Deltarune isn’t an Undertale sequel, and it won’t be finished any time soon

Toby Fox has lifted the veil on many of the mysteries surrounding Deltarune, his first new game since 2015’s Undertale. What most fans believed to be a project set in the shared Undertale universe turns out to be something completely new, Fox said — and like with many new things, it’s going to be in development for a long, long time.

“Deltarune’s world is a different one [than Undertale’s],” Fox wrote in a TwitLonger post. “With different characters, that have lived different lives. A whole new story will happen ...

“I don’t know what you call this kind of game [...] It’s just a game you can play after you complete Undertale, if you want to.”

That answers that question, which a lot of people have asked since the free demo’s Halloween launch. There are some shared characters between the two games, however, so it’s nice to know our canonical endings for them remain unchanged.

Meanwhile, those of us who have already finished the three-hour “Chapter 1” of Deltarune and are hoping for more soon shouldn’t hold their breath.

The Deltarune demo alone took Fox “a few years” to finish, he wrote, and he expects the final product to be lengthy. With more complex graphics and battle system, numerous playable characters and a totally new setting, Fox estimates that the game may take years, if he’s even able to finish it at all.

“Given the length of the rest of the game, and how long I’d be willing to spend on a project (7 years maximum) I think the answer is that it’s actually impossible to make this game,” he wrote.

“Lots of things make this game harder to make than the last time. Since I haven’t started assembling the team yet I have absolutely no estimation of its completion. It could take up to 999 years depending on the efficiency level.”

Deltarune is so good already that we’d be willing to wait 999 years for the rest of it. Maybe. Here’s hoping science and/or modern medicine figure out how to keep us all going for that long so we can see the charming, touching RPG to its conclusion.