Recap / Deltarune Chapter 1: The Beginning

The Beginning | A Cyber's World

''Once upon a time, a LEGEND was whispered among shadows.
It was a LEGEND of HOPE. (It was a LEGEND of DREAMS.)
It was a LEGEND of LIGHT. (It was a LEGEND of DARK.)
This is the legend of DELTA RUNE."

"The Beginning", initially released on October 31, 2018, is the first chapter of the episodic Role-Playing Game Deltarune, initially being presented as a "survey program" before revealing itself as the "sister game" to creator Toby Fox's 2015 project Undertale.

Against a dark void, the player is suddenly greeted by a floating red SOUL and a disembodied voice, which asks them to create a humanlike "vessel." However, the voice suddenly discards the player's creation and bluntly tells them that "no one can choose who they are in this world," declaring that the player will instead take control of Kris, the adopted child of ex-spouses Toriel and Asgore Dreemurr. The only human in a town otherwise populated entirely by monsters, Kris is a quiet loner detached from their peers.

Waking up late for school, Kris is forced to partner with resident bully Susie for a class project. The two are made to fetch some chalk from the school's supply closet, but suddenly fall down into a strange realm, where they're attacked by the buffoonish Lancer before meeting the dark prince Ralsei. Ralsei explains that they've ended up in the Dark World, and that all three of them are destined to seal a rogue Dark Fountain in order to protect both it and the Light World that Kris and Susie reside in; Susie however decides to go home herself. Ralsei teaches Kris how to handle themself in combat, encouraging the idea of defeating enemies nonviolently, before joining them on a search through Card Kingdom for both Susie and the Dark Fountain. The three eventually reunite, only for Susie to join Lancer after Ralsei tells her off for her violent recklessness.

Ralsei and Kris continue heading to the Dark Fountain while butting heads with Susie & Lancer, before the two pairs make amends again. However, when Lancer realizes that the trio plan to fight King— his father and the protector of the fountain— he betrays them by handing them over to King's forces. A heartbroken Susie breaks Kris and Ralsei out of jail and confronts Lancer, only to learn that he simply doesn't want his friends and his dad to hurt one another. Susie promises that she won't hurt King and rejoins Kris and Ralsei, now willing to try nonviolence.

The trio journey through King's castle before confronting him on the roof. King, angry that Lancer has befriended two Lightners and a Lightner sympathizer, attacks the heroes. Kris, Susie, and Ralsei eventually manage to tire King out, after which he claims that he's open to listening to reason. However, he quickly takes advantage of their mercy to trap and try to kill them, only to find his plans foiled at the last second; depending on the player's actions, he is either subdued by Susie & Ralsei or overthrown by Lancer. Ralsei thanks Kris and Susie before Kris seals the Dark Fountain with their SOUL.

Waking up in an abandoned classroom well after school has ended, Susie ponders if all of what just happened was a dream before proposing that she and Kris revisit the Dark World tomorrow, the pair having become genuine friends. The two go home, with Toriel's initial concerns about Kris' absence being assuaged when she learns that they were hanging out with a friend; all's well that end's well, right? However, in the middle of the night, Kris jolts out of bed, tears their SOUL from their body, and imprisons it in a nearby birdcage before drawing a knife and giving a Slasher Smile.

Tropes in this chapter

#-L

• 11th-Hour Superpower: As with the last game, talking with the King is useless, and trying to with any of the characters only changes the talk command to a special ACT:
  • Letting Kris talk gives you Courage, an ability which raises defense for a turn. It's also one of only two solo ACTs that uses TP, the other one being associated with the superboss.
  • Making Susie talk gives you Red Buster, which deals a lot of damage.
  • Lastly, Ralsei's talk gives you Dual Heal, which is a full party heal.
• Abandoned Area: The unused classroom is implied to have been closed off for many years, possibly even decades. There's a childhood drawing in there made by Alvin, who is presently an adult of Vague Age.
• Aesop Collateral Damage: In order to have Ralsei learn the dangers of being overly nice to villains, after healing the King, Kris and Susie are taken out by his revitalised strength, alongside Ralsei himself.
• Already Undone for You: Mentioned early on when Kris and Ralsei complete a puzzle to disarm a bed of spikes, only to find Susie on the other side. When Ralsei wonders how she got past, she responds that she didn't actually solve the puzzle, she just walked right through the spikes.
• Ambiguous Syntax: "You acknowledge the possibility of pain and seizure." Considering how the first chapter ends, that's probably not an epilepsy warning & probably not referring to anything that may happen to the player.
• Analogy Backfire: Before entering the Forest Maze, Lancer claims that he knows it "like the back of [his] head." He's not wrong.
• Antepiece:
  • Early after entering the Dark World, Kris comes across some strange objects that wobble when walking in front of them. Soon after, darker variations of the objects show up that fire projectiles when they wobble.
  • Zig-zagged with the game's first battle. At first, the game throws you in at the deep end by giving you Lancer, a miniboss, as your first encounter. Fortunately, Lancer is quite easily defeated through trial and error, and after that, Ralsei takes you over to a training dummy to teach you the controls and mechanics properly.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Should you make at least three unsuccessful attempts to clear either timed-tile puzzle, Ralsei will offer a hint on how to solve them^note Run to solve the first one, and Susie is required for the second.
  • One of King's attacks has him latch his spade tongue to the dodge window and make spikes protrude from its inside walls, followed by him pulling it around the screen. The spikes pop out the instant his tongue sticks to the window, but there's a grace period where they won't damage your SOUL if you were unfortunate enough to move it towards the edges without knowing what the attack was.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Susie's main method of fighting: She'll keep attacking enemies and won't listen to Kris. Fortunately, she gets better during the final dungeon.
