the joke isn’t really that implied - you can interact with his house over the course of the four chapters currently available and the interact text has consistently changed to be Papyrus related. There isn’t really a play on expectations, so it just comes off as a poorly executed joke, or maybe an idea revealed simply too early. It's clear he will probably show up, but Toby Fox doesn't want to actually answer when, or have anyone imply as to when. Just very messy foreshadowing that wouldn’t have been a problem without seven (nearly eight) years (so far) of episodic releases.


The distinction between the Light World and the Dark World leads to a meta-narrative issue of the real-world plot points never properly progressing, because the actual video game happens in a completely isolated world that never can meaningfully interact with the other. It's clear the distinction between the Light World and Dark World exists because Toby Fox finds himself creatively backed into a corner, forced to use pre-existing characters (while only ever actually using them for meritless cameos that serve to make the player point at the screen in recognition.) Narratively, the Dark World is very bluntly intended to evoke escapism and acts as a refuge for our characters, but it also functions as an escape for Toby, as he is capable of unshackling himself from the attachment and expectations Deltarune has to Undertale. The simple solution would've been to not include the characters from Undertale, but this would lead to a much bigger problem; if the characters were instead entirely brand new, the lack of depth and ingenuity in character writing in Deltarune would be on full display. Almost every returning character is rendered a glorified cardboard cutout in perpetuity, as the Light World offers absolutely nothing of substance to do or see. This only changes when the plot has decided to use and then discard one of these characters for a brief stint, as has happened to Undyne and is about to happen to Asgore. When Deltarune wants to do this it utterly fails because there is no reason to feel any attachment to these characters. Despite Toby’s insistence that Deltarune be taken as something separate from Undertale’s identity, it needs to constantly lean on the writing established in Undertale because Deltarune doesn’t want to put in the work to rewrite and make players care for these characters again.

A few of the many times Toby Fox has insisted Deltarune be played in relation to Undertale.

Time and time again Toby Fox has clarified Deltarune is intended to be played after Undertale, and it’s clear as to why - Undertale does the heavy lifting for characters and operates under the assumption you already know and care for them. If you don’t, then Deltarune gives you next to no reason to care about anyone in the Light World that is a reappearing character. As such, the Light World feels very much like a propped up video-game hub world, rather than a small closely knit town, with the only actual points of interest being already tied to the actual video-game side of Deltarune instead. Despite the game constantly throwing the player into a free-roaming state in which they “can” wander around and explore, speaking to whoever they like, areas and locations are fenced off when you aren’t travelling in the Light World for a plot moment, further leading to the feeling that this isn't a living breathing world. When interacted with, the door to the computer lab in Chapter 1 reads off obnoxious fourth-wall breaking "humor" about a dog working on a game, and that you will be capable of going inside when it's completed. This tongue in cheek approach leads to a perpetually incomplete world that only expands when need-be, because Toby Fox is building a bridge as he crosses it. Considering the inside of the computer lab is a singular small room, the only read that can be made is that the dog on the computer doesn’t seem to be actually working all that hard. It would be different if this game just had plot relevant locations blocked off for potential spoilers, but blocking off an area like the church or the library only speaks to the lack of planning or care for worldbuilding or exploration. The only reason such a small area like the computer laboratory is blocked off is because Toby hadn’t decided what would be in there. If Deltarune wasn’t shackled to its lethargic drip-fed content and the chapter system, there is no doubt in my mind the majority of locations would be immediately accessible.


There is also the fact that Deltarune’s narrative is feeling a bit futile after 20 hours of Toby’s storytelling. Deltarune's plot defining ‘win condition’ - the sealing of Dark Fountains - has no end in sight. Ever. The amount of Dark Fountains is infinitely accumulating and with more information divulged since Chapter 1 has established this goal, it isn’t something that can be tied to any real conclusion. Because it’s revealed that anyone can make a Dark Fountain. There is no numerical goal on how many Dark Fountains have to be sealed, or how many there can exist in the world. For contrast, this stands quite opposite to the game Toby Fox took the most from, Mother 3.

Mother 3 has the set goal of needing to pull the needles from the Earth, and while this doesn’t come into the forefront of the story until the longest chapter in the game, it explicitly establishes rules around the needles. They are not able to be created, there is a goal attached to the amount of needles and most importantly the antagonistic force is given a clear reason to wish to pull the needles themselves. By contrast, in Deltarune Dark Fountains can be created anywhere, at any time, and the primary person creating Dark Fountains has no actual clear motivation as to why they are doing this - and they are probably not even antagonistic. As long as someone is capable of opening Dark Fountains, the balance between the Light World and the Dark World can forever be put into disarray. This drastically weakens the cohesion of the narrative. This isn’t to say this setup for Dark Fountains ‘makes no sense,’ or is, ‘unsolvable’ - the reasonable goal for the protagonists would be to find whoever is making the Dark Fountains and stop them after all. But our characters act exclusively reactively instead of proactively, even after over 20 hours of story-time. After the drastic events at the end of Chapter 3, our heroes are still fine progressing at a snail's pace, poorly trying to find a way to enter the bunker, which they have made no meaningful progress on.


I will use this number a third time in this section: Deltarune's current length is twenty entire hours, on average. If the argument is that “RPG’s just have slow pacing”, that entirely falls flat on its face because it’s simply not true. This pacing issue is exclusive to Deltarune. Here are a handful of real RPGs that have told their entire story by the twenty hour mark, while Deltarune has reached this runtime with zero progress towards its central conflict, and no further clues as to what is happening or why: Super Mario RPG, Terranigma, Illusion of Gaia, Chrono Trigger, Soul Blazer, Lunar Silver Star Story, Final Fantasy 4, Phantasy Star 4, Final Fantasy 1, Suikoden 1, Golden Sun, Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, Shin Megami Tensei If..., Dragon Quest 3, Live A Live and Seiken Densetsu 3. 

Perhaps the most important name to drop of all is still that of Mother 3, which, with this same amount of screen-time, has concluded its immensely more complex character arcs and has finished telling its much more compelling story. In fact, Mother 3 is finished before Deltarune even reaches Chapter 4. Mother is very clearly the primary inspiration for Toby’s works, and for some reason its quick pacing never seemed to be taken into account. One could say Mother 3 perhaps lays its cards down on the table a bit too late, with an exceptionally large exposition dump occurring near the end of the game, but the actual catalyst of the story occurs within the first hour and continues to evolve upon itself in interesting, exciting ways.


Deltarune, a now - yes, a fourth time - TWENTY hour long video game, has not advanced any overworld gameplay puzzles beyond having characters step on certain tiles or organizing tiles into a proper formation. Make no mistake: Deltarune’s “puzzles” with no fail state and zero long-term development would be lambasted in Jason 'Thor' Hall's "Heartbound”, a game that received brutal (warranted) criticism of how lacking of a video game it is. Our good friend Jason’s work would be nothing short of torn to shreds in late 2025. However, it’s extremely clear that he simply took a page from Toby Fox's book of design, making a video game that is devoid of strife and makes zero demand of the player’s mechanical skill or problem solving. Ultimately, it calls into question whether or not the widespread deconstruction Heartbound received was warranted, as it echoes the worst offenses of both Undertale and Deltarune. The only real difference is that it's made by a relatively outspoken and disliked public figure like Pirate Software. Heartbound was perfectly acceptable as a video game for years to the general public with mass outspoken praise for its interesting concept and gameplay, receiving lots of coverage from online outlets. It only received any actual criticism the moment people began to apply scrutiny to Jason himself. Which makes me think that the exact same would happen if Jason was to develop Deltarune. They share the exact same issues, but Heartbound is simply bundled into a less good package. Heartbound may feature worthless, barely interactive segments that only exist to pad time, but it’s nothing a Deltarune player should be unfamiliar with. Under Toby Fox’s vision of Deltarune, minigame and puzzle events are constantly introduced with absolutely zero failure state and zero development. What transpires is instead a cutscene masquerading as gameplay, and this trend of emulated fake gameplay occurs far too frequently to simply write off. For example, the sequence in which you move Noelle platform to platform via mice as Berdly speaks to you is just a cutscene. It isn't real gameplay, and you cannot fail it. Despite the tension the game wishes to impart to the player, it doesn't mean anything when Noelle falls and she is picked up and moved to the next platform without any repercussions. Or the sequence in Chapter 4 in which the player climbs as darkness envelops the wall you are climbing on from below. Despite the insane amount of time before it reaches the player, if it reaches the player, it does effectively no damage and then recedes all the way downward. This scene is worse than the Noelle scene by a significant margin because this can’t even be construed as a joke scene. This is intended to be an extremely serious scene. These segments drag out on replays because the player understands there is no failure involved. No tension, no stakes. I don't see how any of this is any different than the widely criticized section in "Heartbound" in which the player stamps papers and then transitions into a cutscene, after only mere seconds of interactivity. At least it doesn't feign interactivity. It's a sequence that continues if you keep pressing the interact button. That’s at least trying to say something. When you realize how much this concept of simulated, meaningless "gameplay" (in scare-quotes) applies to almost all of Deltarune, you really can never look at it the same again.

Heartbound received heavy criticism for its story that has provided absolutely no development towards its goal, characters with no narrative presence outside of their designated self-enclosed segments, and its passé, snarky, irony-laden dialogue. Unfortunately, all of these criticisms apply equally to Deltarune, as well - to a rather unsettling degree of comparison. Deltarune is a prettier product, with undeniably better written dialogue, better designed characters and a significantly better soundtrack, but a majority of the common criticisms of Heartbound are issues that are present in Deltarune. Its quirky dated meme humor equally applies to Deltarune; a character having "deal with it" sunglasses is truthfully no different than a character making an Among Us joke in 2025, no matter how many layers of irony it launders itself in. Perhaps the exclusive mistake Heartbound made was going a step too far and removing Deltarune’s childish “mock combat,” but truthfully, I really don't think the average Deltarune fan would mind if Deltarune forwent the pretense of combat either. Deltarune's combat is so inherently simple and devoid of thought (unless you are going out of your way to do the one-off superbosses that almost threaten you with a real videogame) that, as it is, Deltarune's combat stands as a blockade to pace out the story events and quirky dialogue. It exists to exist, and its utter lack of innovation as the game's hour count slowly ticks by serves as proof of that. Any attempt at a deeper discussion on its actual RPG combat immediately comes to a standstill, because there is next to no worth in discussing it. There is zero RPG problem-solving in Deltarune.

Now is the point where I discuss Deltarune’s non-RPG combat.

