ok, its finally time to recalculate the odds
sorry for the delay everyone. the poll from last month made it clear people wanted the odds as accurate as possible, and i had just recalculated for march anyway and i just have been avoiding having to make another long post and do a bunch more math... if you want to blame anyone for the delay blame whoever sent this anon, like seriously fuck that guy lol. (im jk obviously its my own fault not anyone elses)
BUT ANYWAY. the best way forward is of course, looking at the timeline on chapter 3 and 4 and comparing it to the current timeline to see what we get!
we can, of course, consult this post from last year to get the previous numbers!
ch3 gameplay: totally complete as of february 2024 ch4 gameplay: finished soon after july 2024 ch3 translation and PC bug testing: finished december 2024 game_change function: implemented december 2024 ch4 japanese translation: finished february 2 2025 ch4 PC testing: started jan 7, finished feb 2 2025 console testing: started feb 3 and 25 (ps5), finished as of april 2 2025 ratings boards reviews: finished or close to it as of april 2 2025 trailer: released april 2 2025 standalone soundtrack release: ready to release april 2 2025
very interesting stuff here. the chapter 5 translation was in progress as of early february, and presumably completed in april according to these tweets. the bug testing officially started on april 1st, which would align timeline-wise about with january to february of last year.
how can we compare this to this year?
there are obviously some big differences from last year's release, though. for one, this release will be done as an update, much like chapter 2, and doesn't need the fanfare and financial push that last year's did. we may or may not get a trailer, for one. we also seem to have it confirmed that pc and console testing aren't being segmented off like they were last year, and are likely all ongoing at the same time.
another big difference is that this is only one chapter, not two. this will likely mean that some areas of work will only take half as much time as they did for the previous release, and also likely means other areas will have no difference at all in work time. which are which, i can't say!
but overall, i think its fair to account for one to three months of bug testing, using the conservative estimate of last year's jan 7 to feb 2 for pc testing (since all of the testing is now happening at once) and the absolute maximum estimate of january 7 to april 2, which is when the trailer came out. after that are the game being approved on consoles and the "various other things." and this part gets a bit harder to predict...
i think from all the info we have available to us, it definitely SEEMS like chapters 3 and 4 were completely done by april 2nd, 2025, when the trailer was released. the whole "deltarune is waiting" slogan, for one, seemed to imply that the game was completely finished and was being specifically held until the switch 2 release date to both build hype and to be a proper launch title for the console. that being said, if we are being as liberal as possible with our time frames, the time span of two months and three days (april 2nd to june 5th) would presumably be the longest amount of time between development completely finishing and the game coming out. if we are again being as conservative as possible, i can take a reasonable estimate of mid-march for the end of bug testing and similarly conclude that at least half a month of pre-release prep time was needed before the april 2nd trailer drop.
putting it all together
with these numbers combined, we can approximate september 3rd, 2026 as the latest possible release date for chapter 5. this number is... actually kind of shocking, to me. it feels like it should be way later! but this is estimating a FULL THREE MONTHS of bug testing, which is almost definitely longer than it actually took for chapter 4, as well as THE FULL LENGTH OF THE WAIT between the trailer and the switch 2 release! the data doesn't lie, folks.
on the other hand, if we go for a month of bug testing and half a month of pre-release, we get the earliest possible date of may 15th, 2026. this is almost definitely too early, but it's the date where i'd be genuinely shocked if it came out any earlier than that. a median estimate might be around two months for bug testing (we know ch4 was "winding down" by march 4th) and one month of pre-release preparations, giving us an approximate date of july 1st, 2026.
now we have to turn this into percentages
i think i'm gonna go ahead and post this for now, because i honestly have no idea how to turn this into percentages yet. i will sit and think on this and get back to update it soon, but hopefully this info alone is still significant to increase your deltarune release knowledge and hopes, dear followers.
how i turned it into percentages
so for the difficult math, once again credit goes to my friend @zaneclodon. basically i had the idea to do a rough bell curve, with the odds increasing obviously towards the predicted date (july 1st) and decreasing to either end. (this will only apply to the amount of increase though, obviously the odds for one day can never be less than the day before it, because as every day passes there are a smaller number of possible days left for the game to release on!)
anyway they were able to generate a graph for me
and then a spreadsheet, which can be found here for anyone curious. these will be the odds for the rest of the year!