• Armor of Invincibility: The Jevilstail is the most powerful armor in the chapter, and is acquired by pacifying Jevil. It gives whoever wears it +2 to every stat.
• Artifact Title: The original PC release of Chapter 1 has the filename "SURVEY_PROGRAM". This is a leftover from the chapter's launch being a Bait-and-Switch, where it was implied to just be a survey to collect audience feedback for Toby Fox's new game rather than a fully-playable demo for said game.
• Ascended Meme: Toriel mentions that Kris and Asriel enjoy playing Super Smashing Fighters, a clear Shout-Out to the Super Smash Bros. franchise. At the time of the release of Deltarune Chapter 1, a popular meme was jokingly claiming that Sans would be confirmed as a character for the then-upcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The ascension compounds when you realize that Sans tells Kris he'll be busy tomorrow, and Deltarune was released the day prior to the final Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Nintendo Direct, wherein the final character roster (which, of course, does not actually contain any Undertale characters) was revealed^note by coincidence, Sans was later added to the game as a DLC costume for the Mii Gunner.
• Automatic New Game: Upon starting the Chapter 1 for the first time, the game skips the save menu and goes straight to the "Character Customization". When the Chapter 1-only demo was first released in 2018, this helped reinforce its disguise as a "survey program".
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • At the beginning, before ending up in the Dark World, Alphys tasks Susie with getting more chalk, and then tasks Kris with making sure she actually gets the chalk. When Kris steps into the hall, we see Susie pull out what appears to be a cigarette… and then she eats it. Turns out, it's a piece of chalk.
  • In the post-game, when visiting Rudy in the hospital, he implies that it would be pointless for Noelle to wait for him to get better before continuing with her video game. The way he says it implies that it's because he's going to die from his illness. Then he adds that the reason she shouldn't wait is because she should bring the game to the hospital so they can keep playing together.
  • Throughout the chapter, you learn that the current King of Card Kingdom was originally one of four kings and imprisoned the other three due to the Knight's influence, giving the impression that your goal is to free the other kings. By the end of the chapter, however, the other kings remain imprisoned, and Lancer takes over the Kingdom instead.
• Bait-and-Switch Comparison: When examining the Susie-shaped hole left in the hedge when she bursts out after the "Create a Machine" sequence, Ralsei gives this gem.
  "It's nice Susie finally found a place she fits in… and she's getting along with Lancer, too!"
• Because You Were Nice to Me: All the enemies which you spared in a Pacifist Run will be led by Lancer to save Kris, Susie, and Ralsei from King. Lancer remarks how they all remembered the trio's kindness and decided to stage a coup because they never actually liked King, only working under him because he paid them.
• Behind the Black: Because of the game's top down viewpoint, the player can see things beyond walls that Kris wouldn't be able to. Ralsei seems to realize this, such as when he suggests that Kris give Susie the solution to a puzzle in the next room over.
• Bookends:
  • One of the earliest rooms in the Dark World is a sequence where you have to escape from Lancer as he fires spade projectiles at you. The area just before the Card Castle features a part where you chase after Lancer as the card army fires diamond projectiles at you.
  • Two of King's lines are used earlier in the chapter: Lancer's "I'm the bad guy" from when you first meet him, and Susie's "Quiet people piss me off" from the hallway cutscene during the prologue.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Ralsei takes a view of complete pacifism, while Susie takes a view of "beat the crap out of everyone." The best course of action appears to be somewhere in-between; Ralsei's way almost gets you killed by the King, while Susie's way causes all sorts of unnecessary problems. At the end, Susie and Ralsei both concede that using their method 100% of the time wasn't working, and that the other's method is sometimes the way to go.
• Cannot Kill Their Loved Ones: This forms a big part of Susie's Character Development. She fights Lancer near the end of the chapter, utterly enraged that he betrayed her. Lancer's attacks cannot hit Susie intentionally (or, eventually, at all), even while she tries to kill him. She ultimately can't go through with it, and the two ultimately reconcile, leading Susie to become more open to defeating enemies peacefully.
• Character Customization: Subverted. This chapter opens with what appears to be a typical character creation sequence, instructing you to make and name a "vessel" for yourself. As soon as this process is done, the game first congratulates you on your new creation, but then informs you that your "vessel" will be discarded, since you are not actually allowed to choose who you play as. The game proper then begins, revealing that your Player Character is Kris, whose name and appearance are fixed.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • One of the encounters can be resolved peacefully by getting Ralsei to sing a lullaby, which also puts Susie to sleep. This later turns out to be the key to peacefully resolving the fight with Susie and Lancer. It comes up again in one of two outcomes to the King's fight, where Susie notes that while she can't take the King down, Ralsei can.
    Susie: I'd never forget something I made fun of you for.
  • Similarly, Susie attacks automatically during the first battle with Lancer (who can't be killed), which is an early hint to the player that Susie attacks on her own and you'll have to prevent her from doing damage if you want a pacifist run.
  • A red stain can be found on the floor of Kris's bedroom and the birdcage next to it is described to have "survived many crashes", indicating this isn't the first time Kris has had their SOUL bloodily ripped from their body.
• Chess Motifs: To a smaller extent than Playing Card Motifs, but they're there. There's an area that looks like a chessboard, complete with pawn-like enemies attacking you.
• Chest Monster: Rouxls Kaard baits the party into his traps by having a shiny object on one side of a room, before removing it and pulling up spikes behind them.
• Cliffhanger: The first chapter ends with Kris (unprompted) pulling out their/the player's SOUL, shoving it in a cage, and drawing a knife, at which point Kris's eyes glow red like Frisk's do after finishing a Pacifist run with a previously beaten Genocide playthrough back in Undertale.
• Comically Missing the Point: Catty and Bratty are both annoyed at each other for "copying" each other's actions when they run into each other, rather than realizing they have common interests.
