Toby Fox comments on Deltarune Development Progress

Delta rune Chapter 5 is still several months away, as a new message from Toby Fox sets a realistic timetable for the release of the next chapter in the episodic bullet hell RPG. While fans still have a long time to wait, move on Delta rune Chapter 5 is coming along nicely, and its creators want fans to know what to expect as it creeps closer to its conclusion.

The follow-up to the wildly successful Undertale takes place in a completely different universe, Delta runes first chapter was released exclusively on PC on Halloween 2018, with ports to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch following just a few months later. Fans who dived in at launch had to wait almost three full years for the second chapter to be released in September 2021, with Delta rune Chapters 3 + 4's release date is taking even longer, launching on all platforms in June 2025, just in time for the release of the Nintendo Switch 2. With three more chapters planned, the next installment should leave fans with a lot less downtime, but exactly how much is still uncertain.

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What to expect from Deltarune Chapter 5

Deltarune's new chapter has set the stage for what comes next, and while the adventure can be unpredictable at times, foreboding abounds.

Deltarune Chapter 5's Progress “Going Great”

The last major update on the Delta rune Chapter 5's release date was revealed by Fox around mid-September, predicting that fans will be able to dive into it sometime in the first half of 2026. Now, an even more recent update from the creator, published in the game's official Winter 2025 newsletter, seems to indicate that the previously revealed timetable will still hold true, if not seeming a little optimistic. According to the newly revealed information, Chapter 5 will require “several months to release the game where we are now.” That leaves a big, vague window of time for a potential release to fall under, but Fox has detailed quite a few things that need to happen before the next chapter is ready to make its debut.

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A progress report shows that a lot of work has already been put into the current project, noting that all the rooms in the next chapter are complete except for some necessary work to touch up the backgrounds. Likewise, all of the game's scenes are practically complete and just need some polishing to get them ready for release. There are only a couple of battles that remain unfinished, but they are all already technically functional from start to finish, with some boss battles in Delta rune Chapter 5 needs some tweaking to their bullet hell pattern and pacing before Fox can officially declare them complete.

Looking to the future, the update notes that the localization of Chapter 5 is already underway, and once that phase is complete, it will be ready to move on to a professional testing phase. Additionally, January will be the time to shift focus to making sure the game runs correctly on all available consoles. Given that the first four chapters of Delta rune on the Nintendo Switch 2 uses its mouse mode, and that this feature could return as part of Chapter 5, this part of the process could potentially pose some challenges for Fox as he works to ensure that all versions of the game are as bug-free as possible at launch.

There's no exact estimate for the length of Chapter 5, but Fox promises it will “contain hours of fun!” The length of chapter i Delta rune has increased since its early days in 2018, with completing Chapter 4 taking about twice as long as it takes to complete the same feat in Chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 sit neatly in the middle of the ever-increasing game length graph, so some fans might expect Chapter 5 to deliver an adventure that will take more than 10 hours for completionists to play.