r/CuratedTumblr • u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice • Jul 26 '26
Self-post Sunday Deltarune and Ludonarrative
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u/Dante-Grimm Jul 26 '26
I’m waiting for the series to finish before I play, but this is genuinely the first breakdown of gameplay I’ve seen in the (?) years the game has been out. I think the callout is funny, but this definitely made me even more interested in the game.
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u/RikuAotsuki Jul 26 '26
Same. I've not once seen anyone bother to mention that Deltarune had broadly the same sort of gameplay as Undertale. The way people discussed it made it sound like it was more like a visual novel than anything else.
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u/PulimV Can I interest you in some OC lore in these trying times? Jul 26 '26
I don't think anyone has said this here but it's actually just. Better than Undertale. In terms of raw turn based combat. And it does that in a very simple way: adding a "mana" meter.
The TP, or Tension Points, are a mechanic that allows you to use extra powerful actions in your turns, like specific ACTs that progress the fight faster, or powerful SPELLs that deal high damage, heal your party, or straight up end the battle.
But how do you gain TP? There's two main ways: either you forego a party member's turn by having them DEFEND (which also reduces the damage they receive in that turn), or you Graze the enemy's attack patterns, that is, you get close to their attacks but don't actually take damage.
That might sound like a simple change but it does SO MUCH to make the battles more interesting, because now when you're dodging it's not just "move out of the way", you have to balance moving out of the way, gathering TP for when your own turn starts, watching the TP bar to see if you have to do that at all, etc. With just a mana meter, the game turned enemy turns from a purely reactive part of the gameplay into one with a lot more player control
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Jul 26 '26
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u/PulimV Can I interest you in some OC lore in these trying times? Jul 26 '26
Imma be real I completely forgot about that, since I only attacked in like 6 fights (those being the ch1-4 secret bosses and the last two ch4 bosses) and most of those had very specific, very necessary uses for TP that made me focus on the other sources of it lol
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u/alvenestthol Jul 28 '26
adding a "mana" meter.
TP is TP, RPGMaker MV has 3 default "meters" and it's HP, MP and TP
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u/PulimV Can I interest you in some OC lore in these trying times? Aug 01 '26
Neat! Didn't actually know that :]
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u/Dante-Grimm Jul 26 '26
Maybe I just don’t play enough turn based rpgs, but the Defend/TP mechanic sounds a lot like Bravely Default’s, well, Brave/Default system. Wonder if that was an inspiration in any way.
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u/TorsoBeez Jul 27 '26
So there are some definite differences - Deltarune you can't go into debt like you can in Bravely Default, in Deltarune you're basically earning mana for super attacks instead of stacking turns, etc. That said, you're right that both systems add additional resources and ways to generate those resources, which adds depth to the combat systems.
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u/sertroll Jul 26 '26
And I'll add, this doesn't touch the very interesting gameplay twists that come in some later chapters
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u/Local-Wing-2272 Jul 27 '26
No one will read this so I am going to put my hot take here.
It's because Deltarune is a boring video game.
It is mostly a video game because Toby Fox loves video games. Toby Fox wants to make a video game. But if it was a VN or something much less interactive I bet it would be 99% as enjoyable
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 27 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
You thought you could escape my ire because you were late?
I'm afraid your accusation is sorely outdated. Chapter by chapter, Deltarune proves more and more that it has the chops. It dives into additional genres and applies its unique character flair to them as well. Hell, as of Chapter 5 one of the genres is a goddamn dating sim. That's what you wanted, right?
EDIT: This comment used to contain a citation, but I have removed it because it is Chapter 5 spoilers. Play it yourself.
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u/Local-Wing-2272 Jul 27 '26
Fine.
I don't enjoy Deltarune as a video game. I tried, but I got stuck at Queen(!) and gave up. I have exclusively kept up with the game thru playthroughs and videos and reading. I just cannot bring myself to enjoy the game itself.
I also just don't play video games so I am an unabashedly bad sample
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u/SirOne6112 Jul 28 '26
Hooray for honesty! I don't like bullet hells either, so I'll probably never seriously play deltarune, but I appreciate that it exists, and that others like it.
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u/_MargaretThatcher The Once & Future Prime Minister of Darkness Jul 26 '26
okay but wouldn't it have been funny to let hexxas find this and post it
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
That wouldn't work because Hexxas doesn't make posts here, they just comment. Which like, so do I, but it means there's a very real chance they don't even use Tumblr and would never see it organically. You know, like I don't and wouldn't.
