Undertale creator Toby Fox has unveiled Deltarune, a free follow-up to 2015's Undertale.
As various Undertale fans have pointed out online, Deltarune is an anagram for Undertale and refers to the symbol on Undertale NPC Toriel's tunic.
Deltarune's website contains several warnings in English and Japanese about things like overriding security protocols and refraining from discussing "the program" for 24 hours in the interest of public safety.
The site says these warnings are the final ones players will receive before encouraging them to take things into their hands and allowing them to download Deltarune for PC or Mac.
Fox first teased Deltarune yesterday morning. He blacked out Undertale's thumbnail image on Twitter and tweeted that it was "really important" for players who completed Undertale to return and check back in 24 hours. "I want to make something new, and it all begins with your feedback," wrote Fox of the tease.
IGN awarded Undertale a 10 in our review, calling it "a masterfully crafted experience." Originally released for PC and Mac 2015, Undertale later arrived on PlayStation 4, Vita, and Linux and was most recently ported to Switch last month.
Curious what those who played the first game think of this one?
Lots of people are calling it a sequel, but there is apparently a number of things that contradict the ending of the first one.
Thoughts?
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A friend and I followed the live release twitter... thingymajig. Neither of us were expecting an entirely new game out of it. The game itself is pretty good - the mechanics are improved over Undertale, with a new party-based combat system and a few tweaks here and there to make the whole thing smoother (including a run button!). The writing (particularly the dialogue) is tight and charming, and the two are woven together in a way that isn't too overbearing. It's also not very long. You can probably complete it (sans secrets) in a couple of hours. That's the spoiler-free review.
Obviously, spoilers are in the spoiler box. Spoiler
The game starts by asking you to create a custom character, which it then discards, telling you that "in this world, no-one can choose who they are". Then, you start the actual game, as a human child called Kris, living in a town inhabited by all the characters from Undertale. Toriel - your adopted goat mom - takes you to school, where you end up paired with a girl named Susie, who also happens to be the school bully. One things leads to another, and suddenly the two of you are locked in an endless supply closet, whereupon you are both dropped into the darkness. Luckily, instead of an eldritch abomination unto reality itself waiting to devour you, you are instead delivered into a different realm.
After a few close calls with various attackers, you and Susie find Prince Rasiel, whose name is totally not an anagram of Asriel, who also asks you to become legendary heroes and... do something with a fountain of darkness that is causing the world to be imbalanced. You're then introduced to the primary antagonist of the piece, Lancer, who is the son of the evil king who lit the fountain. Susie drifts in and out of the party, outright defecting to Lancer for a significant portion of the game, and over the course of your adventures you slowly teach the two of them the true meaning of friendship. You fight the evil king, beat him up but don't kill him, and return home with Susie. You get to walk around the town for a while, talk to all the townsfolk (which you should really do, they have a lot to say), and then go to bed, ending the game.
And, in the middle of the night, Kris gets out of bed, rips out their own soul, throws said soul into a convenient cage, then produces a knife. Cut to credits, and an "End of Chapter 1" message.
So, where does this relate to Undertale? The answer is... complicated, and one I don't actually know. Have some speculation instead. It's difficult to say it's a direct sequel, because it doesn't line up with any of the endings - Asriel is at college and not dead, for example, and the monsters are on the surface, and most of them are alive. It could be an alternate timeline without being too much of a copout - sans turns up at the end, having "just moved in", and his whole deal is keeping an eye on Chara, who also jumps timelines. That aforementioned friend did venture that it's just much later on in time, and all the monsters are the same because they're a) immortal or b) it's like poetry, it rhymes, but I'm not convinced. It's definitely a sequel in the plot sense, if not the timeline sense.
A couple of interesting things: When you first SAVE the game, the game overwrites the name "Kris" with the one you put in for the survey. Much later on, when you go back to the town, the townsfolk comment on how unusually talkative you are, almost like you aren't Kris at all. Asgore also has a set of flowers in bell jars that match up to the souls from Undertale, Alphys and Undine don't know each other, the mirror in your house tells you that "It's only you" at both the start and the end of the game, and the prophecy Ralsei gives you doesn't match up with what happens in the game. I don't have a convenient save file, and it's a bit early to look things up, but IIRC he mentions both the world ending before the heroes come along and also that there's supposed to be five of them by that point.
While I was in the middle of writing this, Toby Fox tweeted some stuff about the game, namely that it's meant to be a demo, that it's a separate story to Undertale, and a couple of other neat details.
TL;DR: It's a good game, there's some interesting stuff in there, it ties into but may not be a direct sequel to Undertale, and it's a free demo for a larger game.
I agree that it feels a much more "polished" version of the game, both in terms of graphics and game play.
As far as the setting...
Spoiler
Currently my thoughts are "Alternate time line" either one where the Monsters never went 'underground' in the first place and learned to live with Humans'. Or one where the events of the game might have happened much earlier.. (at least before Asriel died)
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
