![\"Inefficient](\"https:\/\/gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/no_compression\/public\/2025\/09\/23\/22bb61be\/deltarune_01.jpg.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\nArt by Marcel Mosqi (@mohsqi)<\/p>\n<\/article>\n
Fox explained that the \u201csmart\u201d way to create a game would be to allow the development team to reuse certain mechanics. \u201cFor example, in other RPGs, there may be enemies across the games which primarily only use physical attacks,\u201d Fox writes. \u201cThe appearance and animations may be different, but aspects like weaknesses, HP, and other statistics can just be altered near instantly in a database.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Deltarune, we can\u2019t rely on just tweaking numbers. Everything in the game is simply a container for a never-before-seen gimmick. Every enemy has new bullet patterns, new [actions], every area has new puzzles, etc. I don\u2019t necessarily think this is a good or bad thing, after all Final Fantasies are some of my favorite RPG\u2019s… but the method that I have chosen is not very efficient for development.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
What Fox gets at in his response is that although his way of working might be inefficient and laborious (and thus stupid), it doesn\u2019t necessarily mean it\u2019s not worthwhile. In the case of Deltarune, this added effort translates to verified gameplay that surprises players in every map, battle, and boss fight. One battle might contain a full rhythm game, whereas another might insert a functional roulette machine as a damage mechanic. Sure, it takes more effort for the team to think of each concept for every fight, but the effort results in a much livelier game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fox explains why he and the team put so much work into making each battle a unique experience. According to him, there are two large factors. The first reason is it can be more \u201cfun\u201d for both players and creators to try new things. The other has to do with difficulty and the overall enjoyability of the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n Art by @Natalieleif<\/p>\n<\/article>\n \u201cAs far as bosses go \u2013 most players are not going to be experts at bullet hell games, so there\u2019s a limit to how reasonable it is to push the difficulty with the regular dodging system,\u201d Fox writes. \u201cBy introducing a new gimmick for a boss battle, I can create fresh forms of difficulty that don\u2019t rely on a player\u2019s prior experience with other games.\u201d<\/p>\n Fox and his team must decide if the amount of work it takes to add a certain element in the game is worth it in the end. While it might be impossible for the developers to add certain features to Deltarune \u2013 the team couldn\u2019t turn Deltarune\u00a0into a hyper-realistic AAA game overnight \u2013 the answer of what to include might not always be clear. I ask Fox how he decides when a certain element is worth the amount of work, and I imagine him shrugging behind his screen as he writes the answer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI only ask people to do things that I am confident are possible to do, or I have a vague idea of how I would do myself. I think it\u2019s up to the players who waited to decide whether it was worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n How long a player is willing to wait and whether or not the final product was worth it depends on the tastes of each fan. If a developer told me they really needed to take three months to elaborately animate a funny poop joke, I would respect that. For me, every new game I get feels like a surprising treat, and not something I am entitled to. However, some fans might lose interest over time, and in the case of Deltarune, its players have been waiting for years to play a slice of the game.<\/p>\n Art by Claire Godbold Hilliard<\/p>\n<\/article>\n The Long Road To Deltarune<\/p>\n I chuckle when I hear people talk about how long fans waited to play another anticipated indie game, Hollow Knight: Silksong. That\u2019s because six years just doesn\u2019t seem like that long when I\u2019ve been sitting around playing Deltarune\u00a0slowly for even longer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Getting sucked into the toilet bowl flush of\u00a0Deltarune’s prolonged development cycle is easy, so let\u2019s just go over the general dates quickly so you can get an idea of how development progressed. Fox released the demo (which included the first chapter of the game) in fall 2018. Then his team released Chapter Two in the fall of 2021. After that, he delayed the release of Chapter Three, Chapter Four, and Chapter Five several times. In the end, the team didn\u2019t release Chapter Three and Chapter Four until June of 2025. (We still don\u2019t have a release date for Chapter Five.) Fox says there will be seven chapters in total. It\u2019s been more than six years, and roughly half the game is out.\u00a0<\/p>\n To say that development was a slog might be undercutting it a bit. The team shifted its plans several times and players didn\u2019t get any new content for years. To Fox\u2019s credit, he kept players in the loop with wordy developer blogs that updated fans on the process of creating the game. Each blog started with an itemized list of progress where Fox updated players on the minutiae of game development, like what kinds of work was needed to complete certain maps and gimmicks.