DELTARUNE Chapter 3 (PC/consoles, 2025)

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Spoiler warning:

This post mentions the ending of chapter 2 and the broad setting and event types of chapter 3, as they inform stylistic decisions made with the soundtrack, but it doesn’t otherwise reference specific plot events or characters. The titles of the sample tracks don’t explicitly reference story events, but you might be able to infer locations and so on from them if you think about them for too long.

Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: Bandcamp (tracks 1-38, including hidden tracks), Steam (disc 3)

Info

Alright, I’ve finished the le funy Toby Fox video game, so I’m free from internet jail until the next chapter comes out. I’ve honestly never been an especially big fan of Fox as a composer; he’s been in the “mostly not interesting, but occasionally does tracks I really like” category for me since Undertale. I’ve liked the DELTARUNE soundtracks a little more consistently than Undertale’s, though; I find them generally to be slightly more interesting in terms of sound design and chords.

Chapter 2 of DELTARUNE ends with a dark world being formed in the main character’s living room, so chapter 3 takes place in a world themed around TV and games. As such, the soundtrack this time around has a bit more focus on cheesy TV show jazz and 8-bit chiptunes, both of which have appeared in earlier chapters though to a slightly lesser extent. This is of course DELTARUNE and so the soundtrack is varied, also including some funk, rock, electronic, and so on.

This was my least favorite soundtrack to date, which in hindsight feels pretty obvious given that it pursues styles I have less personal interest in. These soundtracks have always been very video-game-music soundtracks in terms of compositional inspirations and instrument samples, and chapter 3 might go the furthest in embracing that to date (for good reason!), but those aspects… tend to be what I care about the least, so it makes sense that this is how things turned out. It mostly feels more standard and safe than usual to me, so I’m mostly pretty meh on it as a result.

Recommended tracks:

  • Flashback (Excerpt)” actually debuted in a hidden scene in chapter 2 but features prominently into the main story here, very creepy-pasta sounding with a nice vox-ish sample and detuning

  • TV WORLD” has funky Toby Fox final area vibes crossed with some slinky jazz vibraphone

  • Breath” has the scariest sound design in chapter 3, which is why I’m linking it despite it only being 14 seconds long

  • SWORD” was my favorite of the 8-bit tracks, this one’s pretty Zelda with some heroic-sounding modulations

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