Deltarune Chapter 4 Nearing Completion, But Release Still Far Off

Toby Fox, the creative mind behind Deltarune, recently shared a development update, offering fans a glimpse into the progress of the highly anticipated game. Let's dive into the details from his latest newsletter.

Toby Fox's Deltarune Progress Update

Deltarune Chapter 4: Almost Ready

In his recent newsletter, Toby Fox provided fans with an encouraging update on Deltarune's upcoming chapters. Following the success of Undertale, Fox's Deltarune has been eagerly awaited. He confirmed the planned simultaneous release of Chapters 3 and 4 on PC, Switch, and PS4, a promise made in his Halloween 2023 newsletter. While Chapter 4 is nearing completion, Fox clarified that the release is still some time away. Remember, even the free releases of Chapters 1 and 2 (in 2018 and 2021 respectively) took considerable development time.

Chapter 4 is currently in the polishing phase. All maps are finished, battles are playable, but some fine-tuning remains. 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 battle ending sequences are being refined. Despite this, Fox considers Chapter 4 essentially playable, having already received positive feedback from three friends who completed a playthrough.

While Chapter 4's progress is excellent, Fox emphasized the complexities 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, Fox outlined 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 did offer exciting teases: snippets of dialogue between Ralsei and Rouxls, a character description for Elnina, and a new item called GingerGuard. While the three-year wait since Chapter 2 initially caused some disappointment, the growing scope of the game, as hinted by Fox’s statement that "Chapter 3 and 4 together are definitely longer than Chapter 1 & 2 combined," has kept anticipation high.

The wait for the full release continues, but Fox expressed confidence in a smoother release schedule for future chapters once Chapters 3 and 4 launch.