Category: Nintendo News

Toby Fox had certainly stumbled onto something special when Undertale was released in 2015; the seminal post-modern RPG garnered quite the cult following for its quirky humour and disarmingly dark themes, which went a long way towards cementing its unique identity. Now, a few years and several ports later, Fox is back at it again with a follow-up project, the first part of which has released on the eShop for free as Deltarune Chapter 1. Though not a direct sequel (or maybe it is?) of Fox’s magnum opus, Deltarune feels more than worthy of its predecessor’s legacy, even if it does come off as being rather light on new ideas.

After an amusing introduction with a character creator, the story begins by following Kris, a young human child going to an ordinary day of school in a world populated by monsters. Kris and the school bully, Susie, are soon asked by their teacher to retrieve chalk from a nearby supply closet, only to find themselves falling headlong into a mysterious dark world. Here, they’re informed that they’re heroes prophesied to bring balance to the world and set out on a quest to set things right so they can go home. Though the storyline is about as cliché as possible, Deltarune borrows heavily from its predecessor in the way that it handles nuance and ‘behind the scenes’ storytelling; despite appearing to be a simple tale of heroes saving the world from darkness, little hints along the way suggest a much larger plot is in motion.

What makes much of the storytelling so compelling is the hefty dosage of sarcastic and witty humour used along the way; Deltarune is a game that hardly takes itself seriously – it delights in surprising the player and finding all sorts of goofy ways to turn expectations on their head. For example, a memorable early boss encounter sees you fighting against an enemy who isn’t old enough to ride a motorcycle, so he sets his bike on fire instead to feel cool. Or, in another example, a certain party member can’t decide whether they want to be good or evil, so they follow the team at a distance so as to not be associated with them. This kind of humour permeates nearly every square inch of Deltarune, which does a great job of lulling the player into a false sense of security so they aren’t prepared when things suddenly take a disturbingly dark turn. You never know what’s going to happen next, whether it’ll be another gag or an incredibly violent incident, and that makes the plot so riveting to follow.

Gameplay takes much after Undertale – many of the trappings of a 16-bit RPG are present and accounted for – but it notably builds on Fox’s previous game by eschewing the solo, EarthBound-esque combat in favour of a multi-character system that’s more in line with Final Fantasy. Battles still play out in a turn-based fashion, but you now also have a ‘TP’ gauge that fills based on your attacks and dodges, and acquired TP can be spent on casting magic. It’s not a huge change, but it does have a notable effect on how you approach enemy attacks. Like Undertale, enemy attacks play out by having you control a small heart inside a box in a bullet hell mini-game; if you can dodge whatever flies at you in the box, your character avoids damage. However, a little more TP is gained for every ‘near miss’ with the obstacles coming your way, encouraging you to weave between them in such a way that they only just miss the heart. This slightly heavier focus on risk and reward feels like an organic and well-implemented expansion of the original combat concept introduced in Undertale, and hopefully, it will continue to be iterated on in subsequent chapters of Deltarune.

Naturally, a big part of this combat system revolves around doing all that you can to not fight, and fans of Undertale will be pleased to know that the focus on ‘sparing’ enemies is back in full force. Every enemy encounter, boss fight or otherwise, can be completed by somehow talking down, befriending, or otherwise making peace with your foes through a series of often humorous actions that end in everyone walking away relatively unharmed. You don’t receive any experience from battles that end in this fashion, but all your actions – violent or not – have long-ranging effects on the outcome of the story; there are multiple different story paths depending on just how peaceful or violent you choose to be. It certainly brings up interesting discussion around the ethics of being a ‘hero’ who kills just about everything between you and the goal, but it also creates some interesting puzzles that spice up combat a bit more. Every enemy type has a unique way in which they become wooed, and finding out what it takes to talk them down can make things more interesting than simply hammering the Attack button over and over.

Aside from the combat, there’s a handful of simple puzzles to solve in the sparse environments that comprise the game world, which serve as a reminder that not all issues from Undertale have been completely fixed. Though charming to some, most of the world feels like a collection of long, sparsely decorated hallways with very little in the way of interesting design or presentation. Sure, the item descriptions and occasional NPC conversations are funny, but the dark world hardly feels like a cohesive or living place; though there’s perhaps a slight upgrade in sprite quality and detail from its predecessor, Deltarune is unfortunately not a very pretty game to look at.

What’s more – and this is no doubt a more subjective issue – Deltarune has a general feeling of uninspired sameness that never quite manages to go away. Rather than making more of an effort to build upon and differentiate itself from its excellent predecessor, it seems that Deltarune is more concerned with simply copying what made Undertale so great. That doesn’t make it a bad game outright, but considering how fresh Undertale was at the time of its release, it comes off as being a bit disappointing that Deltarune is ‘just’ more of the same. However, this is only the first in what’s supposedly to be a multi-chapter epic, so perhaps the best is yet to come and this first episode is merely a primer for much bigger things to follow.

