Deltarune: Chapter 1

Mechanics

The gameplay in Deltarune develops the ideas of its predecessor. We get the title in the style of old-school RPGs, focusing on exploration, interactions with NPCs and turn-based battles. However, like Undertale, Deltarune is far from beaing a typical representatives of the genre. Although we can find here a typical combat system, the game enables us to peacefully settle most of the battles. To this end, we are doing all sorts of things to weaken the fighting spirit of our opponents: we talk, we complement each other, we flirt and even help them with their problems. All this takes place in turn-based battles, during which we must also avoid the attacks of enemies in a special mini-game. For this purpose, we direct the heart (representing the soul of our character) in sequences reminiscent of bullet hell titles.

Deltarune adds a few new features to this formula. In combat, we contrl the entire party, not just one character, with only one of the heroes having access to non-standard interactions with enemies. There are also completely new options: defense and magic. The former reduces the damage taken during the turn, while the latter is based on Tension Points (TP for short). We gain these primarily for the use of defense options, but we also get them when the heart is very close to enemy projectiles.

Undertale is famous for its ironic approach to video game stereotypes, and it is no different in Deltarun. Toby Fox is constantly playing with tropes and at every step, we come across situations when typical interactions take an unexpected turn. Not even the interface, which seems to be an integral part of the game world during combat, has been spared. All this has a humorous tone, but it is also often used for narrative purposes.

Technical aspects

Deltarune's audio-visual setting is not very different from that of Undertale, despite minor improvements. Toby Fox again worked on the game almost independently. Graphics, inspired by the work of Chef Kano, brings to mind 8-bit productions. The game is complemented by simple, but atmospheric music.

Other information

Although Deltarune seems to have benefited from the legacy of the previous game, in fact, the production of the title began in 2012. However, Fox abandoned the project for a while in favor of Undertale. Creating Deltarune turned out to be so demanding that the demo version itself was created for six years with breaks. As the development would have taken centuries to complete at this rate, Fox intended to involve more artists to work on the game, although he had not yet started recruiting at the time of publishing the first chapter.

Although EXP points are present in the free first chapter, the game does not enable us to earn EXP points and thus level up our character.