It cannot be understated how afraid Toby Fox is of making a video game. Deltarune builds off of the principle of combat used in Undertale; that the player character controls an abstracted icon, and has to avoid incoming objects, or they will take damage. Deltarune offers little to no evolution on this principle, beyond the occasional fourth-wall breaking gimmicks in which characters can affect the boundary box present. The most interesting idea present in Deltarune was recently introduced in Chapter 4, in which the "soul" acts as a beacon of light, capable of destroying abstracted enemies as long as they remain close. This is good! Aside from this exception, the only combat elements introduced in Deltarune are shallow gimmicks that are never built upon (a lot like the overworld puzzle-solving.) Deltarune is very interested in introducing fight gimmicks every five seconds, but very insistent on never evolving them. Enemies and bosses have specific gimmicks that would be interesting to see reappear in differing intermixing contexts, but for whatever reason, the decision was made that characters will have specific gimmicks that cannot reappear.


Mechanically, Deltarune bullet-hell gameplay does intersect with its mock-RPG combat in one new way; Deltarune introduces TP and Graze. TP functions as a team-wide meter that maxes out at 100%, and is tied to a few moves. The word "few" here does Herculean lifting. The amount of consistent TP-utilizing moves is actually four - three of which are actually useful. One being a heal, one being a large damaging move and one being the ability to spare a tired enemy. "Pacify", the ability to spare an enemy based on its tiredness, is a mechanic that could be interesting if every character did not have the ability to spare enemies. As it is, it's a nearly useless system because tiring out an enemy requires either attacking them or using specific context sensitive ACTs typically localized to one character, and using team wide ACTs is simply a faster way to spare an enemy. Graze functions like typical shmup graze, in which getting close to bullets grants bonuses. In this case, grazing by bullets increases the TP meter. Despite the introduction of these mechanics, neither go anywhere near far enough. TP as a meter doesn't matter because the amount of options tied to TP is simply too low. Enemy-specific and boss-specific TP moves seek to make the gameplay easier in every circumstance, removing any thoughtful application of your own skills and the TP needed to use them. The lack of general options that are available every battle makes it so that the context sensitive options are consistently the most obviously useful moves, every single time. One cannot understate how much damage context sensitive skills do to Deltarune’s already nonexistent RPG problem-solving. It is like playing the game on auto-pilot. Graze is mostly good because it introduces a fun, simple risk-reward incentive to stay close to enemy bullets. If it went further and had more interesting applications it could be a potentially great mechanic, but like everything present in Deltarune, it doesn’t go far enough.


The core of Deltarune's combat system is the same as Undertale, with the options to resolve a battle by attacking enemies or sparing them. Ultimately, like Undertale, attacking enemies is still a worthless option. No matter how much RPG dressing and uncommittal King dialogue is put on top of it, Deltarune is a game that still wants you to spare enemies. Attacking and "killing" enemies has them run away, which alters next to nothing. What Deltarune communicates first to the player is that choice doesn't matter in the world, and it's disappointing to see that this isn't committed to in its combat, just like it isn’t committed to anywhere else. Worse is the ability for combat to affect the story. This is the case in Undertale, but Undertale also expressly sold itself on the player's choices mattering, and prepared the player for this. A pacifist run in Deltarune not only recruits all characters back to your hometown so they can have fun quirky dialogue and sequences together, but it can save characters in the narrative like Tenna, removing any and all emotional impact that could’ve been had by committing to the initial premise. Tenna is, in no uncertain terms, killed at the end of Chapter 3. The worst part about this is that Toby does this again, a single chapter later! Chapter 4 does the exact same thing in which Jackenstein is killed nearing the climax of Chapter 4, but if you do the pacifist route, he turns out completely fine. The narrative reasoning behind this is that all your recruited allies come to prop him up before he is capable of falling. The copout that you are capable of rescuing a character from narrative consequence speaks to Toby Fox's many-times-aforementioned FEAR of letting a story have weight. It matters more to Toby’s fear of tonal consistency that Tenna and Jackenstein should reappear and have quirky exchanges with other characters, so fans can endlessly churn out content related to the characters, than committing to letting them die would matter to the story.


As has been described several times here already, this is another example of how Deltarune introduces mechanics and ideas constantly that are immediately discarded for no real reason other than the fact it could be challenging to the player. Chapter 1 features a fantastic gimmick where one of your teammates refuses to listen to your actions. It is one of the most compelling mechanics Toby Fox has ever designed. The idea of a game in which you can spare enemies forcing you to play around a berserker character who has absolutely no qualms with killing enemies and won’t listen to you. It is, with no minced words, a genius concept. Unfortunately, this is undone by the end of Chapter 1, where this character just turns into a regular party member you control. The reasoning for this is that Susie “sees how you spare enemies” regardless of if the player is actually doing this or not. Killing every single enemy you come across in Chapter 1 still has Susie come to this conclusion based off of nothing. This lack of commitment is throughout all of Deltarune. Chapter 4 introduces a sidekick that can interrupt what characters and enemies are doing, and in a real video game, this character would follow you around for the majority of the chapter, creating an interesting dynamic of having to play around the unpredictability. The fact that your actions are not necessarily concrete would create an interesting gameplay flow - something that forces the player to plan ahead more carefully. But since this is a game for people who don't like video games, this is a mechanic you must opt into, and also stops happening after three minutes.


Chapter 1 also has a mechanic in which enemies will target certain party members. This was, by and large, relatively used well in the context of a short three hour long gameplay slice, but had room for significantly more interesting implementations and twists. Narratively, there was a lot that could have been done. For example, an enemy explicitly focusing their attacks on one of your party members has more to say about that character and their relationship with that party member than a generic attack pattern. Gameplay wise? The sky was the limit. A focused target system means that enemies could have their attacks balanced around the fact they will be targeting certain party members more often or even always. Due to this, bullet patterns could be adjusted in terms of difficulty to put the player in uncomfortable positions. An enemy focusing on Ralsei in a long battle would matter more than attacking someone like Kris, because Ralsei is your healer that doesn't dip into items. An enemy focusing Susie means that your tankiest character would be going down more often, making encounters in which you must lay down constant damage to progress significantly harder. An enemy that changes focus from party member to party member as the fight escalates means the player would have to play safer with each character as it would be uncertain who would be taking the next bulk of focused damage. Attacks that are harder to dodge being more likely to target Ralsei would mean the player would have to learn the patterns faster if they wanted to win. These are just a few examples that immediately come to mind as applications with the targeting system, but I am sure the idea gets across. There was infinite potential in doing a system like this due to Deltarune's core combat loop focusing on small bite-sized shmup sections that allow you to avoid all damage. Explicitly accounting for that, and designing a system that takes advantage of the position taking damage can put the player in was smart, and it's removed in the proceeding chapters. Instead, the damage system works as a catch-all, in which everyone takes damage, some more than others, and sometimes the damage is focused on a singular party member. That isn't to say that team wide attacks are bad - they are present in Chapter 1 - but they were denoted as being team wide attacks. By homogenizing the targeting system into just being team attacks, the potential for interesting RPG combat challenges is completely taken out of the equation and the game instead relies on only mechanical reactions.


Toby Fox frequently used the term “RPG” to describe Undertale, and its RPG elements were extremely light. The most choice the player had outside of narrative choice was the ability to use progressively better equipment without any tradeoffs and mild inventory management. This was, in some ways, understandable in Undertale’s case. Undertale is an extremely short video game, clocking in at about three hours per gameplay route for a playthrough. This is in addition to Undertale primarily emphasizing the “action” side of its gameplay, the shmup-like sections. This is all to say that Undertale didn’t try to overexert itself. It did what it needed to do and it did it appropriately well, and it never, ever lied to you about what it was or pretended its simple set-dressing was anything other than that.


Deltarune, on the other hand, is more overtly “RPG” in structure. You control multiple party members who have access to equipment that has differing effects, you share money between these three party members, your characters (partially) have access to different skills, they have different stats, and they are intended to fit into different archetypes. Deltarune is attempting to convince you it is more like a real RPG. Unfortunately, Deltarune is incapable of committing to being an RPG, and once you realize this, the masquerade becomes tiresome. As previously discussed, the unique archetype of Susie fitting into a berserker role that you must manage was genuinely interesting only to be immediately undone. This is frankly because having to mitigate odds and make strategic decisions in the long term are inherently RPG-adjacent in nature, and Toby Fox doesn’t want a game where that occurs, because it would mean the player can fail. It is asking too much of Toby’s garnered audience, and he’s terrified of the idea that his players could fail a gameplay scenario. Your characters should only be making decisions in the short-term, with “short-term” meaning the turn you are playing. Evidence enough that Toby Fox refuses to adopt long-term strategy (or frankly any strategy) into Deltarune is the ability for any character to perform previously mentioned “ACT”s, a context sensitive action that adds to the spare meter of an enemy. In Chapter 1, the only person capable of performing these was Kris, in addition to the help of a friend if they were duo moves. Meaning that two allies would use their turn to perform an “ACT” instead of just one. With the release of Chapter 2, every character could now perform “ACT”s, free of Kris’ involvement. Deltarune did not want to offer any potential planning when it came to mindlessly performing spare moves, so now, you can have every single one of your party members use an “ACT”. I can only view this as a concession. A concession toward making battles faster, and lowering the engagement of combat even lower, as at the very least sparing an enemy in Chapter 1 wasn’t just free. You had to typically spend multiple turns to spare a group of enemies. Now it has been made even more effortless, and without any decision-making involved. Just call-and-response context-sensitive “ACTs” on anyone who can use them, and you’re golden. Any and all individuality has been stripped from this party repeatedly and I truthfully do not understand why.

Character individuality, and the aversion to actually making the RPG Toby is so obsessed with looking like he is making, is not contained to only Deltarune’s combat. Deltarune’s oft overlooked “Power” menu, in which you are able to see stats and other information, acts nearly entirely as fluff, with the only stats there being pointless “jokes.” “Fluffiness”, “rude”, “kind”, “dog”, “guts” and “purple” are some examples of Toby’s non-sequitur gutbusters that have absolutely nothing to do with anything, have no tangible impact on gameplay, and are - I cannot stress this enough - not funny. Elements principle to Toby’s set-dressing of choice, an RPG videogame, are scraped out of the gameplay to make room for these meaningless gags. “Rudebuster”, Susie’s single special attack, factors in “rude” damage, but “rude” is always maxed out. Perhaps in a real video game, a stat like “rude” would be capable of fluctuating in accordance with things the player can say to Susie, or Susie’s mood during events. As it stands, the single time “rude” as a stat has changed was during Chapter 2, and it was bumped down... by 11. Then it was raised back to maximum for the next two chapters. The idea of a joke stat or status effect isn’t new to the concept of “parody RPGs,” nor is it really an indie phenomena. “Earthbound” features the status effect of “homesickness”, only applicable to the main character, Ness, with the method of curing it being a conversation with your loving mother. It’s obviously a joke - the strange functionality of it, and its random chance to occur after any battle make the idea of a status effect being named “homesickness” funny. But the design of homesickness as a status effect works in favor of Earthbound’s narrative. You are Ness, and Ness is no older than thirteen years old. Ness is on a larger than life globe-trotting adventure that has him and his friends wildly in over their heads. Homesickness exists to ground that. To remind the player that no matter how crazy in scale the adventure gets, you are playing as a child. What does “purple” actually mean outside of being some shitty joke? How about “rude”, which means nothing because it isn’t allowed to mean anything? Some of these could, perhaps, mean something, but Deltarune is so thoroughly uninterested in doing anything unique with the idea of being an RPG and so clearly uninterested in at least reinforcing its own themes that the only thing that it really can do is use its performance as an entry into a genre as a vehicle to make “jokes.” All of this is also aside from the pertinent difference that Earthbound’s “homesickness” isn’t at the expense of actual game mechanics that the game only pretends to have.

