SURVEY_PROGRAM: A podcast about DELTARUNE

Kate hears BQ’s reactions to playing Chapter 2 for the first time in 2026.

Check out their previous episodes: Undertale without Deltarune and Chapter 1.

Topics: Charlie Rose for some reason. Kris’s room. The funniest theory of Ralsei’s origins yet. Dangerous amounts of Benadryl and weed. Berdly as Scott Pilgrim. Increased scale and scope of Chapter 2. Metaphorical Darkner designs. A World Cup diversion. The…interesting aspects of Tasque Manager and Werewire’s designs. Noelle’s history. Being put in the girl box. First exposure to the Weird Route. “Smuggling in” mature ideas. More thoughts on gamers. Introducing a brand-new Chapter 2-era Kris Demonology Theory. It Means Tity. December’s conspicuous absence. Asriel’s religion. Soriel oviposition. Noelle’s parents. Reactions to the cliffhanger.

References: Sports spinoff episode. Baseball episode. Chapter 5 Weird Route.

(Cover art from Chapter 2 concept art by Gigi D.G..)

Kate and Sophia talk dads, dads and more dads: Asgore, Rudy, Gerson, King, and even Mr. Cattenheimer. They break down the role of fatherhood in the story, and the ways dads fail across the story. (This is a sequel to Episode 3, on moms.)

Topics: Cat yurts. Deltarune is a land of contrasts. Milves. More Pink talk. Deltarune dads are dead or distant. Asgore’s contrast with Undertale. Child murder. What the flowers represent. The growing seriousness of Kris’s plan. A novel new caller idea. Tenna as an Asgore parallel. A brief diversion on cats and the Cattenheimer family’s role, eh, sploinky? Twin Peaks. Rudy as the first lady…and a Rouxls parallel? Rudy and Asgore are the game’s premier yaoi. These guys raised a bunch of NERDS. People were really disappointed in Chapter 5? Asgore’s relatable unfortunately.

Check out Sophia’s Cerebus podcast “Swords Against Cerebus” and Star Wars podcast “We Have to Talk About Dash Rendar”

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SURVEY_PROGRAM theme music by hywell, now on Bandcamp!

New LOST GIRL remix by Hywell on YouTube!

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Kate and Jackie reconvene for a follow-up on new advancements in the Chapter 5 weird route, and the complicated feelings playing it surfaces.

Previous WR episode: Episode 11.

Topics: Noelle’s agency. What’s wrong with Hometown. Dess’s absence. Lore-character reconciliation. Can anyone escape? Looking for who to blame. What is the nature of the soul? You can’t even say “stop” like you used to. Carol’s place in all this. What it means to get stronger. Something else. ESRB T for Teen. How do we find a way to talk about the most intense and personal implications of this story?

New! LOST GIRL remix by Hywell!

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SURVEY_PROGRAM theme music by hywell, now on Bandcamp!

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Kate and Valerie reconvene for a Chapter 5 update on what Deltarune is saying about gender in what is the trans-est chapter yet. (This is a sequel to our Kris and Mettaton episodes.)

Topics: Kris fans be like “I love when they suffer,” the blue closet of subtext, Flowery did nothing wrong, more musing on what Ralsei represents, the Forgotten Man, MEW MEW MAGIC RETURNS!, Pink/Kris/Spamton parallels, soul and body, returning to closets again, a few rare notes about takes we don’t like, more on Kris and Noelle’s childhoods, Seth, some speculation about what Kris and the Knight actually want.

Sources discussed:

“The Girl”, The Knight, & Gender In Deltarune - An Analysis/Theory by Stuffed Alpaca

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Kate and Elsie kick off Season 2 with their first reactions to Chapter 5. Full spoilers ahead!

Topics: Deltajune. Outfit gonermaker? We’re normal about Tasque Manager. Festival choices. Rudy will be fine, don’t worry about it. GASTER’S GOONS ATE ONION! Anime. Anime. Anime. The seven human flowers. Seth is just like me fr. Going to the Killing Myself Room. IMAGEFRIEND Phantasm Gaster Dess medias. Flowery and Ralsei. Device Theory real. What Ralsei knows, and what Ralsei wants. The best gameplay yet. Miku?!? Another late knight. What’s next?

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SURVEY_PROGRAM theme music by hywell, now on Bandcamp!

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Substitute Games Month is brought to a shuddering halt by the arrival of Chapter 5. But, before the drought ends, Kate and Lucretia gab about ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, the controversial sort-of successor to Disco Elysium.