• Composite Character:
  • Lancer appears to be this for most of the initially-bad guy cast of Undertale, possessing a Sans-like color scheme, Papyrus's kid-brother nature and general enthusiasm for "evil," and Alphys's emotional attachment to the Big Bad.
  • The King is one of both Asgore and Flowey, inheriting the former's position and the latter's sociopathy and Machiavellian beliefs.
• Controllable Helplessness:
  • In the final scene, you can control the SOUL while it's in the birdcage. It won't change the outcome.
  • The fight between Susie and Lancer provides an unusual variation. It occurs while Kris and Ralsei are imprisoned, so they aren't able to stop Susie from relentlessly attacking Lancer. However, the player can still control the SOUL… until Lancer stops letting his attacks hit entirely, much like Toriel in the previous game, meaning the player has to endure the beatdown while either dodging or deliberately getting hit until Susie holds back on her final attack.
• The Coup: Lancer launches a coup d'état to overthrow his father and save the Lightners at the end of the game. How it turns out is the only event of consequence you can affect; if you've been a pacifist, the other Darkners side with Lancer and imprison the King, otherwise they side with the King and Lancer is forced to hold them off as you make a hasty exit.
• Creepy Circus Music: "The Circus", playing appropriately in the jester boss Jevil's room. The subsequent battle theme, "THE WORLD REVOLVING", is a more high-octane take on the trope, being a minor-key carnival melody played at a fitting tempo for a superboss fight.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Discussed after Lancer sics a group of three Hathys on the heroes; he wonders why the heroes won the battle so easily, and Ralsei tells him that it's because he stuck a bunch of support monsters together and included no enemies with aggressive attack patterns (when a Hathy is accompanied by any other monster, their attack becomes a circle of bullets that limits movement but will never hit the SOUL if it's in the middle).
• Dark Reprise: "Card Castle" and "Chaos King" take Lancer's cheery theme song and warp it into something much more dramatic and dark. Meanwhile, "Vs. Susie" mashes it up with Susie's theme to create something tragic and melancholic.
• Defeat Means Friendship: In stark contrast to Undertale, where reducing enemies' HP to 0 invariably results in them being Killed Off for Real, in Chapter 1 of Deltarune, battles never end lethally, and no matter whether you resolve the conflict by force or ACTing, the result is always almost exactly the same, causing the battle against Susie and Lancer to end in this, should you choose to beat them using violence.
• Digital Abomination: The game itself is implied to be this on this chapter: while the part where the installation program was considered a virus and the message "You will accept everything that will happen from now on" is a part of the Early-Installment Weirdness, the mysterious entity who asks you to create an avatar and decides to discard it at the last second still persists.
• Do Not Spoil This Ending:
  • The game's website advised people not to talk about it until a day after its initial release on October 31, 2018.
    * FOR PUBLIC SAFETY, YOU ARE ADVISED TO REFRAIN FROM DISCUSSION OF THE PROGRAM FOR 24 HOURS.
  • After the 24 hours were up, Toby on his Twitter thanked everyone who didn't spoil the game, and for those who did, he says he understands… because he was waiting to talk about it for six years.
• Door to Before: The top floor of Card Castle has an elevator that leads down to the bottom floor. The flavor text of the bottom door of the elevator lampshades this.
  (Currently stuck at the top floor until someone rides it down.)
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Due to the game being early in development when Chapter 1 was released as a demo, it has some mechanical differences from Chapter 2 onwards. Chapter 1 remains in its original state in the combined demo release, with no clear word on whether the changes will be backported.
  • Noelle's hair in her dialogue sprites have a slightly different shape, and she has lip flapping in her dialogue sprites as well. Chapter 2 slightly changes her dialogue sprites.
  • The mercy system is the same as it was in Undertale, where using the right ACT on an enemy will turn its name yellow and let it be spared; the only major differences are microgames to play for certain actions and the Tired status/Pacify spell as an alternate method. Chapter 2 introduces the Mercy meter to add more depth to sparing, with ACTs filling it up in varying amounts to parallel attacks lowering the health meter.
  • Only Kris can use ACT commands, with Susie and Ralsei instead having magic, meaning they sometimes can't contribute to mercy unless an ACT involves them. The first boss fight of Chapter 2 unlocks Actions that the party can use independently of Kris for boosting the Mercy meter, which are stored under the magic menu but don't use TP.
  • Fighting and sparing are de-emphasized on a mechanical level in Chapter 1. No rewards are given for either outside of Jevil's fight, and they only have an all-or-nothing effect on the final scene in the Dark World. Chapter 2 introduces a progression system dependent on violence (stat boosts) versus mercy (recruiting enemies to Castle Town), and since it wasn't present in the first chapter, every enemy from the Card Kingdom automatically gets recruited upon expanding the town.
  • Checking enemies in Chapter 1 displays attack and defense information just like in Undertale, but Chapter 2 doesn't, only occasionally offering hints for their spare requirements. Their stats are instead shown in their recruit data, alongside their LV.
  • Prior to patch 1.07, Jevil didn't give you a Shadow Crystal right away like Spamton NEO did; instead, you collected it from Seam at the start of Chapter 2. This was likely because the idea of the secret bosses holding Shadow Crystals hadn't been implemented in Chapter 1. This was later backported so that you do get the Crystal right away.
• Eldritch Location:
  • The school closet. Once Kris and Susie open it, darkness starts to spread around the corridor, and when they enter inside, it's completely black, except for some paper sheets on the floor. When they try to go further, it seems to go forever, then when they try to get out, the door suddenly shuts on them. Then, the paper sheets start to fall and our two protagonists with them. When they wake up, they have changed appearance and Kris' cellphone only makes horrible noises.
  • The place where they fall isn't better: it's a dead valley with black fluds coming out of eye-shaped holes, some "wobbly things" who start moving as you approch them, and some kind of moss-like creatures.