Lack of attention to detail when it comes to Deltarune’s RPG elements plagues far more than just the obnoxious joke stats. The “Black Shard” is a weapon in Deltarune that is obtained from defeating the boss at the end of Chapter 3, a normally unwinnable battle that can only be won if the player obtains a secret item, and perseveres through the hardest challenge in the game at present. The “Black Shard” is a weapon that is explicitly communicated as capable of “striking the weakness of dark creatures.” At this point you seen yet to see dark creatures, but come Chapter 4, they are present, and your weapon is capable of dealing massive increased damage to them. I bring this up because the end of Chapter 4 has you face off against a “Titan”, an extraordinarily strong dark creature. You would think the “Black Shard” would do increased damage here, and you’d be correct. But attempting to kill the “Titan” with the “Black Shard” only results in it healing itself, with no method of outdamaging its healing, regardless if you are using the “Black Shard” or not. If a player is capable of defeating the hardest challenge the game has offered so far, and holds a weapon specifically designed for this circumstance, why would you not reward the player for doing so? An alternate sequence in which you are actually capable of killing it before bringing you back into the main scripted storyline would have been appropriate, but since Toby Fox doesn’t want to commit to rewarding players for attempting to play around the rules and information established in his video game, why even bother? What is the point of engaging with the knowledge doled to the player if said knowledge is never consistent and never actually amounts to anything? Toby Fox is a creator whose implied ethos is the idea of small details mattering, but large issues like this are fine to slip past because it’s ultimately a criticism of the RPG gameplay, which he frankly could not care less about.

Deltarune was referred to as an RPG until Toby Fox decided to change the description for the game in June of last year. It’s evident enough why. There is probably a desire to move away from the RPG side of Deltarune, but it’s too late now. Toby Fox could have committed to doing a lot of very interesting ideas within the confines of being an RPG, but he’d prefer to walk them all back and regress to the safety of what he truly knows; meaningless non-interactive combat with mild set dressing that only suggests an actual videogame. Toby Fox very clearly wants the bombastic elements and large scale that come with a long, fleshed-out RPG, but he’s incapable of committing to the gameplay and scriptwriting required to accomplish this. Deltarune briefly touches on legends, prophecies, alternate worlds with their own diverse history, and mysteries upon mysteries. And yet, its world feels so small. Some of this is due to the level design, but most of it is due to Deltarune’s inherently constrained, self-contained worlds. As previously discussed, the Dark Worlds you explore in Deltarune being completely separate to the Light World, while also being completely separate to other Dark Worlds, means Toby will effectively never develop a true sense of history or scale within Deltarune. This is a script-writing failure, but it’s clear the actual tangible level design does Deltarune no favors, either. Deltarune’s extremely linear hand-holding design discourages exploration heavily. As such, its world feels less like a world and more like a rollercoaster, that simply carries you through the motions and shows you only the most thrilling and immediately relevant sights for the story to function. The RPG genre is fundamentally built off the idea of exploration, and the principle idea of letting a player become lost in the world, wandering around and taking all of it in. As much as Deltarune wishes to say its inspirations came from classic RPG titles, nearly every title Deltarune shares inspiration with has significantly more complex and interesting level design and overworld exploration present throughout. Those games trusted the player to figure out where to go and understood that it was acceptable for the player to not immediately find a way forward. Deltarune’s insistence on dragging the player by the leash and treating them like they are idiots is antithetical to the genre it asserts itself to be a tribute to.

Toby Fox is very unsatisfied with leaving well enough alone, and constantly undermines his few smart choices with poor ones. This is obviously subjective, but Susie with her hair down is a significantly better design and lends itself to better looking portraits that could remain expressive without constantly showcasing her eyes, but with the end of Chapter 1, this is walked back. None of her sprites produced after Chapter 1 look anywhere near as good as the sprites present in Chapter 1, with awkward looking blank stares on almost all of her neutral sprites.

I'm glad Toby decided to fix this character by making her look like shit, constantly.

For whatever reason, there needed to be a design shift to showcase her new personality, but the gap-moe would have been more compelling on the whole. This is the same for Ralsei's design, which was a subversion of the "Black Mage" archetype of RPG character, a mage literally covered in shadow and pitch black. This gets walked back to literally be a "white" mage. Not only does the design become less interesting as a result, it fits more into the stereotypical framework of what is expected of a character like that. He designed something actually interesting with a unique subversion and immediately undid it. It really doesn’t help that Ralsei's portraits also received a massive downgrade across the board. Ralsei is fucking ugly, but moreover, it’s ultimately another example in the litany of things Toby Fox has gone back on for no reason in order to make his creative decisions less interesting. This concept is so widely applicable to all of Deltarune that once you start seeing it, it’s hard to see anything else.

Deltarune is impossible to critique without addressing the chapter system, which I will now do, because it is an unignorable aspect of the game that is, in no unminced words, an utter failure. Deltarune has decided to split its content into "chapters,” which release years apart from each other. Because of this, every chapter needs to reintroduce the player to how the game is played, and over-explains how its extremely simple mechanics are supposed to work, every single time. Characters interrupt the gameplay to remind you that the game works like this, and it even goes so far as to re-add a tutorial item, in case you just don't know how to play and are for whatever reason starting Chapter 4 with no previous game knowledge in mind. This is aside from the fact that Chapter 1 still has an entirely different design ethos that is simply not compatible with even the very next chapter. Mechanics and ideas that were almost certainly going to be mainstays are just dropped, so you have very awkward points while playing the game consecutively in which the gameplay design just shifts at random. Chapter 1 has a limited inventory that is undone a single chapter later, because the idea of a limited inventory where what you purchase and carry matters is too complex for people that want to play Deltarune.

When sitting down and replaying all the chapters consecutively, it is appallingly apparent that no one on the development team considered how the chapters were going to flow together when the game is completed, and as such, not only do you have the aforementioned drastic mechanical inconsistencies, you have awkward cliff-hangers all the time that still tell you "to be continued...” (which is right now.) This would maybe prove ‘ignorable,’ albeit still extremely jarring and awkward, if every cliff-hanger so far was not immediately walked back with comical fake-outs, but this happens consistently enough that it's just exhausting. Chapter 1 ends with the main character brandishing a knife and evilly smiling at the camera before it cuts to credits, and we were given a three year wait to reveal that they went to go eat pie. It's hard to read this generously as anything but speculation bait that had no real purpose besides making players curiously ask what happens next, and ‘sell’ the idea of more Deltarune. Part of that was absolutely baiting players into believing it was connected to Undertale, as Deltarune's first impression was establishing a world that appears similar to the "true pacifist" ending to Undertale and including motifs from Undertale. The main character in Deltarune wearing clothing similar to "Chara" from Undertale further fed into this, as the "genocide" route in Undertale featured this character ending up in the "true pacifist" ending. Obviously, players of Undertale would see a character that looks like Chara brandishing a knife with glowing red eyes and make the immediately apparent connection, but it has only ever served thus far as a meaningless fakeout. Now that you can play those two chapters back to back without Toby’s three year development gap, this sequence is extremely forced, and honestly, embarrassing.

Chapter 2 also has a similar fake-out, to a lesser extent. One of the last shots of Chapter 2 - that of Kris creating a dark fountain - is immediately followed up on in Chapter 3, but the tone at the end of the chapter speaks to a tone that is not present in Chapter 3. As the screen is enveloped by dark fog, the TV cuts on with droning static and an ominous grin appears on screen. Now, the immediate assumption is whatever that is will certainly prove a sinister presence. Not only is this walked back immediately in Chapter 3 with the actual personality of Tenna, the design isn't even the same. Either Toby Fox radically changed the design after he had released Chapter 2 or it's a worthless cliff-hanger that amounts to nothing on purpose. Ironically, it feels as though Toby Fox understood that people would question why that aspect of Chapter 2's ending was discarded, because the original Chapter 2 smile is haphazardly thrown onto televisions in select rooms in the Chapter 3 area to desperately try to connect to the original visual hook. The chapter icon for 3 changes when completed from the smile into the Knight's visor, which, again, feels like a desperate and failing move to work new, radically different material with what they established earlier.

Toby Fox has also clearly reacted to fan feedback or discussion in-between releases of chapters. The painfully obvious presence of fan input and appeasement present in Deltarune makes me wish more than anything else that Deltarune simply released all at once. Toby Fox's true unaltered vision is something that we will unfortunately never see, as we are left with a new, influenced vision that is partially compromised and forever-evolving and ‘playing to the crowd.’ Toby Fox has repeatedly said he has had the idea for Deltarune for over a decade now, and I truthfully do not believe it. There are too many elements of the gameplay and storytelling constantly changing and revolving for this to be true, and it's evident looking at any of his blog posts that he has never had the entire game extensively planned out outside of vague notions of a plot. It’s why essential pieces to the story are entirely missing in the launch version of Chapter 1. Things like the “Shadow Crystals” didn’t exist until Chapter 2 rolled around, and as a result of Toby’s lack of planning, they had to be retroactively inserted into Chapter 1. Or that the Queen in Chapter 2 was originally intended to fall more in line tonally with the King from Chapter 1, but as the development of Chapter 2 continued, and the online fandom influenced Toby’s perspective, it changed greatly to become what it is now. More than that, the entire rules of the world our characters inhabit are subject to change at a drop of a hat. Some characters are established early on as being from specific Dark Worlds, with those characters unable to cross into other dark worlds for prolonged periods of time. Characters that do not belong in a given Dark World will eventually turn into stone. This was established in Chapter 2 directly, with Lancer and Roulxs Kaard turning to stone as the chapter progressed. Come Chapter 3, because fans like Lancer and Roulxs Kaard, they're in another dark world for absolutely no reason and are perfectly fine being there for as long as they want. In Chapter 2, Lancer and Roulxs Kaard force themselves into your inventory, meaning their appearance in the chapter is tied to where the player is. Lancer literally comes out of your pocket only of your own accord because you are actually carrying him. You have to actually bring him out of the inventory because he cannot come out on his own. In Chapter 3, Lancer is completely separate to the player, not needing to be removed from a pocket and instead is fine to walk about and hang around in the world for as long as possible. It's clearly evident Toby Fox included these characters for fan appeal due to their popularity, but intentionally left the rules of petrification ambiguous to ensure that he can do whatever he wants with them at any given time. Establishing proper rules to petrification could cause the story to become messy, and if Toby Fox wants to have multiple “funny” Roulxs Kaard focused sections later, these rules would only be problematic. It’s abundantly clear that Deltarune doesn’t need to have any consistency when it comes to mechanics, worldbuilding or storytelling; to please and excite the Deltarune audience, you only need comfy familiar faces in their feel-good fandom romp.