<\/p>\n Art by Wynton Yang (@wyntonyang.bsky.social)<\/p>\n<\/article>\n In his various developer blogs, Fox cites issues surrounding localization of the game, porting it to other consoles, debugging, and a new game engine feature as barriers throughout development that prolonged shipping earlier chapters of Deltarune.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the\u00a0spring 2024 newsletter<\/a>, Fox straight-up told his fans he hired more people to help him make the game. He said his new producer\u2019s mission objective was, \u201cfor the fan’s sake, let’s finish this before we become old and wrinkled.\u201d It struck me because it didn\u2019t seem like the kind of update fans would ever need to know. Why tell people he hired new employees? However, its inclusion highlighted his desire to keep the development process transparent and the importance of the new staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n I ask Fox if there was a certain moment when he knew he needed to beef up the team. He told me it was \u201cmore like a continuous miasma,\u201d and he reflects on how it affected development on Deltarune. He told me a benefit to having a larger team is it ensures the game is \u201cpossible to make in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n Art by Wynton Yang (@wyntonyang.bsky.social)<\/p>\n<\/article>\n \u201cIt would not be possible to make or release by myself,\u201d Fox writes. \u201cNot only just in terms of sheer hours but also in terms of my physical condition. I still have wrist issues, which, while improved, prevent me from typing for an extended period of time. (I just use voice to text for everything). Also, it can be fun to work with other people and thinking of ideas together.\u201d<\/p>\n But for Fox, who maintains a strong directorial role in Deltarune, growing the team also came with challenges. When I ask if Undertale\u00a0prepared him to make Deltarune, he writes that the games are \u201csimilar\u201d so he did learn a lot from making his first game. However, it didn\u2019t prepare him to work with a team. \u201cIt\u2019s more like making Deltarune\u00a0made me ready to make Deltarune,” he writes. In a follow-up response, Fox expanded on some of the challenges that came with managing a larger team.\u00a0<\/p>\n Art by @Natalieleif<\/p>\n<\/article>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure this matters to players, but not being as involved in the programming means that the individual tastes and execution of the people working on the scenes often ends up coming into play.\u201d Fox writes, \u201cAs the director my main concern is whether something is fun and matches my intention for the story.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically what I\u2019m saying is that I\u2019m in charge of the kitchen, and other people are in charge of the soup. If I think the soup tastes bad, we need to remake it. If the soup has a slightly different flavor than what I asked for but still tastes good, then I\u2019ll let it go. If the soup has a totally different flavor, like corn cheetos, then it definitely needs to be remade.<\/p>\n \u201cThat sounds easy, but the problem is that when the soup \u2018tastes bad,\u2019 the answer isn\u2019t always necessarily obvious. It could be because I failed to teach them how to make the soup correctly, but it could also be that my recipe is bad in the first place. Basically, when I\u2019m making something myself, if I can\u2019t execute it, then it\u2019s a bad idea. But when someone else is making something, it\u2019s harder to understand where that line is, and how far to keep pushing through.\u201d<\/p>\n Ana Diaz<\/em><\/a> is a former culture writer at<\/em> Polygon whose work has also appeared on<\/em> NPR, Wired, Business Insider, The Verge, and more. You can find her on Bluesky at <\/em>@pokachee.bsky.social<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This feature originally appeared in issue 372 (The Outer Worlds 2) of Game Informer magazine. Special thanks to Deltarune\u2019s enthusiastic and creative community for allowing us to highlight a small sampling of their impressive fan art! When I asked Toby Fox, the developer behind the viral hit, Undertale (and now its spin-off Deltarune), if I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":981,"featured_media":18351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-online-games"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Inefficient](\"https:\/\/gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/no_compression\/public\/2025\/09\/23\/1e442412\/deltarune_02.jpg.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Inefficient](\"https:\/\/gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/no_compression\/public\/2025\/09\/25\/025c5dea\/372_deltaruneclaire.jpg.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe Long Road To Deltarune<\/h2>\n
![\"Inefficient](\"https:\/\/gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/no_compression\/public\/2025\/09\/23\/d5246821\/deltarune_04.jpg.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Inefficient](\"https:\/\/gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/no_compression\/public\/2025\/09\/23\/43aef192\/deltarune_05.jpg.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Inefficient](\"https:\/\/gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/no_compression\/public\/2025\/09\/23\/9b23e392\/deltarune_06.jpg.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n