• Exact Words:
  • Lancer's dialogue before Kris and Ralsei enter the forest maze provides a crafty example: He'll say that he knows the forest like the back of his head, which inattentive players will likely read as "the back of his hand." And once the player enters the maze and sees Lancer going down a certain path, they will then act on the misinterpreted information and tail him, only to find out that he actually doesn't know anything about the forest (which his dialogue hinted at).
  • The game's first chapter makes it clear that your choices do not and will not matter, never changing the outcome in any meaningful way. By Chapter 2, however, there is a way to change the context of the story's events in a much more significant manner, with Noelle's choices being the key. Your decisions may not matter, but everyone else's will.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Susie's hair is wild and covers her eyes, symbolizing her wild and violent outcast vibe. After the fight with the King, it's cut to reveal her eyes (outside of battle at least), and she becomes a lot more expressive and open with her emotions from them on.
• The Faceless: All main characters are this, or have a Face Framed in Shadow. Them revealing their faces is usually a big deal.^note Kris is the only one who doesn't do this.
• False Reassurance: Without any given context, the last lyric of "Don't Forget" can sound either like genuine reassurance or a threat.
  Don't forget, I'm with you in the dark.
• Fastball Special: During the second battle with K. Round, Susie says she has an idea for pacifying the monster and needs Ralsei's help. Ralsei thinks she wants pointers on apologizing, but Susie's actual plan is to throw Ralsei at K. Round to knock its crown off.
• Foil: Ralsei to Susie: The former is gentle, knowledgeable, and polite, while the latter is anything but. They also contrast physically, with Ralsei being a scrawny Squishy Wizard, and Susie being an imposing Magically Inept Fighter. Their predominant colors are also inversions of each other — Ralsei's green to Susie's purple. Downplayed once Susie's Character Development sets in, however.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Toriel drives Kris to school, they pass by Undyne, who's missing her Eyepatch of Power. This is one of the earlier hints that the game is an elseworld setting instead of being a straight sequel.
  • On the walk home, talking to numerous characters heavily hints that something is up with Kris. Numerous people refer to them as "creepy", or "quiet", and Noelle notes that they're usually quite distant from others. They can't play piano as well as usual, according to the hospital nurse, and many people they talk to note that it's unusual for them to see Kris at all. Come The Stinger, the game implies that Kris may be possessed by the player a la the first game.
    • Further foreshadowing this is the ability to respond to characters in the epilogue as if this was still the first game when it is a separate universe, such as referencing Alphys to Undyne or acting like you know Sans. These are things that the character would not know, but the player would. In any other game, this would seem to be a simple Mythology Gag, but since this is sometimes considered a sequel to Undertale, the fact that the player is speaking through the player character is cause for a great deal of alarm.
  • Berdly says that he paired himself up with Noelle because he wanted to pair himself with the 2nd smartest classmate. Chapter 2 reveals that in reality, the only reason why he is that ahead in school is because Noelle helped him study.
  • If you look into the computer lab (which is inaccessible) in the "Librarby", the text box notes that a small white dog is coding a game in there and you'll be able to enter the computer lab when he's done. Sure enough, the next chapter is set inside the computer lab.
  • The quote from the "Astral Wolf" video game on the wall in Kris's classroom serves to establish that a Star Fox equivalent exists in this universe, probably entirely to give an in-universe explanation for Berdly's Falco Lombardi-esque Dark World costume in Chapter 2.
• Forest of Perpetual Autumn: Scarlet Forest (otherwise known simply as the Forest) is a landscape covered in red bushes and trees with blocky red falling leaves, evoking this trope. One of the music tracks that play in this area is even titled "Quiet Autumn".
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: In Chapter 1, the Delta Warriors, plus Lancer, fit this dynamic. Kris is Melancholic: quiet, determined to finish the task at hand, and implied to be a bit of an Emo Teen; Susie is Choleric: violent, aggressive, brash, and short-tempered; Ralsei is Phlegmatic: kind-hearted, peaceful, polite, calm, and patient; and Lancer is Sanguine: energetic, eccentric, hyperactive, and gullible.
• Friendless Background:
  • Kris doesn't have many friends among their classmates, even if they're on good terms.
  • Onionsan here has no friends. Kris has the option of becoming their very first friend.
  • Mettaton and Papyrus, shown as outgoing, charismatic characters in Undertale, are significantly more solitary in Deltarune.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • The player choosing Ralsei's actions is an expression of Kris, the leader, telling him what to do. Conversely, Susie is too hot-blooded and violent to listen, meaning that she always attacks each turn and the player isn't even given an action menu for her. After her Character Development, however, she becomes more open to nonviolent solutions and listening to Kris, allowing the player to choose her actions from then on.
  • Ralsei's Pacify magic puts any enemy to sleep as long as they're already tired. The final fight makes the King weary, and in the non-pacifist ending, Ralsei takes advantage of this after the King's I Surrender, Suckers.
• Good Morning, Crono: The game begins with a shot-for-shot recreation of the Trope Namer, with Toriel waking Kris up for school (first against a black screen before the scene fades in) and opening the blinds to let the sunlight in before exiting, after which the player gains control of Kris.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The aftermath of the fight with the King changes depending on how much violence you used in the game. However, you can still get the neutral ending even if you've been playing mostly as a pacifist. This is because while Susie was in your party and unable to be controlled, you have to use your first turn in fights to warn enemies so they can avoid her attacks. This is something that is very easy to overlook.
  • The in-game descriptions of the Choco Diamond and Hearts Donut only say that their healing varies, with no specifics. The game doesn't tell you that the amount of health they restore varies depending on which character you heal with them.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: Ralsei makes direct reference to interface elements and controls as part of his tutorial-giver role. This leads to an amusing moment in the first block puzzle, as Susie lacks such awareness.
  Susie: (Who the hell is "[Z]"?)