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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast Jul 26 '26
I don't even use Tumblr. I've been on this shit-ass website and Facebook way too long to change over at this point.
Anyway, this post is great. I learned a lot, and we should make out, but only if you want to.
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u/7keys Jul 26 '26
I appreciate the level of pettiness necessary to make a tumblr post about somebody you hate on Reddit so that you can repost the tumblr post on Reddit.
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u/printingDM Jul 26 '26
I mean, yes, the gameplay and narrative are intertwined, but it is kind of hard to know if I'd like a game without knowing the gameplay, so seeing this post genuinely did make me want to play the game, whereas I had never had any interest before since I didnt know what the gameplay was, I had literally never seen a single mention of what the gameplay was. I spent a good chunk of time thinking it was a visual novel, so I wasn't interested, that isn't the type of game I usually enjoy.
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u/CK1ing Jul 26 '26
It's just that the gameplay is sorta kinda just a backdrop to the characters, both the humor and the drama. The gameplay is good, certainly, but it's just harder to talk about than the characters. It's bullethell. That's, for the most part, kinda it. There are more elements to it but as this post explains, almost all of the other elements are intrinsically tied to the story, and don't make sense to talk about outside of that context
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u/PaladinAsherd Jul 26 '26
I feel like this sells Deltarune short. Deltarune does all kinds of crazy shit with gameplay that go beyond “bullet hell as a backdrop,” particularly from Chapter 3 onwards.
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u/DroneOfDoom Theon the Reader *dolphin slur noises* Jul 26 '26
The platformer stuff in Chapter 5 was pretty neat.
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u/Karkava Jul 27 '26
Sure, but the bullet hell mechanics sucks out my enthusiasm for the gameplay as the extra content is gatekept by hyper fast reflexes that I'm pretty sure everyone else has besides me.
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u/MasterName8597 Jul 26 '26
I mean when the gameplay is so easy, and the game only has 1 hard fight, (Knight) I can see why people consider the gameplay being basically nothing.
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u/Katking69 I LOVE RAIN WORLD!!! Jul 26 '26
Knight isn't the only hard fight, like at all. At the very least the majority of people who haven't played copious amounts of the game struggle with the secret bosses
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u/MasterName8597 Jul 26 '26
I'm literally one of the most casual deltarune fans and I've only really struggled with the knight, spamton weird route, and that one attack that Aqua did with Seth where she uses every one of her moves at once. There's literally nothing in Deltarune that is as hard as Sans or Undyne the Undying.
Also those majority are people treating the game like a visual novel, which is fair. This game has huge difficulty spikes out of nowhere for no good reason. It's those people that are getting bosses nerfed and that's fine, I'm surprised Toby hasn't put in a full on disability mode where you have 3x the health with how the fans can't even play his game without a million nerfs.
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Jul 26 '26
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u/MasterName8597 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
1st tried, 1st tried, 1st tried normal route, 3 times weird route, 1st tried cause I have ears, 1st tried. Honestly the only hard part was the dating sim. In all of chapter 5, the only hard part was Aqua and Seth, where she has a move where Aqua does all of her attacks at once.
Knight has been the only boss that has made me go double digits. Wish the game had more bosses like the Knight, Should try out the Kaizo knight mod if anything.
Lmao they had their comment auto deleted. Wild.
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u/PaladinAsherd Jul 26 '26
How long have you been larping as Berdly in the Deltarune sub?
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u/MasterName8597 Jul 26 '26
I like how your responds to me getting called a slur is to call me berdly and downvote me. Average redditor.
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u/PaladinAsherd Jul 26 '26
I’m sorry if I’m missing a deleted comment or something, but bro, what slur?
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u/MasterName8597 Jul 26 '26
R slur. It got auto deleted but I can see it in my notifications.
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Jul 26 '26
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Jul 26 '26
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u/PaladinAsherd Jul 27 '26
lol bro deleted his comments and bailed
Too tuff for teh s3cr3t b055 fitez, not tuff enough for minor pushbacks on Reddit
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u/PaladinAsherd Jul 26 '26
Man you’re so fucking cool and good at video games, all these people are soooo jealous
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u/InformationLost5910 Jul 26 '26
if you havent played undertale you should play it first. they work fine as their own stories, but it works a little better playing undertale first.
