Deltarune is halfway done, but it feels like a full game

It’s been an agonizing wait for more Deltarune. The first chapter of the episodic, parallel story to Toby Fox’s acclaimed RPG Undertale came out nearly seven years ago. But the newly released third and fourth chapters are so good that I highly recommend playing everything that’s available right now — even if there are still three more episodes to go.

In Deltarune, you play as Kris, a teenager who lives in a town inhabited by friendly animals and monsters. Kris is assigned a group project with Susie, an aloof bully, and together they stumble into a place called the Dark World (hidden in a closet at school, naturally). There, they partner up with the prince of the Dark World, take on heroic personas, and try to seek and destroy the world-ending Dark Fountains — all while the team becomes friends along the way.

Each of Deltarune’s four current episodes generally focuses on one new area of the Dark World that’s inhabited by a villain. It’s kind of a monster-of-the-week approach to storytelling, and it really works for the episodic structure of the game. Through a series of focused adventures in themed locations, the game tells satisfying per-chapter stories that are each a few hours long but are dotted with breadcrumbs that pay off in bigger narrative moments along the way.

Like with Undertale, Deltarune’s battles give you the choice to fight enemies or to “act” to try and “spare” them instead. The game strongly encourages taking the peaceful route by making unique act moves for every single enemy — and they’re often quite silly, like playing a short minigame to try and capture a “maus” (mouse) enemy in a cyber-themed world.

Also like Undertale, when enemies attack in Deltarune, your goal is to try to dodge their projectiles by moving around a tiny heart on the battlefield. Each enemy has different attack patterns that can also be pretty wacky: the “maus” enemy can attack with mice (the animals) or a roving computer mouse pointer, for example.

Those kinds of gags are everywhere in Deltarune, and they made each conversation and battle feel worthwhile over the course of my nearly 15-hour playthrough of the chapters that are out now. There are many characters to talk to and different potential enemies to fight, but seeking out every one is rarely a waste of time because of the volume of puns, jokes, and goofy gimmicks. (For much of chapter 3, you interact with a walking television that is a game show host.)

Fans of Undertale will recognize a lot of familiar characters in Deltarune, like Sans the skeleton, the goat-like Toriel, and Alphys the lizard-like teacher. But you don’t need to have played Undertale to appreciate the story in Deltarune. And by chapter 4, the story threads started to tie together in ways that had me unexpectedly glued to my screen. (I haven’t even seen the game’s secret bosses or alternate story route.)

It will be a long time until we know if Deltarune will stick the landing. Chapter 5 is supposed to come out in 2026, and if we assume that one new installment comes out per year, that means the seventh and final one won’t be released until 2028. That’s 10 years after the launch of the first episode. Fingers crossed this isn’t a Winds of Winter situation, but even if it is, Deltarune’s first four chapters stand up on their own.

^{Deltarune’s first four chapters are now available as a paid purchase on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and PC. New chapters will be added for free later on.}