• Heroic Willpower: The trio demonstrates this after the battle with King. Despite King suckerpunching all three at once, Kris steps in front of Susie and blocks the blow. King then knocks Kris away and plans to make their death painful; Susie returns the favor and shoots him in the back. Then in the neutral-violent run, Ralsei casts a sleeping spell.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Susie threatened to beat up Kris for being too quiet, though it was more likely over Kris catching her stealing the chalk. When the King taunts Kris for being quiet before planning to kill them, also saying how "Quiet people piss me off," Susie shoots him In the Back and says, "Get away. From my. Friend."
• Hypocritical Humor: If you try to buy from Susie and Lancer's bake sale stall while completely broke, they admonish you for being irresponsible with your money, which they bet was wasted on pastries. This is after they've offered to sell you a cookie to get the funding for their "evil plans"… and if you can afford it, they'll immediately spend the money on a donut.
• Internal Homage: Susie's solo fight against Lancer parallels the first game's fight against Toriel in a number of ways. In both cases, the foe is a family member of the king that guards the protagonist's way back home, and they're trying to prevent the protagonist from meeting the king in order to avoid bloodshed. Once the fight goes on for long enough, the foe starts attacking exclusively by dropping projectiles from above that are guaranteed to miss, showing their reluctance to fight someone they'd started growing close to.
• Ironic Echo: Lancer's "I'm the bad guy" line is echoed by King just before you fight him.
  King: To my people, I'm a hero. To you? I'M THE BAD GUY!
• I Surrender, Suckers: After his fight, the King pretends to have a Heel–Face Turn to get Ralsei to heal him… then, once he's back at full health and power, he turns around and beats the party to within an inch of their collective lives.
• Joined Your Party:
  • Parodied. Ralsei prompts a message to appear when Susie joins the party for the first time with an excessively grand fanfare, after which she tries to walk at a distance such that no one can tell she's associated… and a message pops up informing you of that with exact same fanfare, albeit warped. The same message and fanfare return when Lancer joins the party, and then when they get a piece of candy. At this point, Susie has enough and cuts it off.
  • Later on, when you're escaping the prison and Susie promises to try being more cooperative, a short piano jingle plays with the message "Susie joined the party for real". This is the jingle used for later party recruits such as Noelle.
• Karmic Jackpot: Upon getting the Broken Cake repaired it becomes the Top Cake, a powerful healing item which restores a whopping 160 HP to your whole party. Alternatively, you could return it to the chef who made it, who will reward you with a free, endless supply of less powerful Spin Cakes (though you can only carry one at a time). Not only does this get around the Too Awesome to Use issue the Top Cake has, but the Spin Cakes also get stronger in later chapters — by Chapter 2, they've gone from restoring 80 HP to 140.
• Lethal Joke Item: Ralsei's manual is initially introduced as an unusable item that has some amusing dialogue when inevitably gets thrown out for more useful items. However using it in battle makes regular enemies instantly go into a tired state, and using it twice against Clover makes her spareable.
• Lighter and Softer: This chapter has a lighter tone than the whole of Undertale. The game mechanics are more focused on solving puzzles and befriending enemies than fighting, and no one can die, even if you decide to attack all your enemies.

M-Y

• Meaningful Echo: The phrase "Quiet people piss me off" is used twice in the first chapter. One is used as a Establishing Character Moment for Susie. The other time, it's used by King and acts as a catalyst for Susie fully completing her Heel–Face Turn.
• Medium Awareness: Seam specifies how their name is pronounced, which is only necessary to do in text. This suggests that they can see the text, which has interesting implications considering with whom they are associated.
• Meta Twist:
  • Of course it wouldn't make sense for Kris to assume that Undyne would know anything about Alphys, or to claim that they've met Sans before. But they'd be perfectly reasonable assumptions for the player to make if they've come into the game having played Undertale.
  • The King pulling an I Surrender, Suckers on the party, especially if he is defeated without attacking him. In Undertale, most bosses that cease fighting the player character have genuinely turned around and try to befriend them. Anyone expecting King to undergo something similar (even though he turns against his own son prior) will be taken off guard when it turns out he really is the Hate Sink evil ruler he's built up to be and nearly finishes off the gang after tricking Ralsei into healing him. Also worth noting is that the very same tactic can be employed by the player against certain bosses in Undertale.
• Monster Clown: The superboss, Jevil, who is a jester devil who also represents the joker in a deck of playing cards.
• Multiple Endings: Heavily downplayed compared to Undertale. While killing enemies is impossible, acting violently enough changes how the battle against the King ends, with Ralsei putting him to sleep. If this is not the case, Lancer leads a huge mob that overthrows and imprisons the King.
• Multiple Head Case: Clover, a three-headed (and thus both Club-suit and shamrock-shaped) hydra, whose three heads make complete statements, but in different moods for each part. One is dere, one is tsun, and one is just practical.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Talking to one of the cars held up by Undyne will have them ask how they're supposed to get past her, and come to the conclusion that they should just run away. In Undertale, defeating Undyne without violence is achieved by running away from her until she passes out from exhaustion.
  • The book in the top-right bookshelf of the Library asks the reader to remember the author's name, Hots Fireguy. Heats Flamesman was a character in Undertale who asks the player to remember his name.
  • In the Diner, a fire elemental (specifically the Deltarune equivalent of Undertale's Fuku Fire) wants to be a waitress, but decides against it, saying that she'd melt all the ice. Grillby, another fire elemental, runs a bar in Undertale.
• Nap-Inducing Speak:
  • When first dealing with Susie's tendency to wallop everything in front of her, Ralsei offers to compromise by telling Susie that she can weaken enemies so that they become Tired and that he can put them to sleep with Pacify. Susie snarks that just listening to Ralsei is making her tired.