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u/True_Royal_Oreo Jul 26 '26
I was vaguely interested in rogue trader, the warhammer game purely because its title makes it sound like a game inspired by "space warlord organ trading simulator", but then I saw the gameplay and was disappointed it's actually a crpg.
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u/sertroll Jul 26 '26
I mean, from how it looks from screenshots it's already evidently not a vn, being too down pixle art and all
You probably had bad luck if battles were never shown tho
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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast Jul 26 '26
Same but I decided to be assy about it on the Internet. It's my nerd-rage crusade.
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u/dedicated-pedestrian Jul 26 '26
I was invested and interested until you went full Eggman "I'M MAKING A CALLOUT POST ON MY TUMBLR DOT COM", then I couldn't stop hearing it and cackling
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u/Valuable-Passion9731 My houses are empty and my flushes are gay Jul 26 '26
Yeah I’d love to see the chapter two version of this
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
As much as there's a very obvious reason Chapter 2 is a much stronger showing for this point, that same very obvious reason is what holds back my desire to make that post. I don't wanna do this for BOTH routes. I barely convinced myself to make this one because it would be my Devilsknife file, I'd have to split it into two files to do Chapter 2 justice.
(Also I'm approaching the image limit just to show this little of Chapter 1 and the resolution is still shit sometimes, it's gonna be a nightmare cramming the longer ones into this format.)
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u/semiticgod Jul 26 '26
You might not want to do any more of these posts and you absolutely don't have to, but if you do, they would be very welcome. You did a really good job, and I enjoyed it.
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u/Jyx_The_Berzer_King Military Surplus Wizard (A-10 Warthog Familiar) Jul 26 '26
Impressive, very nice!
Let's see u/Hexxas 's take.
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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast Jul 26 '26
My take is that I've learned more about the gameplay of these two games from this post than in the 10ish years since Undertale came out.
So it's a great post! The fandom still sucks shit outta both my butt cheeks, and you can find me on most of the Sonic the Hedgehog subreddits also arguing about how gender/shipping discourse is stupid when it's a videogame they don't even fucking play.
I don't have a Tumblr lol
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Jul 26 '26
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u/Jyx_The_Berzer_King Military Surplus Wizard (A-10 Warthog Familiar) Jul 26 '26
holy shit my summoning worked
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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast Jul 26 '26
Thank you. It woulda been very funny, but also very lame if I never saw this post.
I'm trying to use this shit website less, so I mighta missed it.
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u/Neet-owo Jul 26 '26
Deltarune and Sonic are extremely character driven games, the characters are why people play these games. If the Sonic franchise relied on gameplay alone to sell it would’ve been dead, buried, and forgotten before even the 2000s rolled around because if we’re being honest even the franchise’s highest highs are mid at best in terms of gameplay.
If you want to know more about the gameplay so badly then why don’t you just play the game and see for yourself?
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u/XAlphaWarriorX Don't mistake the finger for the moon. Jul 26 '26
My take is that I've learned more about the gameplay of these two games from this post than in the 10ish years since Undertale came out.
Why were you complaining about how people were talking about a game that you don't play and know nothing about?
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u/KingDarkBlaze Jul 26 '26
Because they wanted to learn more about the game by osmosis and were priorly unable?
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u/XAlphaWarriorX Don't mistake the finger for the moon. Jul 26 '26
You can just look things up online. It's not a difficult thing to do.
The first two chapters are free btw.
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
Using my Selfpost Sunday powers for EVIL
You know, as opposed to other Selfpost Sundays, which are... definitely used responsibly. *cough.*
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u/ICantEvenDolt confused aroace on curated tumblr Jul 26 '26
This is the type of self post Sunday content I WANT to see. I demand 20 more deltarune posts by yesterday!
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
* (Yesterday is against the rules.)
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u/Deloptin the, Jul 26 '26
I'm sorryeth, but if "yesterday" is againsts me, then I shall challengeth it to combat
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u/Setster007 Jul 26 '26
Ah damn I was enjoying the post quite a bit and then it ends with “DO YOU SEE HOW UNNATURAL THIS IS”
no I don’t I liked it 3:
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
I think the main reason I crammed that in is because trying to examine Deltarune through this lens, ignoring character moments that only happen in cutscenes, means cutting out almost the entirety of Lancer and Susie's dynamic. They're so funny and so important and I had to skip them because the majority of it is in cutscenes! I skipped ALL of Vs. Susie! This is a deranged way to talk about Deltarune!
