Deltarune Chapter 4 Nearing Completion, But Release Still Far Off

Toby Fox, the mastermind behind Deltarune, recently treated fans to a development update. Let's dive into the latest news on the game's progress.

Toby Fox Shares Deltarune Progress Update

Deltarune Chapter 4 Nearing Completion

In his latest newsletter, Undertale creator Toby Fox gave fans an exciting update on the upcoming Deltarune chapters. Following the success of Undertale, Deltarune is Fox's ambitious follow-up. He confirmed that Chapters 3 and 4 are targeting a simultaneous release on PC, Switch, and PS4, as announced in his Halloween 2023 newsletter. However, while Chapter 4 is nearing completion, the release date remains a bit further out than initially hoped. Remember, even the first two chapters, released in 2018 and 2021 respectively, required considerable development time.

Chapter 4 is currently in the polishing phase. All maps are finished, battles are playable, but some fine-tuning is still needed. Fox highlighted a few areas needing attention: two cutscenes require minor improvements, one battle needs balancing and visual enhancements, another needs a better background, and two battles are having their ending sequences refined. Despite this, Fox considers Chapter 4 essentially playable, barring some polish, and has received positive feedback from three trusted friends who've completed the chapter.

While Chapter 4’s progress is promising, Fox emphasized the challenges of a multi-platform, multilingual release. He noted, "It wouldn’t be such a big deal if the game was free, but since this is going to be our first big paid release since UNDERTALE, we really have to take the extra time to make sure it’s perfect."

Before the release of Chapters 3 and 4, the team has several key tasks:

⚫︎ Testing new functions ⚫︎ Finalizing PC and console versions ⚫︎ Japanese localization ⚫︎ Thorough bug testing

As previously announced in his February newsletter, Chapter 3 development is complete. While Chapter 4 undergoes final adjustments, Fox revealed that some team members are already working on preliminary drafts for Chapter 5, focusing on map creation and battle mechanics.

Although the newsletter didn't provide a concrete release date, it offered tantalizing glimpses of the upcoming content: a snippet of dialogue between Ralsei and Rouxls, a character description for Elnina, and a new item called GingerGuard. The three-year wait since Chapter 2 has understandably created some anticipation, but Fox's statement that "Chapter 3 and 4 together are definitely longer than Chapter 1 & 2 combined" should help alleviate some of that concern.

While the release date remains elusive, Fox expressed confidence in the future development schedule, suggesting that subsequent chapter releases will be more streamlined once Chapters 3 and 4 launch.