  • Lecturing a Rudinn in battle will cause it to become Tired. Trying to convince a Rudinn Ranger has the same effect, as does reading Ralsei's manual to several enemy types.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Clover's three heads: one is cheerful and friendly, one is abrasive, and one is a Shrinking Violet who tries to be nonconfrontational.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: If Susie is ordered to flirt with a Head Hathy, her response is "Annnnnnnnnd hell no." After failing miserably the first time, she flat-out refuses to do it again and delegates the ACT to Ralsei and then Kris on subsequent uses.
• Non-Standard Game Over: If you lose against Lancer and Susie, the screen cuts to black instead of the SOUL shattering, and the party is put back in the previous room. Re-entering their room has Ralsei ask whether he and Kris can join the villains, as dictated by the rules of their battle, but Lancer and Susie decline, saying that it's more fun to beat them into submission.
• Noodle Incident: When Ralsei tries to get Susie to compliment enemies, he suggests saying things that she wishes people would say to her. Her attempts include things like "You are unbanned from Free Ham Sandwich Day" and "Please keep body tackling the soda machine."
• Not Completely Useless: The Glowshard is described as being sellable at shops when hovered over in battle, and it has no use against most enemies. Using it against a Rudinn, however, consumes the Glowshard and makes the Rudinn spareable, a marginally useful case if Kris is otherwise occupied.
• Not Himself: After returning from the Dark World, the player can wander around Hometown and talk to the NPCs. Some of the residents imply that Kris isn't acting like themselves. Noelle comments on how Kris is more talkative than usual, her dad Rudolph implies Kris has forgotten things that they should know, the hospital clerk comments on how Kris isn't normally so bad at playing piano, and in general, Kris seems a lot less "creepy" to the townspeople.
• NPC Roadblock: After defeating the King, C. Round blocks the player from exiting his throne room, preventing the player from accessing the rest of the Dark World.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During Susie's cutscene fight against Lancer, she briefly stops smiling once she realizes that Lancer isn't fighting back anymore. And even before the fight against King starts, Susie drops her smile once she starts to realize that Lancer's attempt at talking King out of fighting isn't going to work. She doesn't smile for the entirety of the following fight against King (except using Buster spells).
• Opening Boss Battle: The very first encounter against Lancer, a Mini-Boss. The fight even takes place before the tutorial battle!
• Or Was It a Dream?: After arriving at the fountain, Kris and Susie find themselves back at the school, in a room with a chess board, playing cards, and some toys that look like the characters they encountered. But both of them remember what happened, and swapping out Kris's Wooden Blade to a Spookysword changes Kris's Light World weapon to a Halloween Pencil. It's left ambiguous as to whether it really was just a dream or not until Chapter 2.
• Playable Epilogue: Two. The first one happens after you defeat King but if you choose to return before shutting off the fountain. You can only go back to the throne room, but with the exception of Seam and a few of the minor NPCs, everyone comes to say goodbye to Kris and Susie (although this happens when you play peacefully, a violent run means Kris and Susie have to leave immediately). The second is after they arrive back from the Dark World, as Kris can explore Hometown before going home, which is possible in later chapters as well.
• Player Nudge: When you first fight alongside Susie, you'll notice that you can't keep her from attacking enemies. However, there's a "Warn" action that makes every enemy avoid her slashes. When she next joins the party, she immediately and unavoidably wallops a C. Round into orbit (this does not ruin a Pacifist Run). Ralsei then directly addresses the need to warn enemies about her, making sure that the player can't miss this mechanic. If you've been following a Pacifist Run, then this also serves as a hint that you can't actually kill anyone in battles.
• Playing Card Motifs: Most of the chapter focuses on the King, his son (representing a Jack of Spades), and his troops which represent the various card suits. Susie and Kris later wake up in a classroom full of knocked-over cards.
• Production Foreshadowing: There are a couple of references to the RPG Maker games Temmie released in the interval between Deltarune's first two chapters; Escaped Chasm and Dweller's Empty Path.^note Perhaps to return the favor, the latter includes a brief cameo from expies of Kris, Susie, and Ralsei in search of a fountain.
  • There's a doll of Yoki, the protagonist of Dweller's Empty Path, sitting on Seam's top shelf. This same doll also makes an appearance in Escaped Chasm, where collecting it allows the player to visit the Developer's Room after the credits roll. In Deltarune Chapter 2 the doll can be found in the same place as Chapter 1, although it has been redrawn to match the changes her design has gone through since then.
  • During the Hometown epilogue, the player can find Temmie in the "Librarby" reading "a comic full of hot demon guys", likely alluding to Zera,◊ a character fitting this description who appears in both games. Escaped Chasm includes a similar gag in the aforementioned developer's room, where the player can ask Temmie if Zera really needed to be a "handsome demon man", to which she'll blush and say yes.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: Seam explains to Kris that their name is pronounced "Shawm" (similarly to Sean). They follow that up with, "And this is my little Seap" ("Shop").
• Punch-Clock Villain: All the enemies you encounter save for Jevil and the King are only fighting the heroes because they work for King, even though they dislike him. Lots of flavor text is things like "All hail the man who pays us" and "I need to make rent this month," and you even encounter a Rudinn who says he's on break and isn't going to fight you until he's back on the clock.
• Puzzle Boss: Jevil, should you choose to go for a Pacifist route— your only options are to use spells and items to weaken his attacks and to restore your own HP, which will gradually tired him out and reduce how many turns you need to survive until he gains the Tired status. Furthermore, the "Pirouette" ACT has a different effect for each turn of a nine-turn cycle that you use it on, requiring you to keep track of how many turns have passed for the best results.
• Red Herring: A lot of the plot details are set up in a similar fashion to the previous game, only to subvert expectations.
  • Susie threatens Kris early on and is a berserker who attacks monsters on sight and doesn't care about the quest she's nominally on, much like a No Mercy run from the previous game, but she refrains from killing anyone and ultimately makes a Heel–Face Turn.