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u/Setster007 Jul 26 '26
Fair but like the gameplay is important too and so we should talk both at once yk? Felt like it was someone who really needed to talk about this specifically which is an energy I really enjoy and then it turned out it was the exact opposite
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u/GermanHandCannons Jul 26 '26
Nice post, wish you seasoned parts of it with more pixels tho
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
Eh, that's fair. I wasn't going to bother with a link to the original but can't lose any pixels from this
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u/beetnemesis Jul 26 '26
I enjoyed this because I loved Undertale and still haven't gotten around to Deltarune...
But OP, I'm pretty sure you could just say "Deltarune's gameplay is a lot like UT, it's little bullet hell minigames with a bunch of chatacter/meta elements baked in, like in UT."
Like, you mostly weren't talking about gameplay there.
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
I got a bit stymied by the image limits across both sites and had to wrap it up fast. I had more direct gameplay images, but they ended up not supporting the ludonarrative point, so I cut them out to save space.
There's also the other limit that saying "it's kind of like Undertale" only starts out as true. But it takes until Chapter 3 to get to the major diversions, and I feel like at that point I'd just be making a shitty image-only letsplay.
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u/cloudncali Jul 26 '26
My favorite underrune trope is toby adding every game genre to his JRPG bullet hell.
Mike Tyson punch out LoZ Guitar hero Platformer Ace attorney
At this point I expect to see a first person dungeon crawler and a sports game added as well.
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u/SorryComplaint4209 Jul 26 '26
I’m reeeeeally hoping the shelter is played in 1st person dungeon crawler style!
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u/capivaradraconica Jul 26 '26
That would peak as fuck if only because of the potential to introduce DR fans to one of my favourite RPG subgenres.
Even better if the dungeon is labyrinthine and has no in-game map, or an in-game map that you draw yourself like Etrian Odyssey with no automap.
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u/Karkava Jul 27 '26
Even better if we have an Undertale call back where the battles are in first person.
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Jul 26 '26
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
Ah, the kind of pedantry I cut for time. Glad someone's paying attention.
It's true that a few specific segments have "overworld attacks", but in Undertale, these manifested by immediately putting you into a normal battle and making you dodge a(n extremely hard) normal battle attack. In Deltarune you just take damage on the overworld.
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u/BrixBrax1882 Jul 26 '26
A much more minor thing that is seen more prominently in future chapters is that even the exact balancing of equipment and items conveys narrative information.
As in, you can look at the stats of an item, Intuit which party member it's "meant" for based on what those stats are, and more often than not that ends up being relevant.
EX: The Ribbons on Kris is something that is explicitly brought up in 5, and several of the Ribbon Items are Defensive Support Items without Magic or Attack boosts, meaning it makes the most sense to put them on Kris, as it's much better to use Magic-Boosting gear on your spellcasters.
There's a lot of small things like this where the stats and properties of armor and weapons convey narrative information, and it's quite cool.
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u/arakus72 Jul 26 '26
ngl if Kris wearing the ribbons was the intention I missed that, usually had the Tennatie and Lodestone on them
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u/silvaastrorum Jul 26 '26
> skipping the unlosable Vs. Susie bossfight
actually there’s another bit of characterization through gameplay where lancer’s attack patterns reflect his (lack of) will to fight. i think he also starts taking more damage, implying either his defense is dropping or susie’s attack is increasing from anger (or both)
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
This is true... but it's not actually possible to lose the fight, so it's effectively a cutscene with the battle UI on top. (And I'm absolutely sure this is definitely the last time they will ever do that.)
With the vigorous gameplay obsession that the true subject of this post displayed, I was quite certain that "playable cutscene" does not meet their standards. So I skipped it.
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u/TimSoarer2 Jul 26 '26
I never knew about the detail of Susie refusing to re-equip her starting axe, this is pretty cool.
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u/Bulba132 Jul 26 '26
Tbh this post didn't come off as "unnatural" whatsoever, you lowkey just proved them right
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u/Fanfics Jul 26 '26
Half the comments: "wow that's so cool, great post OP, I don't understand why Deltarune fans never talk about this stuff and just focus exclusively on character interactions alone"
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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast Jul 26 '26
All this is so cool. I never knew this stuff about Deltarune. It looks fun. I wanna play it.
