Perhaps to nobody’s particular surprise, the release of the long-awaited third and fourth chapters of Deltarune, alongside the game’s official retail launch, have reignited a fandom that never really burned out. I know I played it on launch day, and was more than happy to pay Toby Fox his asking price.
Deltarune’s not even done yet, and I still have every confidence that it will go down in gaming history as an indie masterpiece, just like its predecessor.
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The thing about playing masterpieces, though, is that they put you in a very particular mindset. Specifically, the mindset of “I want more of this exact thing injected directly into my veins.” Since we don’t know exactly when we’ll be getting more Deltarune, we have to busy ourselves with other games in the meantime.
Luckily, there are plenty of games, big name and indie, that offer various blends of metatextual narratives, lovable characters, and the occasional pinch of existential despair.
10
Undertale
If You Somehow Haven’t Played It Yet
It kind of blows my mind that anyone could have played Deltarune without having played Undertale. Deltarune is, for all intents and purposes, a sequel to Undertale, with a lot of its story beats deliberately playing on expectations formed from that game. Even so, I have seen plenty of Deltarune players saying they haven’t played Undertale, so let me say it plainly: yes, you should.
Undertale was a true bolt of lightning, an indie game trendsetter the likes of which the industry had not seen prior. Beneath its seemingly cheap, MS Paint overworld sprites dwelled intricate gameplay mechanics and a positively heartwrenching story crammed full of characters that remain fully ingrained in the public consciousness.
I played Undertale not long after it first launched back in 2015, and even then, I already knew who Sans was beforehand.
You should absolutely experience Undertale, both for the sake of trying a major gaming success story and because it might just give you a greater appreciation for what you’ve seen in Deltarune.
9
Omori
Let’s Get Real Sad Together
I think part of what makes Deltarune and Undertale so interesting is their deconstructive approaches to the RPG genre as a whole, urging you to settle your conflicts peacefully rather than with violence.
RPGs can be very evocative if you know what you’re doing, both challenging norms and making you think a little more about yourself in the process. One of the best games to ever do both for me is Omori.
Omori is a little difficult to discuss for two reasons: the plot has a lot of layers that are very easy to spoil, and the game covers some extremely sensitive subject matters, including depression, suicide, and self-harm. It is a very heavy game, and I would not recommend it if you’re sensitive to those kinds of topics.
If you can power through the heavy stuff, though, you’ll find a deeply emotional story about a young boy who’s just… going through it. To say the least.
Even putting aside the heavy themes, Omori also has a pretty cool combat system, not quite as dynamic as Deltarune’s, but a little more involved. It all revolves around emotions, using abilities to change your party’s and enemies’ states of mind to increase or decrease damage in a rock-paper-scissors cycle.
8
In Stars And Time
A Different Take On Metatextual Saving
Have you ever thought objectively about saving mechanics in games? From our perspective, it’s just a convenient way to pick up progress after dying or taking a break. But what if the game’s protagonist was aware of their ability to save, both as a convenient safeguard and an existential prison keeping them trapped in an adventure? That’s the thorny thicket that you get to navigate with In Stars and Time.
In Stars and Time is a seemingly simple fantasy RPG about a gaggle of adventurers seeking to save the world from being frozen in time by a mad King.
The catch is that our protagonist, Siffrin, is trapped in a time loop that neither death nor victory over the King can seem to break them out of. The game becomes a sort of 4D adventure, where you have to jump back and forth through the loop to subtly shift the flow of events.
In Stars and Time, much like Deltarune, excels in its character work. Siffrin and the party are some of the most lovable, relatable characters I’ve ever seen in a game, and the tangible despair that Siffrin experiences as the loop goes on gave me a tangible feeling of dread and sadness up my spine.
7
Mother 3
It’s Worth Finding A Way To Play It
It’s well-known that Toby Fox is a big fan of the Mother/Earthbound series, having gotten his start in game design making a Halloween ROMHack for Earthbound. In 2021, he celebrated the 15th anniversary of Mother 3 on his X/Twitter, writing that if he hadn’t played Mother 3, he never would have conceived of most of Undertale’s bosses or his many musical composition hallmarks.
It should go without saying, then, that Mother 3 is an excellent game to play if you’re hankering for a similar vibe to Deltarune. It has that similar quirky vibe with an underlying air of serious, potentially world-ending plot development, dotted with sudden gut punch emotional moments. There’s a reason the tagline of the Mother series is “No crying until the end:” because the ending will always get you choked up.
Unfortunately, Mother 3 has never been officially released in the west, despite extremely vocal demand for it. From me. I’m demanding it. Please. But, without saying anything that’ll get us in trouble, it is absolutely worth finding a way to play it for yourself. I did, and I was forever changed.
6
OneShot
The World Knows You Exist
If you’ve played Deltarune or Undertale, you already have a good degree of experience with games that have a heavy metatextual theme. I always enjoy toying with the idea of fictional characters being aware of their own fictionality. The way OneShot distinguishes itself from other stories of that type, though, is that its world isn’t just some random fantasy land. It’s your own computer.
From the start of the game, it’s made clear that “you” are an independent entity from the game’s protagonist, Niko, and that Niko needs your help from the other side of the screen to succeed in their adventure.
