Toby Fox talks about Deltarune, shows concept art in interview with Nintendo Japan

Deltarune Chapter 2 is now available on Switch, totally free. It is from the same creator who made Undertale, in fact, the title itself is an anagram of Undertale, and to celebrate the launch, Nintendo Japan secured an interview with Toby Fox himself.

A massive disclaimer here: There are a lot of parts of the interview where Google Translate didn’t work very well, so apologies in advance … but here are some highlights!

“My feelings are now … tired. I want a day off. Can I [speak to] Mario for a moment? “Take me to Yoshi Island.” I also want to eat that green fruit with an extended time limit. If you eat it for breakfast, you can fall asleep for 27 hours a day, right? “
– Toby Fox on how he is

Fox actually hired a team of people to help him finish the game (you can see the full credits here), and talks about how that affected development:

“The time it took to develop ‘Chapter 2’ was actually a year and a half. There were a lot of things before we could start full-scale development. However, three years is a long time … Sorry a little for making that everyone wait so long …

I programmed “Chapter 1” and “UNDERTALE” by myself, but now I can’t program for a long time because I hurt my wrist. So “Chapter 2” is 90% scheduled by another team member. Yes, I became a director from this point on (imagine a professional dog in a beret). “

However, leading a team comes with its own challenges, and Fox says “coaching people is easy,” but getting them to do what’s in your head is “10.2 times harder” than doing it yourself.

As for Chapter 3, Fox says (jokingly!) That the development time is extended by a year every time someone asks when it will come out. There seem to be 7 chapters planned, and Fox says they are yet to come:

But serious story, once chapters 3, 4 and 5 are done, I’d like to release them. It took me a year and a half to develop Chapter 2, so it’s a simple calculation … yes, is that a lie !? Help!

Finally, a fun tip from Toby Fox, who studied Japanese and was able to help locate the game, which was done by industry legends 8-4 (who also located Return of the Obra Dinn, Hades, and Firewatch):

The Japanese word 「グ ラ マ ー」 (glamor) has a slightly different meaning than the English word “glamor”. In English, it means “luxury” or “shiny”, but in Japanese, 「グ ラ マ ー」 means something like “big boobs and big buttocks”.

For the first time, I knew that the BGM of “UNDERTALE” against Mettaton and the Japanese title was “Brilliant Death Fight”.

The original English title is “Death By Glamor”, so if this is a title like “Killed by Glamor” in Japanese … Japanese [would] say, “Mettaton is an enemy who suffocates the player with big tits and glutes.” I could have misunderstood.

Goodness.

The rest of the interview is full of spoilers, so we’ll leave it there, but if you want to check it out for yourself, head over to the Nintendo Japan blog!