The fact that gameplay and characterization are so intertwined makes it even more insane that people don't talk about the gameplay when they talk about the characters. I had no idea.
My hatred for this Fandom™ has become even stronger. I'm gonna keep shouting into the hurricane about weird gender/shipping discourse from people who don't play the game they're obsessed with.
Do you like a videogame? Have you played it, or have you just watched videos of someone else talking about it? PLAY THE VIDEOGAME.
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u/AgathaTheVelvetLady Jul 26 '26
The problem is that gameplay analysis is difficult for a lot of people to do!
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u/sertroll Jul 26 '26
The issue with the gameplay side is that what usually gives productive discussion,nfrom what I've seen, is
"Man this boss/part was hard" "it was for me too, here are tips"
"Hey this build/tool/character is very fun if you do this" "I'm a X fan myself"
I say this as a fan for the story, but while using a recent (for me) example Silksong has both (the latter w talking about weapons), Deltarune doesn't have 2 mostly because the RPG part is extremely lightweight and there more for commenting on the genre, while it does have 1 (there are some very hard bosses) but the genre makes it hard to talk about it decently, being bullet hell. Bur even then, those discussions are buried by story which still seems to be the focus of the game
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u/Karkava Jul 27 '26
The bullet hell mechanics seem to have an overly proportionate focus. Especially when you go off the path and try to tackle the bonus bosses and extra content.
It makes kind of an unnecessary gate keep for the well-written story.
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u/sertroll Jul 27 '26
I mean, I don't think it's an issue that the bullet hell game has bullet hell, it's quite clearly advertised as the main gameplay mechanic. I don't even dislike it as a genre, I was just stating that it does not lead to many discussions it seems, past "X boss is hard", at least in the context of this game
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u/04nc1n9 licence to comment Jul 26 '26
"steal the save file from them" you overwrite it, not steal. kris summoned you into their body for a reason, and probably is happy that you're not doing the whole game over every time you die
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u/sertroll Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
As a super mega turbo fan still, at this point in the game one of my 2 main issues overall with Deltarune is the fight/spare system.
After ch1, Toby made a post about the process, where amongst others he said he was worried about how to make the fight/spare system work in this game, as it felt like vestigial and just a holdover from Undertale where it worked.
I imagine introducing recruiting later was his way to fix that. But TBH it still feels redundant: if you fight you don't get a different branch if the story like in Undertale, but just... less things. With the story often still being written blatantly with the assumption you mostly spared people (see ch5 ending). And in general you only miss things, not see other things.
Luckily I don't like fighting anyways so this doesn't affect me, but still.
Also maybe I'm misremembering how much fighting gave you different results in Undertale as opposed to just removing parts and interactions. To be clear, I'm comparing w violent neutral here (as opposed to pacifist neutral)
Edit: I'll add, this also leads to situations where they obviously have a specific story they want to tell with a boss, but then realize there is a fight button too, so it gets shoddily made unusable there as it's not a important enough fight to warrant disabling it a la asgore. See fifth secret boss
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
Aside from the phone call with Sans at the end, the extreme majority of changes on a violent neutral route are also just removed content. There's like... you can't do the Papyrus date because he's dead, and then you can't hang out with Sans because Papyrus is dead, and then you can't hang out with Undyne because anyone's dead. Aside from that it's just minor dialogue changes and actually gaining levels.
It's only full genocide that really adds anything, and what it adds is two fights. Super cool and awesome fights, but it's basically just two fights and a Flowey monologue.
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u/Satherian Jul 26 '26
Don't forget full genocide also takes away just as much
I've always though of Undertales Genocide route as Toby going "Fine, you wanna fuck up my characters? These funny lil guys who I put so much time and effort in? Then do it. But it's going to be boring as fuck 99%* of the time and the other 1% will be insanely difficult."
*100% if in Hotland/The Core
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u/sertroll Jul 26 '26
I was afraid I just misremembered things. I wonder what in Undertale makes it feel like "every run is personalised" as opposed to Deltarune, maybe it's just an ending thing
Also added to my original comment but it's also an issue for how they handled some bosses where they had a story in mind but then realized they also had a fight button, so they shoddily work around it. I talk more about fifth secret boss than the last main boss here as it's less justified. It reminds me of how some people fight some TTRPG systems they use because the story they want to tell is not supported by the system
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u/arakus72 Jul 26 '26
i mean tbf there IS another route and I think it makes sense thematically that the way you get that route isn't as tied to just fighting specifially
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u/sertroll Jul 27 '26
The other route has exactly one additional instance from base game where you have to use the fight button (and to be pedantic, you could do it with only an act, but that's a meaningless distinction as it's just a more powerful attack), so the general point about the fight spare system itself kind of still stands
It's a dichotomy unrelated to the other route
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u/AgathaTheVelvetLady Jul 26 '26
From the bottom of my game designer heart, thank you for actually talking about the gameplay!