Conclusion

It’s unknown at this point just how big of a project Deltarune will turn out to be – only Chapter 2 is confirmed as of the time of writing – but this first chapter proves to be a solid, if a little too safe, take on the unique gameplay and humour that made Undertale such a hit. At worst, Deltarune Chapter 1 is just a smaller and shallower version of Undertale; at best, it’s a promising glimpse into a much more ambitious project that will hopefully grow to escape the shadow of its forerunner. Regardless, you can download Deltarune Chapter 1 for free right now from the eShop; we’d encourage you to give it a download and see what you think.

Which is more fun: trekking into unfamiliar territory or walking a more familiar path? Valley released in 2016 for PC, Xbox One and PS4, and has now landed on the Nintendo Switch. On a platform that’s already rich with indie delights, can this blend of first-person platforming and environmental storytelling stand out in the crowd?

After choosing Male or Female, a quick cutscene sets the stage: The player is an archaeologist, embarking on a canoe trip into the Canadian Rockies in order to follow up on a lead concerning something called the Lifeseed. Of course, the canoe runs aground, and after emerging from a cave system into unknown territory our protagonist soon realizes they are now in for much more than they originally bargained for.

It just so happens that the Lifeseed artefact is a focal point of both local mythology and some top-secret government activities in the early World War II era. Part of these operations was the Pathfinder program, which sought to augment combat-unit effectiveness with a powered exoskeleton called the L.E.A.F. Suit. Within Valley’s opening minutes, the player happens to find a spare L.E.A.F. unit that had quite literally fallen off a truck.

Movement in the L.E.A.F. suit is enhanced beyond normal human capability. Right away, the player can jump much higher than a normal person could, and can achieve incredible running speeds by gathering steam in downhill motion. There are upgrades to be discovered regularly, which add functions like a double jump, a ‘magnetic core’ to enable walking on certain walls, and an even greater top speed while running on powered rails.

If a game’s movement mechanics are a selling point for you, then Valley is a carnival barker hawking glitzy wares under the midway lights – when it’s running on all cylinders, running around and leaping through the world is an exhilarating thrill. The sense of first-person speed and reckless leaping on display isn’t a feature you’ll see in many other titles, especially on the Switch.

It’s a feature that pairs nicely with a colourful vision of nature, with its rolling grassy plains and sheer cliffsides dotted by hulking construction equipment and the vestiges of a long-abandoned military-industrial installation. Blue Isle Studios has clearly laboured heartily to create a full, rich landscape. It is just a shame, then, that porting to the Switch has come at a performance cost; players should not expect more than 30fps consistently while docked, and a handheld playthrough will regularly encounter moments when Valley feels chuggy.

Still, a remote location with ancient ruins and strange creatures, not to mention decades-old laboratories, offers plenty of attractions to compel the player forward through the plot. The narrative is told through the environment (including notes that can be found and read without stopping any gameplay) and the use of audio logs, particularly from two characters the player will get to know. There is definitely a BioShock influence here, in the first-person unfolding of a story about an overly ambitious man who doomed those around him against a backdrop of strange forces the character will learn to wield.

Oh, did we mention that the L.E.A.F. technology includes control over life and death? Right. The player can imbue dead things (mostly trees, the occasional deer) with life. Also, the player can kill living things (mostly trees, but then some other creatures) as well. Valley is light on combat, it’s definitely more of a story delivered through a game than a game that happens to have a story. There is some fighting here and there, sure, but the extent of your ‘attack’ complexity is using a button to shoot life-force projectiles at your foes. The added difficulty is mostly in the fact that shooting bolts of life energy depletes the player’s own energy. Refills are plentiful, but it is a factor you remain mindful of through every encounter.

The most interesting mechanic might be how Valley handles player death. At any given time, an on-screen branch icon gives a readout, via leaves either blackened or coloured green, of the total ‘life’ in a given area. If the player dies, they experience ‘quantum immortality’ and respawn nearby, but at the cost of killing surrounding life. The game’s story plays with this trade-off between life and energy, and the implications this power has for curious researchers looking to outdo Oppenheimer’s work with the Manhattan Project.

Although the idea of having to restore life to the landscape in order to preserve your own life (lives?) is intriguing, it doesn’t feel fleshed out to its full potential, similar to how double-jumping is handled through a comically thin-veiled attempt at an in-story explanation. As long as you are responsible with the environment, and utilize the generators that gradual reproduce energy (health, essentially), the game is not exactly Dark Souls in its difficulty.

Valley has a story to tell, and gives the player some fun movement and pretty visuals through which to tell it. Like a rollercoaster with an in-flight movie, Valley isn’t a game with very intense combat or especially intricate puzzles (our biggest obstacle was taking a couple of minutes to figure out we had to fall from a height in order to break through a certain ground section), but if someone is looking for a 4-to-6 hour tale of military intrigue and mysterious ancient powers, this might do.

Conclusion

Valley might be more like a book than a video game; you pick it up, you experience its story to your satisfaction, you put it down. Given the low impact of the bulk of its gameplay, it’s almost puzzling that they bothered to include a few moderately challenging sections at all amid what is mostly just a pleasant jaunt through an appealing world. As long as a would-be player understands that this is not your typical FPS and it’s a somewhat shorter experience as well, there is something cool and refreshing to be found here. In a games market often trying to operate as either an endless buffet or a sticky-sweet dessert parlour, Valley is a satisfying meal that doesn’t outstay its welcome.