Once again Toby Fox has hit us with a new and mind-bending game. After releasing the popular game Undertale in the September of 2015, he quickly gained quite a bit of fame and success. Recently, a new game called Deltarune was released unexpectedly. Only one chapter of the game has been released and it takes about a day/one afternoon to finish depending on how good you are at the battles.  It is free to play, unlike Undertale which costs $29 for the standard edition. The rest of this review will contain spoilers, so quickly look away if you haven’t played the game yet!

Possibly the most interesting things about the Toby Fox games are the messages the games revolve around. Everyone who has played Undertale knows that the ultimate theme of the game was “Your choices matter.” (In Undertale, there are various routes you can take based on your choices throughout your journey through the monster world of the game. If you choose to fight the monsters instead of trying for peace, you will end up with a bad ending. Even if you try to delete the file and restart the game, the main character Sans remembers your choices from the previous playthrough and you still can’t get a good ending.)

In Deltarune, the message for chapter one is the exact opposite, “You have no control.” The game opens up with a menu to design your character to play through the game with, but it is merely a facade. Right after creating a character, text pops up on the screen telling you essentially that “No one can choose who they are born as in this life”. Right after, the game begins and you are stuck with the character the game provides for you.

Gameplay wise, Deltarune is similar to Undertale with the patterns of battling or befriending monsters on a journey to go home again. The monsters in Deltarune also bear a striking resemblance to those in Undertale, but it is clear that Deltarune takes place in an alternate world where they are completely altered. Deltarune also takes place in an entirely different kingdom of board game and card game themed monsters who live under the tyrannical King of Spades. Your character, Kris (assuming you take the friendly route) makes friends with three monsters named Susie, Ralsei, and Lancer who move through the game with you until you defeat the King at his palace, restoring the balance of light and dark in the world- as well as the balance of power between the kings. You and Susie, who happened upon this world while looking for chalk in the school supply closet, are transported back to your own world. Chapter 1 ends after Kris goes home to their mother, Toriel and goes to sleep.

However… Kris wakes up shortly after dozing off and gets up, seeming almost possessed. With a sinister look, Kris takes away their heart (this little heart symbol shows how much damage your character takes during battle and also represents their soul) and locks it up. Why such a sinister ending if you took the friendly route? Many people posed the question, but the core message of the game is that the player’s choices don’t have any control over who the character is at the end of the game. This is very different from most video games, where the players have complete control over the character they play. This is part of why Toby Fox games are so popular- they are very unlike traditional video games. Chapter 2 of Deltarune will likely delve more into this concept, which will come out in a few years. For now, it is up to fans to speculate the mystery of what happens next!