Like Balatro 1.1, Deltarune Chapter 5 will also release "when it's done"

Has it really been a decade since Undertale released? The hit indie game took the world by storm and launched creator Toby Fox's career to the stratosphere. It's reached a point where people reference its dialogue ("Despite everything, it's still you") without even knowing the source material. Fox's follow-up, Deltarune, made a smaller splash but has built a cult following, a following that eagerly anticipates news of when more chapters will release. Those fans are in luck today.

Development on Deltarune is progressing, Fox says. The early stages of Chapter 5 are already complete, but the last 40% is in a "rough first pass" state, and the final 10% is still being prototyped. Fox's newsletter also details that around 85% of the cutscenes in the RPG have been drafted.

Fox says that the team has "already passed of the obvious" hurdles, and aims to begin the localization process by the end of 2025. However, this means that he doesn't expect the game to release in the first half of 2026. "That's not a surprise, right?" he jokes.

There is positive news, though. "We don't have any external factors surrounding the release date this time," he writes. "We'll release it when it's done, and we will continue to update you guys on the progress of its completion."

This is the same tack that Balatro creator LocalThunk is taking. They released a blog last week to say that they were burned out, and wanted to return to their roots as a hobbyist developer, hence they were intentionally slowing down development. While Fox and the Deltarune team aren't slowing down, there's a clear trend in indie games that small developers are being careful with announcing release dates, managing player expectations, and taking care of themselves.

Deltarune seems to be progressing at a quicker rate than the two previous chapters, and one programmer is already working on bullet patterns for Chapter 6. Boss battles have also been decided, and all that's left to do there is arrange the attacks and make them "fit the atmosphere of the battle."

The first four chapters of Deltarune are already available on Steam. You can buy them here.

If you want to wait for the full story to release, why not check out our list of the best PC games? Make sure you've got one of the best gaming monitors, too, to see all this pixel art in glorious detail.

How are you passing the time while waiting for Deltarune Chapter 5? Let us know in our community Discord server, where staff and readers hang out together.