What i've been playing : Deltarune Chapter 1 review

a great way to spend a few hours

By Ethan Gurr 

edited by  Kwame Obiri-Addai

Developer: Toby Fox

Publisher: Toby Fox

Format available: PC (reviewed) PS4, Nintendo switch 

Released: PC: 31st October 2018 Nintendo switch and PS4: February 28th 2019

So by now it’s extremely likely you have heard of “Undertale”, the 2015 Indie smash hit developed by Toby Fox. Undertale quickly became one of the biggest games of the year. Telling the story of a small child who falls into the underground, a secluded region hidden under the earth populated by friendly monsters. Deltarune is what Fox released next and was at first very hard to describe as people were not sure whether or not it was a prequel, a sequel or something different altogether. But now, with the hindsight of a few months and Fox telling us we now know Deltarune is a proof of concept demo... first episode... thing. Ok, so it’s still not very clear but what we do know is that it’s the first chapter of a follow up to Undertale. 

 Now dear reader this is the part of the review where I would start to summarize the plot and start cracking jokes about it  but much like its predecessor Deltarune is best experienced as blind as possible. So all I will say about the 3-4 hour story is that it’s a fairly simple story that’s populated with lots of likeable characters, the same Toby Fox humour and equally great soundtrack.

Like with all follow up projects, Deltarune improves and innovates many of the core elements of Undertale, refining the bullet hell style combat, implementing a magic system and drastically improving the sprite artwork. All of this proves that Toby Fox is more than capable of producing content to the fantastic quality of Undertale while also improving and innovating so that it all feels fresh.  

So should you play it? Undoubtedly, yes. It’s FREE and it’s only 3-4 hours long. So it’s not even half the time commitment most games require nowadays, perfect for the broke student with lots of coursework to do. Even considering all of that, the only people I couldn’t recommend it to are people that don’t like Undertale as it does share a lot of similarities with its much more successful older brother (i.e the writing, humor and the bullet hell style combat). Since ‘Deltarune’ is an anagram of ‘Undertale’, I for one can’t wait for Fox’s next game ‘Nudealert’.