  • A mysterious doorframe appears early on and savvy players might expect them to tie into Gaster as they did in the previous game. They end up being a fast travel system.
  • Lancer's dad, the King, looks like a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Asgore, right down to one of the people close to him trying to persuade both you and him not to fight (Undyne for Asgore, Lancer for the King). However, when you actually encounter the King, not only does he threaten to throw Lancer off a roof if the Lightners don't kneel before him, he also tricks Ralsei into refreshing him so he has them at his mercy again. He ends up being put to sleep by Susie via Ralsei's pacify spell, or being captured by Lancer when he turns his own troops on him.
• Refusal of the Call: After listening to prophecy, Susie immediately ignores it and rushes to the Fountain to return home.
• Rhyming with Itself: When you ask the TP Master about gaining TP, he rhymes the word "bullets" with itself.
  TP Master: You get TP when you DEFEND. Protect yourself, then cast SPELLs, friend. You also get TP by getting close to bullets. Look for the heart outline when you get close to bullets.
  Susie: You rhymed "bullets" with "bullets."
  TP Master: B-because it's important!
• Route Boss: Subverted. At one point, Susie and Lancer will have you make a machine for them to use against you, and you are given options on what type of machine it is (you can even make it a duck). However, when you finally confront your creation, Susie and Lancer blow it up and fight you themselves.
• Running Gag: Lancer being not very good at this whole "bad guy" thing.
• Sampling: "ANOTHER HIM", the song for the create-a-character intro, directly samples that weird robotic screeching during the Giygas fight in EarthBound.
• Sequence Breaking: Downplayed; Ralsei will be amazed if you interact with the hidden tree in forest before solving the puzzle that lets you see it.
• Shall I Repeat That?: Parodied. Saying "no" when asked if your choices during the character creation were honest causes the game to proceed regardless rather than starting over like in other games.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: When Susie leaves the party after the first fight with K. Round, she takes her armors with her if she has any equipped (you can't remove or replace her axe before she leaves). When you fight her and Lancer later on, her Check description will note that she has greater defense thanks to the armor you gave her. You regain access to whatever she has equipped once she permanently joins in the Card Castle.
• Snake People: The Rudinns and Diamond King have a serpentine body with arms and a diamond-shaped head.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Alphys sets out milk in a saucer at night, notices it disappearing, and though she never actually observes what's drinking it, she'd like to imagine there's a cat responsible. A cat that may or may not exist due to being unobserved: Schrödinger's Cat, perhaps?
  • When Jevil challenges the party to a battle, Susie boasts that he'll be "dealing with a couple of sharks". Being in the Card Kingdom, this might be a reference to "card sharks", a term used to describe skillful or deceitful poker players
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: After the fight against the King, he dares Susie to kill him and prove to Lancer that she's a (figurative) monster, once and for all. Fortunately, thanks to either Lancer or Ralsei's intervention, she doesn't have to.
• Sudden Downer Ending: At the chapter's end, Kris changes in disposition, imprisons the SOUL, brandishes a knife, and flashes a Slasher Smile. Subverted when the following chapter starts with nothing bad having happened overnight after all (at least not on-screen).
• Symbol Swearing: Susie's choice of name for the team is apparently pretty darn rude, but the game only displays a random series of punctuation (and it really does seem to be random, differing from game to game and even sentence to sentence). Apparently Lancer's dad would be upset at Lancer for merely hearing the word.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: When you encounter the first block puzzle, Ralsei tries to read the rules, only to find that they've been vandalized by Rouxls Kaard. He complains that vandalism is against the rules before reading the next line of writing left by Rouxls, which claims that he makes his own rules.
• Tastes Like Friendship: Called out by name when Susie lets Lancer have the candy he helped her get. When she asks what that tastes like, Lancer says it tastes "like [his] teeth are disintegrating".
• Team Mercy vs. Team Murder: This is a large part of the conflict between Susie and Ralsei in Chapter 1. While Ralsei believes everyone can be spared and given mercy, Susie prefers attacking everyone, to the point of refusing to listen to Kris' orders for the majority of the chapter. It's only after her falling out and reconciliation with Lancer that she starts trying to be more merciful to her opponents, at which point the player can get her to spare enemies of her own accord.
• Terms of Endangerment: Lancer seems to be trying for this— he calls Ralsei "you sweet little pumpkin" and "you delicious little apple"— but as usual, it fails to be threatening in any way.
• Toy Time: The chapter takes place in a world with anthropomorphised playing cards, checker pieces, pawns, and building blocks. The end of the chapter reveals that the entire adventure took place in an empty classroom with toys strewn about.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Salsa for Lancer. He and Susie are seen munching on some salsa he stashed away in a hollow tree stump, and he's dug a ton of holes and stuffed them with salsa in his room in the Card Castle.
• Training Dummy: Like in Undertale, the first battle encounter is a dummy, crafted by and resembling Ralsei to teach Kris various skills. If you repeatedly attack it, Ralsei wonders what this says about your feelings towards him, and you can also hug it, or hug Ralsei.
• Twisted Echo Cut: The opening of the game has the voice telling you who you are get interrupted by Toriel pestering Kris to wake up.
  Voice: No one can choose who they are in this world. Your name is—
  [cut to Kris's bedroom]
  Toriel: KRIS! Kris, if you do not wake up, we will be late for school!
• Unhand Them, Villain!: When King grabs Lancer by the neck for failure to kill the Lightners, Susie furiously demands he "let him go". So of course that gives King the idea to threaten to throw Lancer off the castle roof if the three of them don't surrender.
  King: You want me to LET HIM GO!? Then how about this...? I'll drop him off the edge and let him splatter... Unless you all KNEEL and learn your place!