There are simply too many weird retcons and sidestepped established rules that I truthfully cannot find Deltarune exciting to watch unfold, because it's evident Toby Fox doesn't have this all planned out, and that any and all foreshadowing is subject to retconning on Toby’s whim. Chapter 3 brings the revelation that the mysterious bunker south of town has actually had an electronic lock on it the entire time, that was simply covered by a panel flimsy enough to be inadvertently knocked off by banging on the door. It's extremely obvious this wasn't intended from the start because it is stupid, and was something that was added to the narrative much later - specifically, this addition was made to pace out the search for how to open the bunker. Considering Susie kicks the door extremely hard the previous chapter, and the only difference is she hits it with her fists in Chapter 3, I don't really see why the flimsy panel would only fall off specifically now besides "this plot development has to happen now and not in Chapter 2.” I think the implication that the Knight ran to the bunker and then input three four digit long codes within seconds is just too much of a stretch to believe. This really could've been solved by either having a real key for the bunker or just having it only open from the inside, which the design already seems to facilitate, considering it's a bunker.

The idea of "freedom" has yet to be truly established, but it's clear that in Chapter 1 Jevil does not operate the same way that Spamton operates in Chapter 2. It would be foolish to insist that the secret bosses follow a strict pattern of behavior, but considering the shared designation that the game is willing to group them by (a shared leitmotif, along with the holding of a crystal) it would make sense that they are at the very least a little similar. Jevil has a completely different view on the world than a character like Spamton does, and its clear his perspective and what makes him "mad" is significantly more complex - the idea of everyone else being in a prison, and him being the only character that is truly free. Spamton longs for a more powerful body to be free, but when he obtains it, he is still controlled by strings. Then there is Gerson, who is ‘designated’ as a secret boss, in that he holds a crystal and shares the leitmotif in his song, but has absolutely nothing else in common with any of the previous secret bosses. It acts more as a friendly fight, or a test of skill. Ultimately, the dilution of the secret bosses at this point can’t be recovered from. They no longer share anything in common, and anything and everything can share their designation. My initial interpretation of the idea of "freedom" was that it was a character that implicitly understood more about the world that causes them to act the way they do (possibly as a result of being taken from fountain to fountain.) But this freedom as a concept seems to have been abandoned; only the leitmotif has remained and is the predominant thing people think of when they hear "freedom" in the context of Deltarune, as if the implication of the leitmotif being named “Freedom” has been completely lost to time. It’s the freedom motif. Don’t ask what it means, because the answer is nothing anymore. And no one seems to mind that.

You might argue that both examples given do not really have enough in common to establish the pattern I interpreted, and as such, it is ‘not technically a retcon.’ While this could be a fair observation in a vacuum, this is an issue in Deltarune because everything is written this way. Everything is written explicitly as open-ended as possible so that if Toby Fox changes his mind, he can adjust it however his whims beckon for this chapter’s dev cycle. There's no interact text with the shelter that says anything in specific, nor is there anyone that talks about it in detail for the first two chapters presumably because Toby still hadn't made up his mind about the intricate details. There are also things like the King talking about working for the Knight and explicitly acting under the Knight's will, but come Chapter 4, the King reveals he has never actually met the Knight. You can very obviously assume this is a retcon, but you cannot actually point to it as a concrete contradiction because it was always intentionally left ambiguous, just like everything else in Deltarune. But the idea of a character named "King" never once meeting a character named "Knight" is just preposterous. There was clearly supposed to be an intentional link between the two conceptually before it was changed. The same is true of the stupid chapter cliffhangers. Put an ominous smile on the television, but don't actually commit to it in the case you want to change the design later. Make Kris brandish a knife and act overtly evil, but leave enough ambiguity that you can change it later if you don’t like what you write. This is the end result of the chapter system. Endless changes constantly occuring during development resulting in writing purposefully left open-ended and changed later so that it can be dealt with later when Toby has finally settled on what he wants. The last chance for the chapter system to to bring any real benefit to the storytelling of Deltarune was the dual release of Chapters 3 and 4; a chance to start opening Deltarune's mystery boxes Toby has had no interest in opening so far, and a chance to develop chapters with more interconnectivity, shared mechanics and shared threads. It accomplishes none of these things, and might as well have released years apart, just like the rest. This chapter system has failed Deltarune.



Toby Fox has consistently been at his best when he is writing and designing things the player should not be capable of doing. Undertale's "genocide" route is an excellent subversion on the idea of "grinding" in an RPG, forcing the player to monotonously run back and forth, fighting enemies over and over until there are none left. The subversion comes from the game acknowledging this narratively - changing events in the story to accommodate your character being used as a killing machine. The fault with the genocide route in Undertale is its simple, cartoonishly evil tone. The on-the-nose twist of LV standing for "level of violence" and EXP standing for "execution points" wouldn’t be out of place in something like Sonic.EXE. There is nothing inherently wrong with the route being comically evil, but it leaves something to be desired. I certainly wanted more depth from it. Deltarune gave me what I wanted.


Deltarune's fan-named "Snowgrave Route" starts in Chapter 2, and centers around Chapter 2’s new party member, "Noelle." Noelle, your distant childhood friend, is not entirely clued into what is going on in the chapter, because she entered this Dark World inadvertently. The core principle of this “Snowgrave Route” is to literally break the rules of the game. Noelle is capable of more than simply pacifying and sparing enemies - Noelle can kill them. They become frozen, a state that breaks many established conventions of enemy battles (in a good way!) Enemies when spared or defeated in conventional gameplay are simply dashed away, resulting in them leaving the overworld. The enemies killed by Noelle in the Snowgrave route stay on the overworld outside of battle, and remain there screen to screen. Narratively, this is presented as Kris forcing Noelle to use offensive magic and to strengthen herself. As the chapter continues, she begins to doubt her own perception of reality, because Kris has much more forceful dialogue with Noelle. There is a section in Chapter 2 where you can interact with a ferris wheel and tell Noelle "I will ride it with you.” She responds by talking about their past with Kris and ends with "no thanks!" and then you are prompted to say "Noelle will ride with me.” This consistent theme of lack of choice for Noelle looms over the entire Snowgrave route. An NPC exists in Chapter 2 that comments on the two of you being together, and offers you "Dating Shoes" for purchase in the regular route for Chapter 2. She denies and says that they are just friends, to which Kris is prompted to say "We're something else.” When this is selected, he ponders that since they are something else, that perhaps a "FreezeRing" would be a more applicable item. The ring always costs more than what you have by one, and you must repeatedly choose "get it,” commanding Noelle to kill the seller. After Noelle is nearly cornered into a laser and killed, she says that what she was thinking was wrong - that Kris was not trying to hurt her, but instead trying to make her stronger. It ends with you eventually commanding Noelle to use the titular spell called "Snowgrave" against Berdly. It presumably kills him, and a shell-shocked Noelle decides she no longer wants to take part and simply wants to go home. After the dark world section, you return to the light world and can interact with her. She is very clearly traumatized.


The overexplanation of events thus far may have grown tiring to read at this point - I hate a ‘summary review’ as much as the next guy - but I have listed them for good reason. These events all reinforce an overarching theme of unhealthy romance and robbing of independence and personal identity, which is a refreshingly gritty tone from Toby. Her doubt in herself is overwritten by "becoming stronger", but is it actually true that she is becoming stronger? She becomes more malleable to the player, and more capable of self actualization, as her weaknesses of character become a thing of the past. She becomes capable of solving puzzles for the player, turning off hazards for the player, killing enemies for the player. The route is intentionally centered around an assertion of control over a meek girl and how it turns her into nothing more than a tool to service your power fantasy. She becomes incapable of determining for herself if what she is doing is right or wrong because it is justified as "becoming stronger," a judgement that is deferred to the player. The "strength" is forced onto her by the player, and that decision factors none of her own free will. She begins to solve puzzles and grow stronger to please Kris, because it is what Kris wants and what Kris asks for. She rationalizes this as a good thing, as long as she simply continues to obey what is said. Regardless of what Kris does to Noelle, whether it be putting her in danger, forcing her to confront lifelong fears or risk abandonment, as long as she obeys what she is told it will all be fine. It does not take a genius to see the immediate parallel in this with an abusive relationship. The focus of Chapter 2's Snowgrave route is to enforce your will onto this submissive girl, breaking her sense of self and imposing your own ideals onto her. Eventually reaching a point in which she operates not for herself, but instead to please you.


Undeniably, the most narratively divisive moment in Deltarune takes place as a part of this route during Chapter 4, where Noelle asks to speak with Kris alone in her room. She talks to Kris about a sequence the player does not get to see because Kris had removed the player before it occurred. The player takes over Kris' body and begins to talk to Noelle before pulling out the Thorn Ring. You have to manually press "Equip" and "Proceed" repeatedly as Kris inches slightly closer to Noelle while she backs away. It eventually reaches the edge of the loveseat, with her back against the edge, and she cannot move. She cannot look away. She cannot run away. She tries to reason with Kris, and then you equip the Thorn Ring on her. There is then a visual of a flower losing its petals.

This was divisive because it was interpreted to be rape. I am now going to say something that should not be controversial. There is nothing wrong with interpreting this scene as rape, there would be nothing wrong with this interpretation being the intended one, and it was almost certainly initially designed to be interpreted as such.

Chapter 2's "Snowgrave route" constantly has you deprive this girl of her choice. You bend her will to yours. You make her your slave. She begins to act only to please you. There is obviously an abusive relationship being developed here, and this is undeniably intertwined with the romantic subtexts of Chapter 2. It's really only a logical conclusion. You are alone, in her room, as you continually inch closer and closer to her as she begs you not to do what you are about to do. There is dialogue during this sequence of her pleading "Didn't you... want to... protect me...?". She is begging for you to protect her instead of doing what you are about to do.

