They say the best time to play Deltarune was October 31st, 2018, but the second-best time is now.
That’s right! Deltarune Chapters 3 and 4 are launching in more-or-less exactly one month from this writing, and all my podcast feeds and socials are abuzz with people making plans to…not play it. Yeah, while Deltarune has certainly been enjoyed by plenty of people, I’ve noticed a considerable number of critics, as well as just people in my own circles, saying they’re going to wait until Deltarune is “finished” to play through the whole thing. And, I get it. That’s a way many people typically approach episodic games, and even episodic media in general.
But…Deltarune is not a typical episodic game. And as someone who’s been following these games from the beginning, I feel like I need to stress this to anyone who might be waiting for the finished version of Deltarune: DON’T! Play them now! The way these chapters are coming out is the way they’re meant to be played, straight-up, and I think you might be setting yourself up for a genuinely lesser experience by planning to binge the “complete” game all in a row.
Why? Three reasons. Let’s go over them.
Each chapter is a self-contained story!
I feel like the main reason people would want to wait for Deltarune to be “done” is that they don’t want to experience 2/7ths of a story and have to wait for the rest, and I can understand that. But honestly, that’s not the kind of story Deltarune is telling. Each of the existing two chapters are sizable and satisfying arcs all on their own. Sure, each chapter ends on a cliffhanger, and there are plenty of larger series-spanning mysteries still left to unravel, but the story doesn’t feel “cut off” or “incomplete” simply because there’s more of it to go.
The best way I can describe it is that the chapters of Deltarune are less like chapters in a book and more like books in a series. Each one tells its own tale, but also adds pieces to a larger puzzle. If you’re expecting something more akin to a Telltale game, where very little happens per episode and it takes an entire season to wring anything of substance out of the proceedings, that’s not what this is. Deltarune’s first two chapters are a worthwhile and satisfying experience entirely on their own. Hell, just the first chapter is a perfectly great 5-hour RPG, so if you don’t believe me after playing the first chapter…go ahead and skip the second, I guess, but I guarantee you won’t.
The wait is part of the fun!
If you know anything about the Deltarune fan community, you probably know how dense it is with fan-theorization. That is, fans trying to untangle the various unsolved mysteries and unrevealed twists the series has presented thus far. Most fan communities do this to some extent, making videos like “We scientifically identified where CatDog takes place!” or whatever, but for Deltarune specifically this kind of speculation is the fandom’s bread-and-butter, and there’s a reason.
Because Deltarune makes it fun as hell.
If there’s one thing in the world Toby Fox is a master of, it’s striking a balance of being just cryptic enough to keep your gears turning while providing just enough solid facts to give those gears something to turn. Thanks to his amazingly clever writing, practically every line in Deltarune feels like it has a double-meaning you’re not quite grasping, with the only exceptions being the double-meanings you do manage to grasp. You put each chapter down, satisfied with the story you’ve been told…but then, the questions start. “Wait, but why did she react that way?” “How did he know about that?” “Why were those two sound effects the same?” “Why did the flavor text make sure to point out that specific detail?” And so it goes until your mind is on fire and you need to start comparing notes with other players.
And trust me when I say, this is all deliberately baked into the experience. The period of fan speculation and fan interaction between episodes is a big part of how these chapters are written and designed, and this is the part you’d miss out on by waiting until the game is “done” before touching Chapter 1. With no time to process and ruminate between chapters, I feel like a good amount of the intended mystery of the series would be genuinely lost in a binge playthrough. This, more than anything, is the main reason I encourage people to start playing Deltarune as soon as they can, because the experience of not playing it is in many ways just as fun as playing it.
Related to this, by waiting for the final chapter to release, there’s also a lot of official supplemental material you’re missing that adds a lot to the experience. Unfortunately, I can’t really explain these out of context, because…um…
…Look, you’ll just have to trust me on this one. You’re missing out.
But if you’re still not convinced, there is one other important thing I need to tell you about Deltarune as it currently stands. It’s a bit of a spoiler, but it’s one of the coolest parts of the game you’ve probably never heard of if you haven’t been following it closely, and it’s a big reason so many people are excited for these next two chapters specifically. I shouldn’t say it, but I’m just gonna say it…
We need to talk about Snowgrave.
Okay, this is going to be minor spoilers for Chapter 2, and I know that right now Deltarune fans are screaming at their screens for me not to say anything about this, but in order to fully express what you’re missing by not playing Deltarune, I need to explain what’s really going on with this game. I’m gonna have to Toby Fox this and be slightly vague for the sake of mystery, so follow closely.
See, Deltarune is a linear game. Compared to Toby Fox’s previous game, Undertale, which famously had a whole spiderweb of possible routes and story paths based on your choices, Deltarune is telling a simpler narrative with no branches and a fixed ending. The first chapter actually plays with this idea, with multiple moments that seem like important choices revealing themselves to be totally meaningless. This idea of destiny and lack of choice is a pretty prominent theme in Deltarune, and the more linear story reflects that.
Except, a short while after the release of Chapter 2, something changed. Players found a branch.
By making some very specific choices and performing some very specific actions, players realized that they could effectively force the story of Chapter 2 off its rails. Pushing this deviation even harder, the once linear story could effectively be snapped in two, resulting in a final act for the chapter that’s virtually unrecognizable from what it’s supposed to be. All the while, the game makes it abundantly clear that what you’re doing isn’t right. The actions you have to perform are…out of character, to say the least, and you end up being met not with a reward for your curiosity but with consequences for your defiance. Consequences that will likely change the game forever. You wanted a branch, and you found it. Welcome to a new story.
Players have dubbed this the “Snowgrave Route,” after a…particular moment that occurs in this branch’s dramatic climax, and what makes it so amazing is that it was purely a community discovery. Nothing in the game pushes you towards this route, with the actions that get into it bordering on a cheat code. It was discovered slowly by the audience, comparing notes in real time and sharing their amazed screenshots as each new layer of the route was revealed. All of a sudden, this linear RPG was leaping into completely unknown territory. What did it mean? How would this impact future chapters? No one knows even now.
You will never experience the moment Snowgrave was discovered, but if there’s anything I’m sure of when it comes to Deltarune, it’s that the ride is far from over. Deltarune may not be an ARG in the traditional sense, but its sense of community discovery and collaboration are just as intense as many ARGs of years past. It’s the reason people still talk about Deltarune and still make videos about it all these years after its release. It’s the reason speculation about where the series is going is still fun with only two chapters to go on. People aren’t just waiting for the next chapter, they’re waiting for the next event, the next Snowgrave, the next Spamton Sweepstakes (which I didn’t explain but it was also a community discovery thing).
If you wait until Deltarune is complete, you’ll have missed out on…so much that makes it truly special. It’s more than just an unfinished story. It’s one of the coolest ongoing narrative experiments I’ve ever seen in the gaming space, and it demands that you not just play it, but be part of it, discover along with people, speculate with your friends, and stay up at night imagining what the next chapter might be. Even if you (like me) don’t particularly care to be actively part of the community, seeing the discoveries as they happen is still incredible. It’s a one-of-a-kind game, and it’s not too late to catch up and see what I mean for yourself.
You’ve got a month left, and the first two chapters are still free. Don’t keep Deltarune waiting.
