Undertale tie-in RPG Deltarune has had a long development cycle, and an intriguing release schedule, to say the very least. Its very first chapter launched all the way back in 2018, nearly five years ago, which was followed by a second chapter (out of five total instalments) about three years later in 2021. Since then, Toby Fox and his team have put their heads down to work on the remaining three chapters of the game together, with plans of releasing them as a single package, and in a recently sent out newsletter, Fox provided further updates on how development is progressing.
According to Fox, though some members of the development team have started working on Deltarune’s later chapters, the bulk of the team’s focus remains on Chapter 3, for which development seems to be coming together at a good pace now, with the work currently being focused on the overworld area. Fox says that Chapter 3 has been a complicated one to develop nonetheless, and that Chapter 4 should be a relatively simpler one.
You can read the full update below, courtesy of Nintendo Everything:
“As was the case last time, we’re focusing on Chapter 3. However, there are a few people working on pieces of later chapters, such as bullet patterns or puzzles.
“As for Chapter 3, we’re finally creating the final overworld area. You could think of it like the “Queen’s Castle” or “Card Castle”, but for this chapter. With this complete, the chapter will finally be playable all the way through…! (Fun Fact: I composed the song for this area in 2016…)
“This Chapter is made of many different pieces… so it’s been hard to understand exactly how everything was turning out. Now that things are clearer, I just need to roll over the entire game with a steamroller and crush out all the bumps. There may be things to add, things to fix, or things to remove… but, many pieces have been quite polished already, so it won’t be too bad.
“As you can tell, this chapter is shaping up to be a pretty strange one. I mostly focused on unusual gameplay elements, and it’s not too heavy on the story. Since it’s so frivolous, I feel a bit self-conscious about it… but, at least I got to try something different!
“Anyway, Chapter 4 will be a much more standard chapter!”
The first two chapters of Deltarune are currently available on PC, PS4, and Nintendo Switch.
