While it can be easy to forget, thanks to the sometimes long breaks between chapters, Deltarune is kind of a big deal. When Chapter 5 of the episodic RPG launched on June 24, it more than doubled the game’s all-time concurrent player peak, hitting 291,816 active players on Steam alone (it’s also available on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5).
For context, that would put Deltarune in the current top five of the Steam charts, which are generally dominated by live-service games and idle clickers where you can grind for Steam marketplace items.
On top of this, the game has just hit another milestone: Toby Fox landed on a song-based Billboard ranking for the first time. “Flower Man” and “Cutie Mew Mew Magic” made it to the 13th and 18th spots on the Hot Dance/Electronic charts. While the Chapter 3+4 score landed on Billboard’s Soundtracks album chart, this is the first time Fox has had songs big enough to rank individually, putting his name next to acts like Tame Impala and Danny. Good job, Toby and Camellia! As a whole, the score landed at No. 3 on the Soundtracks chart and No. 5 on Top Dance/Electronic Albums.
While Undertale and Deltarune have obviously produced many all-time jams, so much so that “Megalovania” was once performed in front of the Pope, Deltarune: Chapter 5 has led to another big moment for the series in internet culture, in part thanks to its excellent new motifs. “Flower Man” is the main theme for Flowery, a flower reincarnated as an anime boy who goes from despicable foil to all-timer ally (thanks to the power of friendship). One of his signature features is dispensing nonsensical audio quips that don’t always match his text-based dialogue (“Glue!”).
It also helps that his track “Flower Man” first plays with lyrics that aren’t vocalized in-game, which has led to many fan covers of the song.
Meanwhile, “Cutie Mew Mew Magic” is the theme for the chapter’s secret boss, and it includes a surprising (and mildly hilarious) cameo by the one and only Hatsune Miku. The Vocaloid spin on the song has led to covers featuring other virtual singers, such as Kasane Teto.
One of the main reasons the chapter has produced even more memes than usual is that the new characters — Flowery’s allies, who are technically antagonists — have been a hit, like the stab-happy murder child Aqua and her scholarly pseudo-sibling Seth.
Meanwhile, Flowery has received multiple fan animations detailing his heroics, Miku’s appearance has been spoofed ad nauseam, and there are even already fighting game mods that let you play as some of these characters. The game’s nightmarish “weird” route (basically the bad ending) also continues to captivate players while generating lots of unhinged theories.
If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that nothing can defeat the power of anime.