Pretending that Toby Fox has never heard the term "deflowering" is asinine. Pretending that nobody on the development team saw the asset and thought it could be interpreted in such a way is even more asinine. Pretending Toby Fox accidentally wrote a route to the game where you make a girl subservient to you with the climax being alone in her room giving her something she does not want is utterly fucking preposterous. You are literally equipping a fucking ring onto her that is denoted as a "commemorative ring.” That ring, mind you, which is not an actual ring in the real world, and is instead a thorn that has to be inserted into her. Even ignoring all of this, I find it extremely hard to believe nobody thought twice about the fact that this, a route all about control, glanced over the sexual assault angle of control. Rape is fundamentally linked to the idea of power and control. Think about the act of rape for a singular second and how it applies control over someone. Think about any time you have ever seen rape in any form of art and how it directly ties itself to control thematically. Then tell me that the scene where she is literally deflowered had nothing to do with rape. Tell me that the graphic of a flower losing its petals as you force yourself onto her and cross a line you can never uncross was accidental imagery. Tell me that the route in which complete and utter control is the most prevalent theme never once intended to have an allusion to sexual assault of any kind. The route in which you are constantly depriving her of choice didn’t think that the most common visual representation of loss of innocence would be interpreted as rape as you continually inch closer to this vulnerable girl you control as she begs you to stop. The line of thought that Toby Fox just waltzed into this big misunderstanding is a result of pretending Toby Fox is an "uwu small bean" that could never write anything uncomfy or enjoy any storytelling that might not ascribe to your sensitivities.


Toby Fox nearly immediately patched this out of the game, because it was too interesting. It was too complex, too challenging, too unabashed for Deltarune's audience of high-school freshman and younger who avert their eyes to anything morally intense. Anything that features uncomfy content or themes is a no-go in the fictional stories I like, because it must mean the author approves of that. Why else would they write it?

I cannot stress enough how anti-art patching it out is. The point of art is interpretation. Art is a conversation that occurs between the creator and the viewer. If a viewer wants to interpret something like that and it isn't intentional (lol), who gives a shit? It's interesting that that connection can be made. In a real video game for people who have progressed past the mental age of 9, this would be a completely acceptable, albeit challenging theme to approach. But since Toby Fox is actually staunchly anti-art, it was quickly patched out. The way it was patched out was also deeply embarrassing, with it quickly being replaced with a singular red pixel before later having a different animation made.

This is what it was changed to during Toby's self inflicted panic of needing to make a new animation. This is real.

Such obviously panicked damage control, and for no reason. Because he made something interesting. Because he made something with grit. Something uncomfortable. But art isn't supposed to make anyone uncomfortable, right?

Chapter 5 is set to release this year, and has already vaguely hinted at aspects that will be present. Specifically, a larger focus on Asgore, explicitly hinting that he will be the next "villain". Unfortunately, I have no faith in Toby Fox being able to do Asgore properly again considering every single "sympathetic" character done after Asgore has been infinitely worse. Asgore is, by and large, Toby Fox's best work of writing. Every piece of critique I have had so far about Toby's writing does not apply to Asgore. His tragic character stands almost disparate to every other character in Undertale and Deltarune, mostly because of the sincerity applied to him. The banishment of his people and the loss of his child underlines Undertale's narrative in a way that makes him immediately compelling to basically everyone that played it. I know many people who don't like Undertale or any of Toby Fox's work that love Asgore because he's a fantastic character. The character works in spite of Undertale's faults because there is actual depth to be read there. In the "True Pacifist" ending, Toriel, Asgore's ex-wife, brings up the fact that Asgore could've taken a single soul and passed through the barrier, then killed six humans and brought their souls back in order to free anyone. But Asgore did not do this because having to take a life would stand at odds with everything he believes in, and instead chose to live in a perpetual state of torment of his own doing. He would rather live underground and condemn his people, believing there would not be another human that would come through, than have to actually kill another human. It's sad in a completely believable way that doesn't feel forced. The first time you actually meet him after he’s built up the entire game, he’s watering flowers, and telling you that he doesn't want to do this, nor is he ready to. Details like this, in addition to him telling you how he's had to put on the front of wanting to wage war with humans, are just fantastic. It effortlessly sells the character in a way that all of Undertale failed to do for the majority of its cast.


Deltarune has already spent seven years running away from the fact Asgore used to be a character. Every single chapter and all post-launch supplementary material has cracked the long-tired running joke of him being a washed-up loser, usually multiple times over. It's not particularly funny because this characterization is already kind of present in Undertale and it's not very good there. The "True Pacifist" ending has him used as the expense of a joke amounting to, "he is divorced because he is a loser, lol.” Continually insisting this tragic character is a loser and unworthy of any sympathy is just so annoying and reeks of the same irony that poisons the rest of Undertale and Deltarune - almost committing to an earnest idea before immediately panicking and tearing it down. The immediate differentiation of the "True Pacifist" ending being Toriel attacking Asgore and then calling him a "miserable creature" and that he is "terrible” - I don't want to sound offended on the behalf of a fictional character, but it gets to be a bit eye-rolling to see a character that is as well developed and well built-up entirely thrown to the side as yet another comic relief / punching bag character. Having him be washed up could have been an interesting characterization in its own right, but I wonder if any Deltarune player who hasn't played Undertale even cares about this character or, for that matter, CAN care about this character. In the amount of time it takes to get to Asgore entering the narrative in Deltarune, you could beat Undertale six times over. He hasn't done anything at all, and it's only implied that he will have some involvement in the plot in some vague way. Maybe it'd be interesting to actually see this take place in the game considering that RPG's typically have stories. Alas. If the plan is to just shove as much character building in as possible in a single chapter, it's going to fail. Miserably. I suppose the scarcely dropped plot information in Deltarune has already been discussed, but it really does feel like Deltarune's end goal is to torpedo towards shoving character arcs and development into singular chapters and abandon them or denigrate them when their usefulness is outlived. The contrast between Asgore in Undertale and Asgore in Deltarune shows Toby Fox has somehow regressed in terms of being able to tell a story.


Ironically, The King and Asgore suffer from the exact same lack of commitment issue. The King almost acts as a reverse Asgore: a king with tremendous power over his people, who leads them to hostility with their counterparts - the Lightners. Where Asgore puts up the front of wanting to destroy humanity because it brought motivation to his people, the King wants to destroy Lightners because he believes they are truly oppressed. He believes they have lived in the shadow of them for far too long, under their will too long, and wishes to eradicate them. Both of these characters are extremely compelling for completely different reasons. Asgore is compelling because of the tragically understandable circumstances he finds himself in, where the King is compelling because he is simply so overwhelmingly convicted to a school of thought that is diametrically opposed to the protagonists’ entirely. Sadly, both of these characters have had their characterizations nuked from orbit, resulting in them being nothing more than unfunny walking punchlines. Asgore is no longer allowed to be an interesting character and is delegated to comedic relief divorce jokes, and the King is no longer allowed to be an actual antagonist because the idea of an antagonist in a Toby Fox game that is not redeemable is a step way too far.


Deltarune has attempted to comment on the nature between player and character, and while I think it’s a good idea, I don’t believe it goes anywhere near far enough. Things like the differentiation between the player and the character is interesting, but it’s simply not pushed far enough. The dialogue box representing Kris' thoughts is interesting, but the noticeable lack of commentary on perhaps the biggest discussion that comes with this territory is glaring and bizarre: the projection of self that occurs between the player and the character that they play as. When someone plays as a character (specifically a blank slate “self-insert” character) in an RPG, there is a level of projection onto the player character that occurs. This can be as simple as referring to the player character as "you" or "me" in discussions about a video game, thereby erasing the context of which the player character exists, or as complex as a player projecting thoughts and opinions onto a character because they hold none until the player decides them. These things can occur subconsciously or intentionally, and Deltarune could have had something extremely interesting to comment on in relation to this, but it doesn't go anywhere near this topic.

This blurred line of the separation between the player and the character results in some of Deltarune’s sloppiest writing yet. Kris as a character acts of their own accord, independent of the player, even when the "soul" is in the body, creating situations in which the realm of player control over Kris is inconsistent or unreliable. Deltarune wants to have moments where Kris is capable of deciding what to do without the player's choice. What this results in is Deltarune having to constantly write characters observing out loud Kris' actions in the moment, because Deltarune doesn't want to actually animate anything. Despite its obviously "Suikoden" inspired character animation design philosophy, the game never wants to illustrate anything occurring in the overworld visually, unless it's a gag. This leads to characters constantly awkwardly narrating subtle body language, speaking effectively directly to the player about visual storytelling that is only told, not shown. It's jarring, and reads as borderline childish, when you have situations like Susie needing to describe something that happened to Kris when she's standing right in front of them. Kris violently bites their own hand, which is not shown to the player as the screen goes black, and the dialogue immediately after is, "Kris! ...what happened? You started saying something... then you, like, bit the hell out of your hand.” Nobody talks like this. This is something that just happened that Susie just watched occur, so why is she re-explaining the sequence to Kris, who is not implied to have lost consciousness or lost the ability to parse information? If you really refuse to just show this obvious visual storytelling with visuals, then it would be fine to have natural dialogue that leads the player to understand without being extensively told what happened. This isn't cherrypicking either, this is something that is constantly happening throughout all of Deltarune. The most egregious example is in the Snowgrave exclusive scene in Chapter 4, which has Noelle painstakingly describe a play-by-play of something that occurred off screen. Because to simply imply and not fully elaborate on what exactly happened would leave room for interpretation, and Toby clearly hates the idea of someone interpreting his work incorrectly, despite not wanting to show it either. So he’d rather just task someone with telling you. This is the core of the issue.

The true issue is not that there is a level of player and character separation that Toby does not want to commit to showcasing on screen, it's that Deltarune is written such that it needs to give heavy-handed exposition constantly because it does not trust its player to come to any conclusion for themselves. Characters suffering from mild, childish depictions of trauma need to explicitly spell out every aspect of it - maundering about their past, how it made them feel, and how it affected the others around them - instead of letting the player identify this through analyzing subtext. Its immature heavy-handed handling of concepts like abandonment and insecurity are handled with kiddy gloves, more often than not turning themes like this into a vehicle for shitty jokes. Tenna, the unused abandoned television, gets to have a breakdown on screen that functions as no more than a scene for the player to guffaw at. Because Deltarune needs to not only directly explain to the player as bluntly as it can that the overlooked television set covered in dust is, in fact, abandoned and neglected, but also needs to drag these moments down to nothing for laughs at every opportunity that it can. The player is not allowed to come to the conclusion Tenna suffers; it has to beat it over your head so that it can be used as a punchline.

An actual scene of interest between two characters that know eachother and have not interacted in quite some time is nothing more than a punchline, without any single interesting thing said. Because Deltarune is so desperate for laughs while simultaneously putting things off for future Toby Fox to deal with.

