Deltarune Chapter 5 gets final patch as devs turn full focus on Chapter 6

Developer Toby Fox has released the latest patch for Deltarune, and with it the game gets one step closer to its long-awaited finale. V0.0.253 will be the last patch for Chapter 5, as the developer focuses on what comes next.

The official Deltarune X account released the full patch notes for v0.0.253 on July 30. The list of changes mostly addresses several bugs in earlier chapters, but there is one major addition to Chapter 5. Every Deltarune chapter so far has contained a Shadow Crystal boss, optional challenges for players to test their skills against. Chapter 5‘s Shadow Crystal boss is Pink, the final such encounter of Deltarune, and she’s no pushover. The latest patch gives players the option to choose between two new difficulties for the encounter.

After losing against Pink once, a Pink Bomb will now appear outside the combat arena. Interacting with it will allow players to choose “Nicer” or “Meaner”. Choosing the former will make the fight a little easier by adding an indicator showing where explosions will land as well as making bombs take one-sixth of a second longer to explode. “Meaner” increases Pink’s damage dealt by 25% as well as slightly increasing the speed of some attacks. Both the “Nicer” and “Meaner” options now activate the bomb explosion hitbox one frame later.

The patch urges players to try the harder difficulty by including the note that “Girls like it when you are better at dodging danmaku.” Players who do complete the boss fight on the “Meaner” difficulty will receive an award of sorts, though it might not be what people expected. Once Pink is defeated, the post-fight cutscene will have her plant a bunch of kisses on Kris, the game’s protagonist. It doesn’t seem like anything else meaningfully changes in a playthrough depending on the difficulty on which you defeat Pink.

Image: Toby Fox

Toby Fox ends the patch notes by announcing that the team has no further plans to update Chapter 5. Development will focus entirely on Chapter 6 going forward, the penultimate entry in Deltarune‘s continuing story. Chapter 6 is currently planned for a 2027 release.