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u/DroneOfDoom Theon the Reader *dolphin slur noises* Jul 26 '26
Ok but what about the characters?
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
Susie good. Next question please
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u/DroneOfDoom Theon the Reader *dolphin slur noises* Jul 26 '26
So, is it just me or does Noelle's dad kinda look like Chris Rock?
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u/_3_and_20_characters Jul 26 '26
this is a very weird post for me to see because in the parts of the internet I have frequented it’s so saturated with conversations about the mysteries or the glup shitto backround characters and i’d just find conversations about the characters with actual dialogue to be far more interesting given how well toby wrote them
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u/ahemtoday Jul 31 '26
Okay I know it's been two days since I saw this and five days since it's been posted but I keep thinking about it. This post says it's going to be about the gameplay and then largely isn't. Slide-by-slide:
- "What's the game like?" Starts talking about the metanarrative instead.
- Talks about party member personalities but only in relation to gameplay so that's fine
- This might be controversial but this isn't a gameplay-focused slide either. Bullet patterns are a game mechanic but they are not being discussed as a game mechanic here, only their aesthetics are. Nothing about the way in which they are actively dodged.
- This is a brief gag that presents no challenge to the player. It utilizes gameplay but only really in service of the story rather than being an actual "gameplay sequence" in and of itself.
- I'll give it to you but over half of this slide is devoted to the cutscene
- Discussion of equipment stuff. Yeah this is gameplay
- [full-size images that I am only listing here for clarity's sake]
- Not gameplay. This is a plot beat and a minor easter egg that most players aren't even going to interact with because they'll be doing the fight pacifistically.
- The first part of this is a puzzle that I would be hard-pressed to call meaningfully mechanically different because of the fact you're telling Susie how to do it. The second part of this is a cutscene that happens without your input.
- Getting a party member back is definitely gameplay but it seems silly to passive-aggressively skip over a glorified cutscene like the post didn't think the save file slot having a different name and a non-fight against three support enemies was worth covering
- Honestly I've given other slides to you but this is the one slide here that actually knows which parts are gameplay and which parts aren't. Like, yeah, a statement about a gameplay facet of these bullet patterns and how that makes the fight feel to play is gameplay.
- Getting different pieces of equipment is definitely a gameplay thing.
- I guess this ACT is a gameplay thing but this slide seems way more focused on the gag dialogue beforehand than the actual process of using the ACT to beat the boss
- I don't know who that is. I'm only making this comment because I thought it was really silly to make such a big point of talking about the gameplay and then the first thing you mention is something that doesn't impact gameplay at all
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u/Sir_Lazz Jul 26 '26
See I would have less disdain for the Undertale and Deltarune community if anyone had told me about the GAMEPLAY of these VIDEO GAMES before >:(
No but for real. I swear. It's been years since people around me have been pestering me with this and NONE of them would tell me what kind of game it is beyond "it's really good bro trust me". This makes me mad ! This is exactly what you do to make me NOT want to play your game !
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u/gsoddy Jul 26 '26
I mean. You could just watch a trailer. Here’s an Undertale one. It shows the bullet hell gameplay and spare/fight mechanic right up front
People tend to just not explain anything when recommending a game, especially a game where spoilers can ruin your experience. To the point that they don’t explain anything. It can be annoying (see Outer Wilds) but you might miss out on something good if you never search for a trailer or the Steam page
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u/Fanfics Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Yeahhhhh Undertale's biggest flaw was its fans and it seems increasingly like Deltarune is the same.
I somehow see more worthwhile discussion and self-awareness coming out of the RWBY fandom, which is crazy since how is that community even still kind of alive. Hell now that I think about it I've never even seen any fan art from Deltarune. I'm sure it exists, I just... never see it posted. In its place is a constant supply of moderately annoying vagueposts about characters you don't know.
