Deltarune dev announces major release date change for upcoming chapters
Deltarune & Undertale creator Toby Fox has announced a huge change in how the upcoming chapters of Deltarune will be released due to ongoing delays and production issues.
While Undertale was released as a single package, Deltarune has come out in chapters. Deltarune Chapter 1 was released on October 31, 2018, followed by Chapter 2 on September 17, 2021, both as free downloads, with the intention that a future entry would be a paid release.
Undertale’s Toby Fox had said that Deltarune Chapters 3-5 would be released in a single package, but development updates released as part of a semi-regular fan letter have suggested that production is facing issues. Despite being in development for two years, Fox had discussed in the past how Chapter 3 still isn’t complete, never mind Chapters 4-5.
Obviously, developing three chapters at once will take much longer than one, so fans have been unsure how long it will take for Deltarune Chapters 3-5 to be released, especially considering that Chapter 2 alone spent three years in development, despite its short length.
Deltarune Chapter 5 has been delayed
October 31 is the fifth anniversary of Deltarune, and a new fan letter sent out to fans has revealed new information about the next release of the game.
The biggest announcement, as reported by Wario64 on Twitter/X, is that Chapter 5 won’t be included in the next release. Instead, it will just be Chapters 3-4.
In more positive news, Fox revealed that work on Chapter 3 is almost complete, as it’s possible to finish the game in its current form. Now, most of the production staff have moved on to Chapter 4 full-time, which already has a lot of work completed. Fox has also hired a new producer for the project, which will hopefully hasten development time even more.
With this change in release structure, the question is how long fans will have to wait for Chapters 3-4 to be released. The fact that Chapter 3 is nearly complete is a good sign, but it seems like fans will still be waiting another year or so for both chapters to come out.
There’s also the question of how Chapter 5 will be handled. Fox has never revealed how many chapters Deltarune will encompass, though fans believe it will be seven, each covering a different day. It’s possible that Chapters 5-6 will be one release, with Chapter 7 being the big finale.
Whatever the case, it seems that fans will be getting more Deltarune content a little quicker than planned, though they won’t receive as much content as they realized. That being said, fans are ravenous for more Deltarune, so they’ll be happy to return to the Dark World once more.