While some of the game’s puzzles are solved via in-game items, many of them go full-on fourth wall-breaking, requiring you to comb through your PC operating system or move the game window around to uncover information and solutions.
It’s admittedly not the best game to play if you get paranoid easily, as it will subtly futz with your folders and documents to spin its tale. Though, if you’re worried about that, you could play the console version, which uses a simulated operating system.
5
Celeste
Improve Your Life Through Mountaineering
Deltarune’s main story could be seen as a journey of self-discovery for all three of its main protagonists, Kris, Susie, and Ralsei, perhaps the latter two a bit more. That’s what I enjoy about these kinds of indie games: they’re quite good at showcasing a character’s personal hardships and motivations without beating you over the head with melodrama. Another game that’s skilled in that department is Celeste.
While it’s not an RPG, Celeste’s setting does do a comparable amount of flipping between the mundane and supernatural, framed against one young lady’s quest to scale a mountain and surmount her personal insecurities. Madeline’s problems are interwoven throughout the story, popping up when thematically appropriate and taking a back seat when they’re not.
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Gameplay-wise, Celeste’s platforming is great for those who love the more challenging fights and setpieces of Deltarune. If you think defeating the secret bosses was a walk in the park, let’s see how you fare against those B-Side levels, smarty-pants.
4
Live A Live
Deconstructive And Inspirational
In a 2023 interview with Square Enix, Toby Fox explained that he had played the original Super Famicom release of Live A Live when he was in 8th or 9th grade. The game wasn’t localized in English back then, but he played through it anyway, and it left quite a mark. Sans’ signature theme from Undertale, Megalovania, was inspired by Live A Live’s boss theme, Megalomania.
Naturally, as one of Fox’s formative RPGs, you can find a little bit of it in his other works, Deltarune included. Prior to 2023, it would’ve been as difficult to play as Mother 3, but thanks to the HD remake that was released that year, you can try it for yourself.
Perhaps even moreso than the Mother games, Live A Live is very deconstructive of the genre, with every playable character having their own unique stories and signature gameplay mechanics.
It’s not unlike how new mechanics are introduced fairly regularly in Deltarune, just a bit more spaced out. It’s also got a good blend of levity and seriousness; I can’t think of many other games where you get to pilot a giant robot and also overthrow a king except… well, Deltarune.
3
Everhood
Bullet Hell With A Beat
As far as combat encounters go, Deltarune’s signature style lies in forcing you to dodge numerous and varied oncoming projectiles, bullet hell-style. There are plenty of bullet hell games out there, but very few that offer anything more elaborate than “don’t be in the place where the bullets are.” One example of a game that does do a little more with that mechanic, while sharing some of Deltarune’s DNA to boot, is Everhood.
Everhood has a similar world-traipsing vibe as Deltarune, having you traveling across unusual locales and meeting colorful, quirky characters while gradually unraveling a more serious plot. The primary difference is in its combat sections.
Instead of standing in a box and having bullets fly at you, you’re on a horizontal grid with shots flying down at you from the top of the screen, all set to the beat of the backing track. It’s kind of like reverse Guitar Hero, where you’re avoiding the notes someone else is playing.
It’s also worth noting that, since the game is music-centric, it’s got a pretty awesome soundtrack. Whether or not it’s as good or better than Deltarune’s is a matter of opinion, but it definitely has some spicy tracks that are worth hearing for yourself.
2
Eastward
A Coming Of Age Tale
I think one of Toby Fox’s strengths as a writer, and this is something frequently on display in Deltarune, is that he’s good at writing young characters going through heavy events as they come of age.
We were all young once, and know how confusing and scary those young years were. If you take that kind of story, and combine it with the contemporary “dad simulator” game, you might get something a little like Eastward.
Eastward is a mildly Zelda-adjacent action-adventure game where you play as young girl Sam and her gruff father figure, John, as they journey around in search of answers to the world’s steady decline.
At the start of the game, all you can do as John is care for Sam, using your trusty frying pan to both cook for her and fend off monsters, but as the story develops, Sam slowly starts becoming more aware of herself and the world.
One thing this game shares with Deltarune is its ability to convey character emotion and motivation without dialogue. John is a silent protagonist, but just through his incidental animations and actions, you get a very good sense of where his head is at in any given moment.
1
Hylics
Incomprehensible, Yet Straightforward
Deltarune is, in a vacuum, a pretty weird game. You’re regularly navigating worlds made up of inanimate trinkets brought to life, some of which seem to flip-flop between weird fantasy world logic and completely sensible real world logic. It’s strange, but fun to immerse yourself in. If “strange” is specifically what you’re after in an indie RPG, though, it doesn’t get much stranger than Hylics.
If you broke Hylics down to its base components, it’d be a pretty straightforward RPG Maker adventure. You got a hero, you got a party, you got monsters to beat up, and so on. However, from the moment you boot up Hylics, everything feels distinctly… sideways.
Both the world and characters are borderline Geiger-esque in their designs, and the dialogue flits between normal conversation and bizarre backwards talk.
In spite of its offputting designs, Hylics still manages to be a completely cohesive RPG. It’s like the RPG equivalent of a Magic Eye painting, complete nonsense on the surface with hidden depths just beneath. Also, your characters make funny little hand signs whenever they perform spells in battle, which makes me giggle.
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