Berdly needs to explain his own personality and why he behaves the way he does, because it just isn't enough to tell the player exactly what happened from his perspective; this would leave room for misinterpretation, or even falsehood. No, Berdley’s tragedy needs to serve as a point of sympathy for this character, and Toby will leave no room for errors, so, like every other character, his characterization is handed to you.. All of this, for a sympathetic moment that falls completely on its face, because, as usual, Toby cannot stop himself from turning this into another shitty joke. A “joke” sympathetic moment that isn’t allowed to matter; he continues to act the exact same after this, because otherwise, he'd stop functioning as a joke dispenser. Berdly is truly the worst offender in this regard - a character that could be fine without his mental-inferiority complex explained to you, with it instead being something you need to piece together from his dialogue, his actions and the things people around him say. Instead, it has to literally tell you every single thing about this character, in the case a player is potentially too daft to pick up on context clues. Deltarune is terrified of tackling any of the serious topics it often threatens to discuss because it would require handling them with some sort of tact. Toby cannot write anything with any nuance because Deltarune designed to sate the palate of mentally stunted children. This pathetic bluntness with no room for complexities or interpretation outside of what is told to you is probably why Toby Fox immediately patched out the singular interesting mature thing he has ever written. Because it was challenging, uncomfortable and most importantly - made the player think. Unless the player is thinking about a potential epic lore theory, Deltarune truly fears asking the player to think.


The alternate route Deltarune has is by far my favorite aspect of the game. I've already discussed the "Snowgrave route", but Chapter 3 has something akin to it referred to as the "sword route.” While this is entirely localized within Chapter 3 with no overarching impact on the rest of the game, I think the quality of it is worth discussing. This sequence has you play the "real board game" full of inconsistent logic that has you walking through walls and killing objects that shouldn't be killable. The angle of a "forbidden game" complete with broken logic is genuinely extremely compelling. The further along the "real game" progresses, the more twisted and nonsensical the board game becomes. It creates that feeling that Toby is all but too good at - that feeling of seeing something that you shouldn't be seeing, with its droning echoing music, unique elements that don't exist in the main board game, and its eerie premonitions of what is to come. The Snowgrave route as already discussed is quite good, but its issue is its overarching lack of cohesion with the narrative. Killing Berdly in the Snowgrave route results in him being placed into a coma, because literally placing him on ice is necessary in the case he needs to reappear in the narrative, since Toby is writing as he goes. Things like this are present throughout all of the Snowgrave route. It's full of non-changes, because of the structure of the game. Chapter 3 is entirely the same if you did the Snowgrave route, even though Chapter 2 had large alterations to the story and structure of the game after starting it. Chapter 4 is more of the same outside of its singular exclusive scene of note. In a Deltarune that released all at once, it seems obvious to me that it would reach a conclusion before the "normal" route ends. But, because Deltarune is a game that is drip-feeding its content, it cannot show elements that it plans to introduce later if they are not entirely exclusive to the route. A Snowgrave route that blitzes to the end of Deltarune with a vastly different sequence of events means that the storytelling of the normal route would fail because it would require, in parts, revealing content not yet implemented. Again, this is an issue that arises because Toby is both developing and writing the game as he goes. This is yet another strike against the chapter system. If it didn't exist, we wouldn't be running into the issue that chapters have nearly zero interconnectivity or cohesion between them. Compare to the "Genocide" route in Undertale, which had significantly altered content throughout all of it. What Deltarune is left with is meandering pacing plaguing a route with zero differences in content for large portions of the game for, potentially, a different ending. "Genocide" in Undertale is a snappy well paced playthrough that is constantly delivering interesting altercations, and it adds to replay value. Deltarune refusing to actually change the structure of the game or any of the events will kill its replay value. To upkeep a save for both routes, it requires forty hours of gameplay, with at least 80% of it being identical between saves.


BONUS CHAPTER: FANDOM


This next part is a little more cynical towards Deltarune's design as a drip-fed property, and I'm going to discard some of the objectivity I have graciously lent thus far. I whole-heartedly believe that the Chapter system is designed to parasitically feed off of fandom, financially and socially, and this benefit took priority over simply developing a completed videogame, which Toby was completely capable of doing. Deltarune's constantly shifting game design, in addition to its narrative that is never capable of finding proper footing, makes me believe that Deltarune is an infinitely malleable experience that is still changing in response to fan reception. As previously discussed, Deltarune's story never truly progressing is almost certainly a hook to endlessly bait fandom. Deltarune almost functions as a perfect intravenous drip of never-ending content; endlessly filling, and tailored to anyone's bare minimum nutritional needs. It’s little more than content from a tube.

Endless supplemental shipping bait is present in Deltarune, because Toby Fox making a character actually enter a relationship after 8 years of development would end the "will they, won't they" that occurs every single chapter with Susie and Noelle. Since this will (presumably) only wrap up near the end of the narrative, fans are free to endlessly speculate for - again, 8 GOING ON 9 YEARS - about their ships, because dangling the conclusion for this long allows for significantly more discussion (free marketing, more money). Of course, shipping wars aren't complete without the opposite ship present, and you’d better believe there’s equally endless baiting between Kris and Susie, which reached a brief apex in Chapter 3 where Kris grabs Susie's hair in order to pull her in closer. Susie shyly says "Alright, I... I get it. Well, if... if you really want to" in response. Toby Fox has been on the Internet for over 20 years - on the Homestuck team, no less. He is not an idiot nor is he oblivious to what he writes. Toby Fox was undoubtedly aware of properties like that shitty Voltron show which entirely subsisted off of fandom shipping. He understands how important the aspect of shipping is to perpetuating a fandom. 

The previous discussion of characters vs caricatures has to be brought up again here. I believe Toby Fox intentionally writes characters loosely enough for a fandom to be able to imprint whatever they want onto them. More importantly, I believe they're written so that people can easily emulate their wacky antics online. Queen comes to mind as an example of this. A quirky character with simple, relatable writing that you can easily mimic, along with their identifiable typing quirk. This is the same with Spamton, a character whose typing quirks also substitute personality. Despite these simple and made-to-be-emulable characters, you, somehow, have people still misinterpreting them. This is a two way street. Characters are made simpler because people fail to understand their complexities despite their boisterous “personalities,” while people misinterpret these same characters due to the amount of flexibility they intentionally allow. It would be significantly harder to mimic Queen if she had any character whatsoever outside of Tumblr aloofness and her Homestuck typing quirk. Luckily, the typing quirks exist, so you can still effortlessly signal what character is being referenced, in case you somehow don’t know how to write a dril tweet. I also attribute this issue to the fact that they have no bite. Characters are mostly harmless without any actual negative traits, and if they have negative traits, they can be quickly explained away and minimized, as the game is so quick to do. Fandom artists can unironically view Spamton as being anti-NFT's, despite his entire character revolving around shady business practices and internet scams, because it's easy to forget he is supposed to be shady when almost all of his dialogue exists for punchlines. This and their near infinite flexibility means that any of these characters can be anything you want! You don't have to ever be told a character "wouldn't do that" because the things that define what a character “wouldn’t do” are so completely banal. To rectify that would require writing a character, something Toby Fox is not very good at.

Deltarune was originally released as a standalone executable distributed through someone operating Toby Fox's Twitter account with dozens of tweets. The executable Deltarune was distributed as was a "survey program", with a specific prompt to have to opt in and accept anything that could occur from now on. The angle of having to accept the terms and Deltarune operating as an executable that is a bridge between our world and Deltarune's world is entirely lost now that time has passed. Chapter 1 has been updated to be consistent with the user interface present in subsequent chapters, meaning the program aesthetic has been lost. In addition, the tweets about Deltarune have now been buried over the years, and this important framing is barely there. These details matter, and the ability to just "miss out" on things like this unless you are there at that very specific period of time hurts, because Deltarune is entirely focused on providing a contemporary community-lead experience.


Deltarune has had multiple external alternate reality games in which exclusive information was doled out to people who engaged with it during the limited period of time in which it could be interacted with. As a result, players not endlessly glued to the idea of Deltarune or a Deltarune fandom have missed pertinent information that could or would inform them of the story and characters better. Characters that presumably will be introduced later have already been introduced in this limited-information fashion to keep players engaged during the long periods of time between chapters. For the average player, "Dess,” Noelle's lost sister, is a character that means next to nothing. The total times "Dess" has been mentioned in the script by name is ten times, most of which are interact text. A character haunting the narrative with information being slowly doled out over the course of the game is not an issue. The issue is that this character has had a slew of extraneous material related to them in the alternate reality game(s). What this leads to is a disconnect in information player to player. If Dess becomes a pertinent character in the narrative, the average player will understand this to be a twist - although the idea of a twist isn't necessarily a twist if the character is barely pre-established or discussed - and the more knowledgeable player will not view this as a twist. This character has been explained too much to them, and had too much information distributed out to them, and as such, the shock of this character returning doesn't exist. There isn’t really a problem with having ‘some’ secret foreshadowing for this character, but all the information thus far has revealed far too much of Toby’s hand. A player that has engaged with the amount of external material related to Dess knows that it is now a formality; she’s coming.

This is the same with the enigmatic W.D. Gaster, a character that was established in Undertale as a simple understated side mystery. Something that was a part of its lore with no clear explanations besides a timeline of events. He becomes the head scientist, builds the CORE, falls into his creation, and is then erased from time. That's it. It's a simple enough intriguing backstory and gives some room for theorycrafting, and it didn't really need to be more than that. Obviously, answering this character's backstory would be interesting, but it isn't needed to understand or appreciate Undertale. Deltarune has now intertwined W.D. Gaster into the narrative in such a way that it may be impossible for new players (or a player that does not look up an explanation) to understand. As it is, Deltarune has backed itself into a corner. It either shows W.D. Gaster and leaves many players confused as to what this character is supposed to mean, outside of being our vague narrator who may or may not be responsible for the events taking place, or it doesn't show him, and pisses off the lorehead theorycrafting fandom players who have been lead to very reasonably expect him. If the first was picked, there would have to be a gargantuan lore-dump in order to bring every player up to speed to not leave out players who haven't been obsessively researching both games' lore. This lore-dump would be a triviality to a player glued to the idea of Toby’s work, but undoubtedly necessary for the average player. But even then, who's to say this doesn't just completely fall flat for people? The payoff would work for someone who has been anticipating this, but for anyone else - the average, normal, NON-FANDOM video game player - it would be completely out of left field. There is essentially next to no winning here. This issue is all downwind of Toby Fox writing for fandom because the average player does not know or have any reason to care about W.D. Gaster. But the fandom does, because every fandom is inclined to squeeze as much content out of their respective properties as possible. Years down the line, when Deltarune is complete, the mystery that surrounds this character will be gone. It will be a conclusion that does not matter to anyone who comes in later, as the mystique behind this character could only occur during the time in which there were no answers. As a result, the amount of payoff this character has to provide in order to make the buildup for significantly more invested fans worth the amount of time spent is nearly insurmountable, and the work needed to execute him for uninitiated non-fandom players hasn’t been put in at all. I don’t believe it can ever work out.