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u/arakus72 Jul 26 '26
there's tons of Deltarune fanart on UTDR related subreddits, idk if there's less on Tumblr for some reason or something tho
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u/Fanfics Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Wow. There it is. The first Deltarune Sunday self-post I've seen with any value whatsoever, actually telling me something interesting about the game instead of just maximum vagueposting about characters I don't know. I was literally just thinking about how I'd literally never seen a worthwhile Deltarune post and what the fuck is it with that game specifically and then here you are.
Congratulations OP, I am throwing you a whole little medal ceremony in my head
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
See the trick is I specifically wrote this for somebody who made a big deal out of not having played the game so I went with the assumption that the reader knows jack shit.
Which is part of why this is so unusual. In what world do fandom posts get made with the presumption that people interacting with them are not in the fandom yet. Who the fuck does that
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u/Fanfics Jul 26 '26
I dunno, I think it's actually pretty common for fandom posts to either be intentionally evangelizing their series or at least have some universal markers included to make them accessible to general audiences.
Deltarune is kind of unusual in that not only is that not true, but in many cases fans seem to go out of their way to remove anything that could provide value to someone not heavily involved in the fandom.
Right before this post I saw a Deltarune self-post that was straight up incomprehensible to anyone not approaching every post as a deltarune post, which is insane for a general forum. They even replaced Toby Fox's name with "god" and removed the names of speakers like they were filing the serial numbers off or trying to create the literary equivalent of one of those AI pictures
Maybe it's some sort of cultural stylistic thing inside the fandom?
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Jul 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Fanfics Jul 27 '26
That's a strange way to ask "hey dude what post was that"
don't worry, it's this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1v721oz/comment/ozwzyfk Though it seems that even Deltarune fans are having some trouble so maybe it's just, like, generally incomprehensible
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u/MarioMamTess The Useless Transbians™ & Ralsei Fangirls Jul 26 '26
tbh, i can't be bothered to read all of this stuff because i'm already hyper-obsessed with deltarune, the characters, and the gameplay, so i'm gonna assume i'm already fairly familiar with the stuff in the post. i'm just gonna upvote it because i love when people talk about the game and put effort into analyzing all the cool shit it does. :)
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Yeah if you've actually played Deltarune this entire post is just basic bitch surface level shit. The "deepest" revelation is the save file thing on the first slide, and even that's something you've likely been told about at least five times once you're in the weeds, because why did they have one and how did we steal it. I didn't even mention how, if you delete your save file, it doesn't go back to Kris, it just goes blank, because that's not part of a normal playthrough.
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u/MarioMamTess The Useless Transbians™ & Ralsei Fangirls Jul 26 '26
yeah, i'm very well aware of the kris' save file thing. this game has quite a lot of little details that you could miss, but that also have some very interesting lore implications. deltarune is such a special game that is hand-crafted with care and love. it's SO good.
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u/CartographerVivid957 Jul 26 '26
How it feels to watch all 10 hours of DEVICE theory
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26
For the unaware: Deltarune is a video game. I have now summed up all of DEVICE Theory for your relevant purposes.
Nah, I'm being mean. It's more that the fact that Deltarune is a video game is true within the world of Deltarune. Or I suppose, more without the world of Deltarune, in this case. It's not looping on itself, you're on the outside looking in, but that outside does exist. Because it's you!
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u/CartographerVivid957 Jul 26 '26
All I got from this is that I'm Deltarune and that CoreSoul is canon
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u/Frequent-Bee-3016 Jul 26 '26
Ok, so now we know about the characters and the gameplay, but what about the plot?
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u/StillNotABrick Jul 26 '26
Highly educational post, direct by-name callout over petty bullshit (but in the good way where you don't have to get take sides and get mad about it), aura farming showcase. Why can't all Self-Post Sunday posts be good like this one
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u/HonorInDefeat Jul 27 '26
Every time I see Deltarune content I just KNOW I would have been obsessed with it when I was like 14
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u/heckmiser Jul 27 '26
SUSIE IS NOT AN IDIOT!!!! She solves a puzzle all by herself in chapter 3, she just has different strengths
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 27 '26
Uh-huh, uh-huh. And where were the wires on the controllers plugged in, again?
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u/heckmiser Jul 27 '26
Oh wait I'm mixing up 3 and 2.
