Deltarune Chapter 2 progress "proceeding at a good pace"
Here in no temmie at all.
It's been nearly two years since the first chapter of Undertale's sequel was released, and understandably, you might be wondering how the rest of Deltarune's development is coming along. Thanks to a development update from creator Toby Fox, now we know.
The blog post explains that while the sequel is due to release in chapters, Deltarune has been more difficult to make than Undertale: the graphics and systems are more complicated, the plot has been harder to tie together, and it contains significantly more content than Undertale. Fox also spent time investigating alternative engines for the game, which he used for Chapter 1, before deciding to go back to GameMaker. To make matters worse, Fox has also been suffering with wrist pain, which recently got so bad he had to use voice-to-text instead of a keyboard.
All in all, there were a fair few reasons for the slower pace, but it's not all bad news: Fox has completed readable outlines for every chapter in the game, "including first-pass dialogue for almost all the cutscenes [and] examples of the music." Work on creating the second chapter only began in May this year, yet Fox thinks a lot of progress has been made in this time - while using Chapter 2 as a base will speed up the development of future chapters.
"I believe we can complete this chapter, content-wise, before the end of the year (not accounting for translation, bug testing, and porting)," Fox added. "Even though we ended up using the original engine, I don't regret the lost time, either. Not only was I still busy designing the game, but during that long period, I was able to think of many ideas that make the game's story and characters better.
"I'm glad that I'm making the Deltarune that I have now and that we are making healthy progress."
If you want to help speed up progress on Deltarune's next chapters and happen to have the right qualifications, you can even apply to join the team: Fox is looking for people skilled in music transcription, bullet pattern programming and minigame programming - amongst other things. If you want to find out more about the job requirements, and a more detailed breakdown of how Chapter 2 is progressing, you can find the blog post here.