W.D. Gaster is encounterable in Undertale, and various aspects of his story can be found in a legitimate playthrough, but the majority of information around the release of Undertale came from data-miners. Toby Fox has had a tendency of hiding things in the code that he wants people to find, which worked to great effect in Undertale as it was a fully complete game. People data-mining for secrets in video game files is not a new thing. It works for Undertale because fans wanting to understand what went into the making of the game were rewarded with extra information, and that information was intriguing. It didn’t stand as cut content, but instead a purposeful wink to the inevitable devoted people who would be interested enough to comb through it. This is the same for Deltarune, but it doesn't really come to any benefit, since it's incomplete. Ironically, the amount of frivolous material shoved into Deltarune's code is far more offensive than anything left over in Undertale, because it is obviously intended to stoke the flames of online fandom discussion. Dozens of sprites have names and classifications obviously intended for external analysis only, as the actual grouping would not be helpful when compiling assets in Game Maker. This is the same with various incoherent variables that have no real rhyme or reason to their name, or sound effects intended to play during odd sections that are simply muted in their call line. This and the constant updating of text in the code that alludes to a character being “lost” literally in the code. None of this is especially to Deltarune’s benefit, either, because what is a hook to a future chapter and what is throwaway lorebaiting, like the Undertale W.D. Gaster files, is indistinguishable until the entire game is completed. This isn’t really very compelling if you aren’t a lore-addicted fandom theorycrafter. It just muddies the waters with what are potentially ‘meaningless’ red herrings in the files.

These aspects have facilitated ceaseless theorycrafting around every single aspect of Deltarune. Deltarune presents itself as a narrative that is capable of being "solved.” Various aspects, themes and characters are all present and are currently unexplained, with effectively no elaboration or development occurring over the course of at least eight years. Naturally, fans have taken it upon themselves to attempt to "solve" the story before it ends. This leads to phenomenons like "img_friend,” an in-game sprite that has appeared in the actual game four times, three of which are indescript, optional appearances. But, because the file naming style relates to other similarly named sequences, alongside the extensive alternate reality game, it lends itself to having more importance than what has been presented. Now, this entirely unremarkable "character" has been radically sensationalized, and had countless theories and explanations put forward that cannot even reliably be theorized in favor of or against because there is so little to go off of. This is the case for the "forgotten man" as well, a character contained to hidden rooms only accessible by repeatedly walking through other rooms. This character has appeared four times, each per chapter, and has still received zero elaboration or development over these eight years; only speaking in vague terms intended to be theorized upon without actually giving any hints as to what the purpose of this is or the intention behind it. This reaches its peak in Chapter 3, where entering the room is entirely nonsensical, much like the dialogue within. If the intention is to be a meaningless mechanic that gives out information as a red herring, then it could make sense. But I don't believe this to be the case, considering that the game tracks you collecting the items that are given out in these rooms. There are also specific rules to being able to get to these rooms - curiously enough, you cannot be flagged as participating in the Snowgrave route.

Deltarune has reached a state of near mass hysteria within its fandom, with people reading into nearly every single line of dialogue or word spoken in order to find a pattern. I would describe this behavior as "lunacy,” but it's probably intended, in order to keep as much content and ‘buzz’ churning as possible. Of course, in a mystery story, there is value in trying to piece everything together, but sometimes coincidences are simply coincidences. Repeating visual language does not inherently speak to overarching narrative presence, and sometimes simply means that a designer just likes something. I truly do not want this to come off as "the curtains were blue,” but there is an abundance of popular fan pattern-recognized ‘patterns’ that sensationalize the wholly insignificant. Highlighting text for the player does not necessitate a forty minute long theory video about the idea of colored text, something the vast majority of RPG's have done for decades to denote importance. As previously discussed, I don't think Toby Fox has Deltarune this extensively planned out, nor do I think he is paying this much attention to detail to necessitate the insane leaps and bounds people will make to come to a conclusion capable of answering everything.

I've seen enough episodic mystery stories to know how they most frequently fail. They grow too large. Authors expand upon concepts and mysteries without a conclusion for each detail in mind, because this ultimately is vastly easier and financially viable than planning everything out before getting started. It allows for exciting moments to be developed as inspiration strikes, and it’s clear Deltarune is no different. It's a little subjective whether or not a mystery story is fine without answering everything, but I personally take great displeasure in it. I greatly prefer mystery stories that resolve themselves without leaving giant unexplainable plot points. Toby Fox has already commented on this - that it is going to happen. If you believe Gerson is Toby's insert to talk to the audience - which it undoubtedly is - then these sentences should be taken at face value. 
"The story, it became so grand, so overwhelming, some say it swallowed up the author himself. The ones who could write the next, the youth, the pen was lying there for them to pick up. To make the next page."
Toby Fox is directly commenting on how large Deltarune's story has grown, and how the vastness of it has consumed him. That the conclusion for the story should be written by someone other than him. The second quote is harder to nail down what exactly it means, but my interpretation is that Deltarune’s ending will lend itself to fan interpretation for its unexplained story beats. This obviously isn't implying he will not end the story (though it could happen, and could be extremely funny if it did) but is more implying that whatever happens at the end will be up to the fans to interpret. This could date the game extremely poorly, but I wouldn't need to write this section if I believed Toby Fox could and would wrap everything up satisfyingly.

Deltarune's chapter system and its prolonged delay between content drops have led to all of this behavior. Everything previously discussed exists to supplement the time between release dates. Because of the isolated time between chapters, ‘fandom’ is given time to blister and fester as it reaches a brief respite, in terms of content. As previously mentioned, because of this, Deltarune is equally, if not even more intended to be met as an ‘experience’ than it is as a video game. You experience the chapter when it comes out. You are intended to experience all that comes from a chapters release (fan-art, covers, remixes, the discussion online, the secret hunting, the theorycrafting, the character roleplaying, the fanfiction that spawns) rather than experiencing a game, because these elements of community engagement are what Deltarune obviously falls over itself attempting to facilitate. The game is secondary. It's ancillary to the actual event that a new chapter brings. This is why the gameplay is so rudimentary, the characters so flat, and the game so devoid of challenge. It's to allow everyone to enjoy it, so they can be filtered into the fandom. This line of thinking can be easily misapplied to quickly turn every video game release into an "experience,” but the defining difference is in how Deltarune presents itself and facilitates this attitude. Deltarune is fine not evolving its mechanics or gameplay as it progresses. It’s fine with letting players entirely forgo sections with any challenge or skill-checking at all, in case you somehow fail one of them multiple consecutive times. It’s fine putting you through fake, simulated gameplay segments with, secretly, no actual failure state. It’s fine letting players skip chapters. It’s fine with people jumping in anywhere in the story, no matter how far apart. Because it doesn’t care to pretend to be a video game with rules. This utterly demented presentation Deltarune adopts and the concessions it makes to accommodate people who wish to join the hype of a new release is best exemplified by applying it to literally any other game. Imagine an RPG where, regardless of your progression, you are capable of starting the game at the final act. At any time, with no restrictions, because the game will accommodate you by adjusting everything you need to play and giving you ample opportunities for tools that you could need. That is what Deltarune does, today. It is what Deltarune will do when it is complete! It's clearly not designed to be a video game that is all played at once, and it’s of no surprise that this was very obviously never even a consideration among the team. The alternate reality game plugs should already inform you that this is not concerned at all with being a game. It's intended to be an experience that you share alongside other like-minded people. In Toby Fox's case, he has followed in the footsteps of Andrew Hussie and created a community-lead experience. "Homestuck" was an experience. It was not fueled by the discussion between author and reader, but the discussion between readers. It was the constant polling of reader expectations and deliberate subversions of them. Deltarune has a chapter system to do what Homestuck did. The release schedule of the chapters allows Toby Fox to tweak his vision to suit the expectations of the masses more comfortably. Toby is unfortunately even more susceptible to this influence than he should have been, and he’s likely already applied too many changes to what Deltarune could’ve been without that influence. Toby Fox's new community-lead “people-pleaser” vision for Deltarune is simply to endlessly cave to everyone. It masquerades as a refinement of or reflection on core ideas and concepts of the genre, while it runs away from what it really is, or rather, what it really could have and should have been. Games with significantly less focus on the core ideas of RPGs as a genre do more within the confines of a video game mechanically and narratively than Deltarune has set out to do. The sickening, disgusting “meme” idea held by a disturbing number of people in gaming discussion and gaming journalism spaces that RPGs “need to evolve" is assuredly a thought also held by Toby Fox, who has done everything he can to evolve Deltarune into an RPG in name only. Like many other games repulsed by the genre they pretend to pay homage to, Deltarune seeks to “fix” the genre by devolving the foundational staples and traditions RPGs have built on over the course of forty years into tepid stillwater, by eroding every ridge Toby can find. The end result is a game that seeks to “parody” RPGs without the reflection, respect, or restraint required to do so; a game seemingly desperate to run away from being an RPG - or yet, being a video game at all - in order to appease anyone and everyone. Like ‘Doki Doki Literature Club,’ it can’t take good natured ribs at the genre, because it doesn’t participate in or celebrate the genre; the jokes aren’t made to be appreciated by people who care about the genre - these jokes are at the expense of the genre, for the sole enjoyment of people who are deeply unfamiliar with the genre, and view it with mockery, and dare I say, contempt. Any discussion of video games being art that point at Deltarune as an example should be laughed out of the room. There is no real substance to art that is unwilling to be an expression of self. Deltarune is an expression of everyone else. Because it is not a video game, and it doesn't want to be a video game.


If any of what has been said makes you personally angry on Toby's account, you should step back and ask yourself why. Toby Fox has amassed a cult of personality that has been unlike anything ever seen in the gaming sphere. There are no other creators that get as much leeway as Toby does. It has reached a point in which people refer to Toby by nicknames and even pet names. He himself is a major part of the fandom meme zeitgeist. Mass delusion has poisoned the well on nearly all discussion of Toby Fox or his output, portraying him as some kind of mastermind or auteur never seen before in the industry (a great judgement to be made by people who, largely, do not actually play videogames!) It's hard to back this up without giving examples, which I don't want to give, to avoid inciting harassment. I think anyone that has participated in any discussion of Deltarune or Undertale between both a “fandom” fan and a person with a normal, healthy perspective on videogames, knows exactly what I mean. Deltarune is an incomplete video game. There is no arguing this. Yet, Deltarune wins awards against actual complete video games in yearly award showcases, which is commonly dismissed by its rabid “fandom” because "it's just that good" or that "the chapters serve as a full game.” Not only is the actual quality present in Deltarune truly not that impressive, but the chapters do not serve as full experiences. "Kirby Super Star" is a game that features eight games. Should "Gourmet Race" be considered its own video game eligible for awards? How about any of the games present in "UFO 50"? Should "Barbuta" be nominated alongside full games? Game Maker ran an award showcase that featured community-voted polls and had Deltarune up for 2025's "best game.” Take a guess what won. Deltarune shouldn't be eligible for awards if it fundamentally sits in the same box as many incomplete early-access titles. Because Deltarune is early-access. The only difference is the wording with which content is distributed. Chapters open up the eligibility for Deltarune to run for every single award showcase because if the released Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 apply as a “full game,” why would Chapter 5 not?