• Useless Useful Spell: Kris's Courage ACT increases defense for the entire party for 25% TP, but only does so for one turn. You're better off saving up to cast Susie's Red Buster to help end the fight early.
• Violence is the Only Option: In the battle against the King, no matter what you do, trying to talk him down will ultimately have no effect, as while he stops fighting due to becoming tired (by weathering his attacks) or by his injuries (by attacking him), he pretends that he has been talked down by the party, and convinces Ralsei to heal him, whereupon he attacks again. Either way, he isn't killed, but the fact is that he never would have listened to reason.
• Visual Pun: K. Round is a checkers piece. It gets stronger when it moves to the end of the board and gets crowned.
• Wham Line:
  • One not from the game itself, but rather from the Twitter account, which was hacked by the Voice in the lead-up to the demo's surprise release, clueing fans in to who exactly they are (possibly) dealing with:
    I HAVE SOMETHING. SOMETHING I WANT TO SHOW YOU.
    SOMETHING. I THINK YOU WILL FIND. VERY. VERY. INTERESTING.
  • From the character creation screen, players expecting this to be a survey for a future project (as Toby tweeted the day prior to the release of the "survey") or choice-driven game like Undertale receive their first big shock as the game reveals its true colors:
    YOUR WONDERFUL CREATION...will now be discarded.
    No one can choose who they are in this world.
  • While on the way to the school, Toriel drops a line which is the first real indicator that this is not the same universe as the original game.
    Toriel: I hope it stays this way when Asriel visits next week.
  • One of the most casual involves you walking up to Undyne and asking her about Alphys, with her response being:
    Undyne: Alphys? Who's Alphys? No idea who you're talking about.
• Wham Shot:
  • When the game was first released, the very first shot of the game proper is when Toriel wakes you up, revealing that this is a follow-up to Undertale rather than a survey program. Of course, now this is a Late-Arrival Spoiler.
  • Ralsei removing his hat and hood at the end, revealing that he looks a lot like Asriel. Judging by Susie's reaction, this is one both in and out of universe.
  • Right at the end of Chapter 1. Kris is tossing and turning in the middle of the night, when they jump out of bed and start walking around very slowly. They then stop in the middle of the room and pull their own SOUL out of their body, before throwing it into the birdcage from earlier. They then turn their head around slowly, revealing a wicked smile and glowing red eye, before pulling a knife out of their pocket. Exactly what this means is still unclear, though the parallels to Chara from Undertale are very apparent.
  • The implications aren't yet clear, but enter the "Librarby", and you'll find an NPC who looks like a colorized version of the only Gaster follower from Undertale to lack a colored counterpart. If you speak to them, they cryptically mention a book upstairs, which cannot be accessed (a few, but not all, can be reached in Chapter 2).
• What the Hell, Player?: Played for Laughs with the "Create a Machine to Thrash Your Own Ass" sequence. The duck parts all have negative descriptors informing you that picking those parts will make you lose points. After choosing all three parts, instead of the program asking you if you wish to confirm your machine choice, it asks you, "Your machine sucks ass. Is that OK?"
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • The Card Kingdom, enigmatically, appears to be this for a neutral/pacifist run of Undertale. To wit: our main characters fall down a hole into another world in the underground, where they meet a kindly royal goat who advocates pacifist action against mostly goofy, light-hearted enemies. The player slowly wins over (or tries to murder) the monster populace while making friends with a quirky, entirely harmless subordinate to the enemy king. At last, our two main characters reach the final area, where they face off against the king in their most morally difficult fight thus far. Afterwards, the player is allowed to go back through a few hallways, wishing goodbye to all the friends they made over their journey. They even get to meet Asriel at the end!
  • Susie's arc in the first chapter is clearly meant to echo a neutral run player of Undertale. She begins her adventure in the Card Kingdom like a regular RPG, rejecting the Toriel stand-in as being no fun and deciding to devote herself to "the bad guy." This leads her to bond with the Papyrus stand-in, who she can't bring herself to kill when finally afforded the opportunity. She then tries to turn herself around as a more pacifistic player who is still willing to fight when no other option can be reached.
  • The prophecy Ralsei tells to Kris and Susie is both an Internal Homage to Undertale as well as Final Fantasy, one of the founders of the RPG genre.
  • The first chapter also forms an analogue to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass — an even more explicit one than Undertale, which itself had definite shades of it. Falling into a wacky kingdom where things don't work as they do in the real world. Crossing a giant chessboard at one point. Playing card themes, along with sundry other classic board games. Hapless royalty. It-was-all-a-dream-or-was-it ending. Deltarune even railroads the characters in much the same way as Alice's choices don't seem to matter much in her adventures.
• Would Hurt a Child: The King grabs Lancer's throat when he finds out that he let the heroes get away. And, of course, the heroes themselves are children and he has no problem trying to kill them.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Exaggerated with Rouxls Kaard, who seldom makes it three words without misapplying some archaism.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Averted. Susie and Kris enter the Dark World, and it takes several hours for them in-game to help Ralsei defeat King and shut down his Dark Fountain. By the time they leave, school has long ended and Toriel is frantic since Kris wasn't there for pickup.
• You All Look Familiar: Lampshaded for the second K. Round battle. Ralsei keeps insisting that this one looks distinct and unique, which makes Susie constantly object that it looks exactly identical to the first one.
• You Know What You Did: We don't know what Asgore did that caused Toriel to leave him, since as far as we know he didn't kill six children as he did in Undertale. All we know is Toriel glares at his Apology Gift bouquets and mutters the proper place for them is in the trash.
• Your Mom:
  • Sans slyly tells Kris that he already "befriended" their mom last night. She came in to the store to buy chocolate kisses.
  • Berdly tells Kris that if they don't go after Susie, they'll have to partner with their mom for the project again. Given that this is Berdly, it's almost certainly intended to be insulting.

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