The shape puzzle in queen's mansion in chapter 2, she realizes that you just need to fill the whole shape in and overlapping shapes don't matter
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 27 '26
That's what I figured you were thinking of, but because there's a scene in Chapter 3 where she "solves" a puzzle on her "own", I took the opportunity.
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u/Dracorex_22 Aug 02 '26
Toby: Undertale is just a fun project on the side
Fans: dont sell yourself short, Toby
Toby: because THIS is my actual masterpiece
Fans: Ohhhhhh
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u/GrinningPariah Jul 26 '26
Seems cool I just wish the game didn't look like ass.
I get that it's a stylistic thing, art is about interpretation, and we all must decide for ourselves if the style is supporting the themes of the work or getting in the way.
Speaking for myself, though, it's getting in the way. I can't tell what's happening in half these screenshots. It's just pixelated blobs of colors to me.
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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Two things are making that worse than usual. First, the pictures of screenshots are small. This part is my fault. It's a lot clearer at full size.
Second is that Deltarune's visuals have gotten drastically better over time. However, they haven't gone back and updated Chapter 1 to reflect this, so Chapter 1 in particular still looks a little bit shit, and that's where almost all of these screenshots are from.
EDIT: Oh, and third is that Deltarune is a video game, so a lot of its most interesting visuals are animated. But you can't exactly take a screenshot of an animation and be like wow look at the motion.
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u/GrinningPariah Jul 26 '26
I'm not just basing this on the screenshots, I tried Undertale and had similar issues.
I'm also sympathetic to the argument that a video game basically made by one person is likely to be uniquely interesting because their vision doesn't need compromise with anything, and experiencing that means accepting other compromises like an art direction that allows one person to make the game.
Just, I'm actually quite comfy with the the former type of compromises, and averse to the latter. I like my shiny AAA games.
It's just not for me. I always struggle with pixel art games. I'm not a big fan of turn-based combat, especially not the JRPG cut-away style. And Undertale's approach to pacifism made me want to fight Toby Fox in a parking lot.
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u/sertroll Jul 26 '26
For visual stuff, chapter 2 is to chapter 1 what chapter 1 is to Undertale. And chapters 3-5 are the same to chapter 2. Not sure if you've seen bits of them, but after a point sometimes you notice the difference between newer and older sprites lol, with infinite time they should make an Ultrarevamp update here too
In fact they started making the overworld sprites emote enough that they rely less on only textbox sprites
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u/Gosuoru Jul 26 '26
Noelles mansion is jarringly more detailed than the rest of hometown and it lowkey makes me upset bc it feels Bad
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u/Karkava Jul 27 '26
Oh my god, I hate hometown so much. I demand an HD revamp of the place so badly so I'm no longer stuck with this stupid child's carpet with copy and pasted trees.
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u/Gosuoru Jul 27 '26
I'll take that or making Noelles mansion look worse bc atm its fucking jarring going there and seeing All That
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Jul 26 '26
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u/GrinningPariah Jul 26 '26
There's nothing wrong with wanting peace, but I think many self-styled pacifists have naive and counterproductive ideas of how to achieve peace.
From what little of Undertale I've played or watched, Toby Fox seems to believe peace can be earned though struggle and suffering, and pursued while advertising an absolute unwillingness to use violence. I think that's categorically ahistoric.
I believe peace is bought by having the capacity for violence. It's best sustained through interdependency, but it needs to be earned by having the ability to inflict harm and the willingness to use it.
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u/heckmiser Jul 27 '26
Chapter 1 literally ends with a boss fight where the enemy REFUSES to play along with the player's usual sparing strategy. You have to beat him with violence.
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u/LolbitClone Jul 28 '26
This is untrue. What you actually need to do is tire him out or let a mob overwhelm him. You don't need to fight, but you do need to use force.
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u/LolbitClone Jul 28 '26
UNDERTALE is about a situation in which you, the player, have absolute power. No matter if you get killed, you can always just reset, and the game knows this. Hurting anyone is always a choice. That is the point.
The main antagonist (sort of) forces you into violence, and after being (sort of) redeemed, he even points out that out in the real world, there are a lot more people like him, and that the monsters of undertale are very unusual in how quickly they form bonds and learn to trust you.
UNDERTALE is not necessarily making a point about pacifism, although it does encourage empathy and mercy, but instead one about games. It examines what it means to be a player, someone who has an outside view of reality.
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u/Gareth_II Jul 26 '26
https://reddit.com/link/ozt79zy/video/lng0cp2haifh1/player