“(...You felt like, whatever you were, for just right now, it might be okay.)"
My DELTARUNE Summers
When my friends who are unacquainted with the game ask me what DELTARUNE is about, I’m never entirely sure how to put it into words or where to even start. Not just because of its layered, metafictional narrative, its uniquely episodic nature, and its mysterious connection to its predecessor — Undertale — but also because of what it has come to mean to me in the nearly eight years since its premiere and how the meaning of the game has shifted accordingly with the passage of time.
To provide a brief summary of the plot, though, DELTARUNE follows the adventures of Kris, a teenager and the sole human in a town full of monsters, and their delinquent classmate Susie. They discover an alternate, fantastical realm known as a Dark World in the supply closet of their high school. Upon entering the Dark World, they meet Ralsei, the prince of the darkness who explains to them that the three of them are the heroes of an ancient prophecy known as the Delta Rune. Since only one Dark Fountain — mysterious rifts between dimensions that give Dark Worlds their form — can safely exist at a time, the heroes’ destiny is to seal other, rogue Dark Fountains to prevent an apocalyptic event known as the Roaring. However, as the story progresses, the player comes to discover that the prophecy does not end happily, prompting the heroes — and, in a certain hidden storyline, the player — to try to change their fates.
I replayed the entire game before playing the new chapters throughout the course of the summer and a bit into my fall semester of second year.
Since its first installment in 2018, the story of DELTARUNE has grown alongside me from the seventh grade to the present day, though I perhaps first noticed this connection towards the end of my first year at UVA in April of 2025. After about three and a half years since its last update, DELTARUNE’s third and fourth chapters were announced for a simultaneous release in June of that year, coinciding with my move back home and my new internship. Since it had been over three years since the last chapter was released, I replayed the entire game before playing the new chapters throughout the course of the summer and a bit into my fall semester of second year. I was beyond delighted to revisit this digital world and its characters, all of whom felt so real, and I found myself picking up my controller whenever I had time between shifts at my internship and my high school hostessing gig.
Being back in my hometown certainly added a kick to my replaying of the game. The nostalgia combined with DELTARUNE’s queer themes made me feel like I was a wistful teenager again, only now I had graduated from Catholic school, was living as an out lesbian, and had acquired several more piercings to show for it. I didn’t necessarily miss being in high school, but I often thought of where I was in my life when Chapter 2 had released — a sophomore in high school, seeing my friends every day at theatre rehearsal — and how far removed from it I was starting to feel. As I did when I was 16, I took solace within DELTARUNE and its characters, particularly deuteragonist Susie, who is also a lesbian and who struggles against the conformity that Hometown, the setting of DELTARUNE, and the overarching prophecy attempt to push onto the games’ many characters. What had changed in the past three years was that, even inspired by the authenticity and bravery of Susie, I felt deeply out of place, like some sort of unwelcome specter haunting the bleak sprawl of Newport News.
I was enrolled in summer classes and working two jobs, but I had few concrete plans for the summer except to recuperate and to figure myself out, at least a little bit, and to embrace a setting that I felt more suited to at this point in my life.
In June of 2026, about a year later, DELTARUNE’s fifth chapter found me at a much different time in my life. Over the course of my second year, I had some truly great experiences with my friends, travels, and some of my classes, but I also struggled with other aspects of my academic life and my mental health, prompting me to change my major and reevaluate what I wanted from my future. I had no upcoming internship, and since I was staying in Charlottesville for the summer while all of my roommates went home, I was going to be living on my own for the first time in my life. I was enrolled in summer classes and working two jobs, but I had few concrete plans for the summer except to recuperate and to figure myself out, at least a little bit, and to embrace a setting that I felt more suited to at this point in my life. Despite the uncertainty I felt both about my upcoming summer and about the course of my life leading up to this point, this new chapter released at yet another perfect moment, thanks especially to its themes surrounding escapism, our perceptions of reality, and self-determination.
After the chaos and stress of my second year, I was looking for an escape from my reality and instead found self-realization within the newest installment of DELTARUNE.
Though DELTARUNE is an incredibly layered and thematically rich game, I find that, in discussions surrounding it, Dark Worlds — the primary settings within the game — are overlooked despite being a core element of not only the gameplay but the narrative as well. They represent various themes and events within the characters’ lives, both literally and figuratively, transforming the everyday into the truly remarkable. These surreal settings typically represent the forms of escapism sought out by the main cast and often toe the line between beautiful and unsettling in terms of their visuals, atmospheres, and inhabitants.
After the chaos and stress of my second year, I was looking for an escape from my reality and instead found self-realization within the newest installment of DELTARUNE. Not only does it directly explore the repercussions of lingering in the past and fantasies with its primary conflict, but it also has perhaps more callbacks to Undertale than any chapter yet, imbuing this chapter with a distinct sense of nostalgia that somehow resonated with me deeper than any chapter before — perhaps because of my newfound distance from my hometown and most of my friends from both high school and college, or perhaps because the fifth chapter serves as a triumphant revisit to and reclamation of the past.
Though very few of the game’s many, many mysteries were solved and the ominous prophecy still loomed over the main cast by the chapter’s end, it felt like a step in the right direction for the heroes of the Delta Rune, and I think that is ultimately what I needed from the game — not a neatly wrapped-up continuation of past chapters that addressed all of the story’s unknowns, but a reckoning between the game’s past, present, and future.
At the time of writing, both DELTARUNE and my undergraduate experience are incomplete. I won’t lie and say that I have stopped worrying about my future or that I have moved on from the past, and nor should I; however, DELTARUNE has taught me that it’s okay to not know what comes next. Ultimately, my past two summers and my time spent in the world of DELTARUNE have reshaped my fear of failure into something I believe to be more constructive — hope.