Any line of even mild criticism with intense hostility from Toby's cult of personality who are belligerently incapable of accepting any valid, pointed criticism. As it stands, Deltarune and Undertale are proposed as some of the greatest modern videogames - nay, greatest works of modern art ever created. Undertale is the most popular indie RPG ever created and is very likely one of the most popular video games ever created. Yet, nearly no large-scale or popularly cited criticism of Undertale - an ultimately ‘mild’ game with many observable shortcomings - really exists, because the overwhelmingly majority of responses to any sincerely framed criticism are disingenuous fandom Twitter dunks from fandom teenagers with little in the way of permeable brain activity. "Matthew Patrick" of "Game Theory" fame handed the late "Pope Francis" a copy of fucking Undertale. I don't think any artist on this planet really merits such an overwhelming cult-of-personality response from fans in response to negative thoughts on their work. I am purposefully leaving replies on for this writeup when I typically do not as I would like to invite conversation around it, but I cannot imagine any of it will be pleasant. If there is any conversation at all, that is - you’re very likely to see exactly the people I’ve just described skip right to the comment section on this review they didn’t read, put on their snarky fandom performance, and not engage with the rest of the discussion or the review they’re pretending to have read a single time.


Say what you will about "Five Nights at Freddy's" or even Scott Cawthon himself, but Scott has always made an extensive effort to always interact with his fans. Scott has spent nearly ten years directly replying to every letter he is sent and very frequently sends back merchandise, too. He is extremely vocal on how much he cares about his fans, how much they inspire his work, and how hard he strains himself to provide compelling work for them. What he has never done is reshaped a Five Nights at Freddy’s game to be what his fans wanted - historically, to their notorious ire. Scott has thrown in the towel over "Five Nights at Freddy's" multiple times and retracted it in response to fan-outcry or because he believed he was capable of giving his fans something better. "Five Nights at Freddy's 3" was a definitive ending, until it wasn't, because fans thought it wasn't scary enough. So he began work on another title that was scarier than anything he had made prior to explicitly subvert them. Even if you ignored all of this and simply wrote it off as him wanting to bleed the IP dry, Scott is also one of the only creators that has actually funded fan projects under the "Fazbear Fanverse Initiative,” allowing fans to express themselves within and interpret this universe and what it means to themselves, and be paid for sharing that with the fandom, even without his approval of content. One of the very few creators of our time that has directly acknowledged and love fanworks, and actually sought to try and legitimize or incorporate them, despite the many times it has bit him in the ass, already. Fanworks have, generally speaking, always been viewed as lesser "inferior" forms of art because they expand on an already existing intellectual property. To have an actual creator not only make a large effort to reshape this perception, but also fund them directly out of pocket speaks volumes about how much he cares. Toby Fox's policy has been to turn the other cheek, so when he says that it's more important what other people think of his work and world it's hard to ever take it seriously. Toby Fox can say that fan interpretation is the backbone of all his work, but if you refuse to actually put your money where your mouth is, it's evident what you actually think. It could not be more clear that he does not care. Undertale would never have a "Fanverse Initiative" because it would devalue Undertale and Deltarune as an IP. Something like that existing is the ultimate giveback to fans; irrefutable proof that they come above anything else, and that more importantly, their interpretation matters. Something he tries to imply, but would never seek to truthfully stand by. Toby will endlessly please fandom expectations, but he will never make a Deltarune that is open to interpretation or formally celebrate real, original fan works - only fan products that further his principal works. Despite Undertale and even Deltarune's massive tidal wave of fan content produced daily, with even extremely high quality collaborative projects like "Undertale Yellow," Toby Fox will never actually acknowledge or celebrate them to the degree that Scott does (if he ever does, at all.) It is impossible to know without direct confirmation whether or not this is a restriction enforced by Toby Fox's publisher "Fangamer,” but if it is it, probably speaks louder that he is fine abiding by their guidelines. The most Toby Fox acknowledges fanwork is to damage control negative press. "Undertale Yellow" had one singular acknowledgement: the legal clarification that they were in the wrong for attempting to publish their music online, after an online spat with Toby Fox’s music rightsholder. Music that is nearly entirely original, and effectively all of it transformative. You can say how much you love fans, but actions speak much louder than words. Toby’s actions are deafeningly silent.




My takeaway, from the over ten years that I have been exposed to Toby Fox’s work that he has vomited into this world, that has irreconcilably changed the digital and gaming landscape forever, is that it is possible for Toby Fox to write good material. He can be a good writer. It is possible he can be a good designer. But the only conclusion I can make is that he chooses not to do these things because he is terribly afraid of commitment to an idea that could prove challenging to literally anyone. He will never make a decision that isn’t the most palatable one. Because to commit could upset someone; to commit could cause someone to not immediately resonate with his work as much as they could have. He's capable of writing compelling, interesting characters and scenarios, and able to play with the expectations that come from being an interactive work. But Toby Fox has grown terrified of these hidden strengths, and rejects them wholeheartedly, because to play into those strengths would create something challenging, and not something comfortable. Of course, it also can’t go unsaid that committing to challenging the expectations of the medium would take an amount of effort and direction that Toby isn’t comfortable applying. Chapter 2's alternate route, what should be a completely different scenario, is instead delegated to simple changed scenes with miniscule dialogue alteration in proceeding chapters. This is a result of a lack of commitment. Committing to something grand like that would take effort and planning he doesn’t want to apply. Toby Fox wants to play fast and loose with Deltarune, and as such, Chapter 3 and 4 have nearly no alterations to the actual sequencing of events because he didn't plan ahead, and realized the vast amount of content needed to do a narrative split would take effort. He didn't want to commit, so it's walked back and minimized. Berdly has been in a coma for two chapters straight with next to no comment about it from anyone because Toby Fox inadvertently wrote himself into a corner by killing off a cast member without thinking through the ramifications this would have on the next FIVE chapters of game time.


Toby Fox is capable of writing characters complex and sympathetic like Asgore, but it stokes the old familiar fear in his soul; to tear down this almost challenging character concept, Asgore is immediately denigrated into a walking punch-line for the next ten years of Undertale content. Because that’s easier than committing to a powerful force in your setting, and so much safer than writing a sincerely complex character. Toby Fox is capable of writing interesting and threatening villains, but he doesn’t want to commit to doing that long-term, because it’s easier to create fan-favorite internet meme generators out of them. Toby Fox is capable of writing shocking, uncomfortable dialogue and situations, but he doesn't want to commit to it, because it could be far too challenging for his fragile underage playerbase. A route in which the player acts as evil as possible cannot have sexual assault or even an allusion to sexual assault because that could make people uncomfortable. Toby Fox is capable of designing interesting gameplay gimmicks, but he doesn't want to commit to them because it would require evolving upon them, which could result in gameplay that is even a little bit difficult for players, and would challenge Toby himself to think creatively in order to evolve upon them over time. Toby Fox can create difficult sequences of gameplay, but he doesn’t want to commit because that could gate players from experiencing Deltarune, so none of them have failure states. Toby Fox is capable of designing gameplay mechanics that interact with the actual RPG side of Deltarune, but he doesn't want to commit to the RPG side of Deltarune because it could introduce friction. So the RPG side of Deltarune remains nearly separated from the action side, without any further development on its systems or mechanics over years and years of development. Toby Fox can write a complete, cohesive narrative, but that would require commitment, so it would be more comfortable to leave things perpetually undecided, so he can shape each chapter around his whims, and the fans’. Toby Fox can allude to exciting new plot developments coming soon, but actually committing to delivering a satisfying conclusion is hard since it backs you into the corner of having to meet and deliver upon those expectations in a timely manner. So, it would be best to put off any meaningful developments for as long as possible. Deltarune's arch-enemy is commitment. Because committing is bold and challenging, and Toby Fox is not. At the end of the day, Toby Fox is as comfortable as he can to be to as many people as possible. No one who would immediately patch out an obviously intended uncomfortable visual could ever be described as “bold.” It is comfortable. Being bold requires committing to what you have no matter what people endlessly beg for. But Toby Fox is so deathly afraid of commitment because it means putting your vision on the table and telling people to take it or leave it. So Deltarune has spent eight years instead morphing itself into a sickly sweet grey paste, nutritionally suitable for all.


Toby Fox has created a simulacrum of a video game. It represents nothing. It provides no artistic merit or expression because the expression it offers is that of someone else. It is the mathematical average of the imposed desires of every single player. When I played Deltarune, I wanted Toby Fox’s vision. I wanted the vision Toby Fox had allegedly spent over a decade attempting to bring to life. For brief glimpses in Chapter 1, I almost got it. I didn’t want a vision centered on the expectations of any given audience, but especially not his core “fandom” audience. In terms of gameplay, Deltarune offers next to no challenge with entirely hollow, meaningless mechanics that only serve to provide RPG-themed set dressing, without ever actually being one. It has not evolved on its RPG gameplay one single time outside of thrown away one-off gimmicks over the course of twenty hours. It has, in fact, regressed. It could not be clearer that Deltarune is not intended to be a video game. Video games are rarely mechanically stagnant, because there is almost always progression that relies on the development of the game's mechanics and systems, and the players’ understanding of them. Deltarune does not have this. What you see in Deltarune’s earliest sections is really just what you get. It is what you will continue to get as it lethargically crawls towards the finish line. It could not be more evident that Toby Fox designed Deltarune as a community experience. Honestly, it should not be judged as a video game because it clearly isn’t that interested in being one. Its intention is to evoke emotion from people experiencing it together at the same time. We already designed that without the interactivity that Toby Fox clearly views as cumbersome. It's called television. The thing Toby Fox portrays as outdated and abandoned in Chapter 3 has more in common with Deltarune than it does Undertale as a piece of art. Deltarune acts the exact same as a television show does, with specific content drops on dates that people experience together and come to their own conclusions as it progresses. Deltarune is closer to "Lost" than it is a video game. A story designed with - allegedly - a conclusion that was decided at the beginning, but obviously written as it was developed with open-ended story segments that could be rearranged or rewritten on a whim, as the incompetent directors deemed it necessary. Much like Lost, Deltarune has already garnered the same tired defense force of conscripted morons who ‘drank the Kool-Aid.’ They bought the hype, and will never really be convinced of its flaws by sane people with a healthy relationship with the medium. Everything was planned, and its writing is actually impeccable if you’re willing to pour a glass, too. And the obvious examples that showcase when its writing wasn’t planned, evidenced by failure of foreshadowing or payoff? These were actually attempting to subvert your expectations, and this cherry flavor is frankly delicious. For what it’s worth, Toby Fox is great at subverting expectations, but I’m starting to think that’s my fault more than his. I expected Toby Fox’s vision when I played Deltarune. Or, at the very least, I expected a video game when I played Deltarune. Consider my expectations subverted.