Toby Fox says that most of the Deltarune Chapter 5 dev team has moved on, suggesting that the next part of the beloved Undertale follow-up is finally nearing release. Following up a post last month, where Fox explained that "some preliminary internal bugtesting on PC" was underway, he says the testing process is about to get underway in full.
"The professional testers are familiarizing themselves with the game now," Fox says in a new Bluesky post. "They begin formally testing on April 1st. Japanese translation quality assurance is projected to be completed in April. Outside of addressing bugs and translation, most of the development team has moved on from Chapter 5."
Fox adds that "the actual testing period will last for an indefinite amount of time." Note that this seems to be "indefinite" in the literal sense – not a euphemism for "never," as in "indefinitely delayed."
"After that, the game needs to get approved on consoles and we need to do various other things to prepare for release," Fox concludes. "That'll be all from me on this subject for a while…"
Deltarune Chapter 1 launched way back in 2018, with Chapter 2 following in 2021. Chapters 3 and 4 were released simultaneously alongside the Switch 2 launch just last year, so if Chapter 5 lands this year, it seems the pace of releases will be dramatically accelerating.
But for some Deltarune fans, the question is not what Chapter 5 will look like, but rather the shape of Chapter 6. "he keeps saying things like 'moved on from chapter 5' instead of 'moved on to chapter 6,'" as one fan notes on Reddit. "what the hell is gonna happen in chapter 5?"
"Toby very rarely using the phrase 'Chapter 6' continues to be very, very interesting," another adds.
The notion that Fox is deliberately avoiding the term "Chapter 6" is a pervasive one in the community, but you don't have to look much farther than last year's winter newsletter for some contrary truth, as Fox noted that, "in a few months, much of the team will probably already be focusing their attention on Chapter 6."
What does all that mean? Nobody knows! And that's kind of the whole point. There's some belief out there that Chapter 5 will be so consequential for the story that Chapter 6 will have to take on a form completely unlike anything that's come before – but, again, that's all speculation. Either way, it seems we won't have to wait too much longer to see for ourselves what Chapter 5 has in store.
Check out our Deltarune review for our evaluation of what's come so far.