Topics: BREAKFAST_PROGRAM. Lucretia counts to 100 and I leave it in. Five Iron Frenzy is Asriel’s new theme. Speculation about Chapter 5. Apple Girlington. Shitty CEOs are everywhere. Working on indie projects that go south. The problem is that games are a commodity, dingus. Lovely Lady RPG. The end of history. Spies as unthinking weapons of fate. The passage of time in narrative games. Trepanning HOLOCENE. 0/100 Falks. Let a hundred Discos bloom. What’s your spy codename?

Music from the ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies Original Soundtrack by Fernando Cabrera.

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SURVEY_PROGRAM theme music by hywell, now on Bandcamp!

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It’s SUBSTITUTE GAMES MONTH, where SURVEY_PROGRAM talks about new games that aren’t Deltarune before Chapter 5 snipes us!

Kate and Nillin kick off festivities by breaking down AP Thomson’s Titanium Court, modern fae stories, and metatexuality. Within, Kate grapples with the question: can you love a game to death?

Topics: Fairies and ferries. The Mountain Goats. Games that don’t want you to play them. Inspirations from Shakespeare. Self-insert characters and gender. The legacy of mobile games. Kane Parsons’ Backrooms and The Oldest View as fairy stories. Cars aren’t real. Kinds of Kindness. Games made by musicians. The only choice a player really has. A Series of Unfortunate Events. Do you really need to see it all?

Get Titanium Court and its soundtrack on Steam!

References:

Post Games interview with AP Thomson and bonus Patreon episode

SCP-1733 – Season Opener

Episode 25 – Millenial Art

Episode 12 – Halloween Hack

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SURVEY_PROGRAM theme music by hywell, now on Bandcamp!

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BQ rejoins the show after discussing playing Undertale but not Deltarune in Episode 19 to react to playing Chapter 1 for the first time. Reactions include gonermaker, religious ska, gender, Greenster, divorce, school experience, the symbolism in the Dark World, and first encounters with every new character, and checking back in with Undertale favorites, immediately picking up on Kris-player dichotomy, and more.

We’ll return again with Chapter 2 in the future!

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SURVEY_PROGRAM theme music by hywell, now on Bandcamp!

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Kate interviews Shadow of Roserade about Undertale: Cooking with Kindness, a new Undertale fangame about the green Kindness soul, with cooking minigame mechanics. Can you make the greatest restaurant the Underground has ever seen?

Topics: What makes a prequel or sequel worth it? Indie dev timelines. Fate and death. Luna!!!! Why climb the Mountain of Dying? Minigame design and conveyance. Kate is bad at slicing bread. Cozycore indie games. An RPG with no fighting at all. Why to not create different routes. Games set in single neighborhoods. The 10th anniversary stream. Game engine choice. How to write NPCs Toby-style. The surprise character!

Download Undertale: Cooking with Kindness and its soundtrack, or join the game’s community Discord.

Support SURVEY_PROGRAM’s Green Room for bonus episodes!

Join the SURVEY_PROGRAM Discord or follow on Bluesky.

SURVEY_PROGRAM theme music by hywell, available on Bandcamp! Check out Hywell’s “BLACK KNIFE (Vocal Breakcore Remix)”, now released!

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Kate and Valerie discuss Undertale and Deltarune as art made by a millennial and ask “what defines millennial art?” For this, they define what a generation means as an analytic context, what experiences millennials share that go into their art, and the indie game as the modern equivalent to the personal film.

Topics: Other generations flippantly characterized by Friends, Tung Tung Tung Sahur, Buddenbrooks, sex, lies and videotape, and Woodstock, Steven Universe and Fionna and Cake as parallels, economic stagnation and the Great Recession, video games as the eighth art and Toby Fox as one of the first wave of game developers raised on games, The Amazing Digital Circus, and millennials breaking into film and deploying genre with I Saw the TV Glow, Sinners, and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. We talk about our expectations for Deltarune’s ending and our own futures in the context of the generational approach to sincerity.

Support SURVEY_PROGRAM’s Green Room for bonus episodes!

Join the SURVEY_PROGRAM Discord or follow on Bluesky.

SURVEY_PROGRAM theme music by hywell, available on Bandcamp!

Check out show musician Hywell’s “BLACK KNIFE (Vocal Breakcore Remix)”, now released!

Subscribe on Spotify / Apple Podcasts / RSS.