Deltarune's story will continue next year, as creator Toby Fox has set a 2027 release window for Chapter 6.

Yesterday, Deltarune Chapter 5 was finally released to much anticipation. Within hours of its launch, the release helped the game shatter its previous concurrent player record on Steam. Previously, the record was 133,920 concurrent players, now the record sits at 290,973 concurrent players, more than double the original all-time peak. Despite Deltarune being nearly a decade old, it seems like it has only grown in popularity over time.

With all of that said, Toby Fox isn't slowing down when it comes to continuing the story. In an FAQ on the game's Steam page, the developer confirmed that Chapter 5 is not the end of the story and Chapter 6 will release next year.

"We are aiming for a 2027 release," reads the FAQ. "Meanwhile, we will be periodically releasing information on the development progress of the game."

Previously, Fox noted how smoothly development was progressing on Chapter 6 and said that it was possible that Chapter 7 may enter full development in the near future.

"This sounds crazy, but it’s not unrealistic that some staff members may start working on Chapter 7 before the end of the year," Fox said.

It's unclear how long Deltarune will be supported for. Perhaps Fox will try to tie everything up in 2028, when the game reaches its 10th anniversary. As of right now, we'll just have to wait and see, but it has been a wonderful indie phenomenon to follow.

We gave Deltarune a 9/10, noting that it manages to impress despite the fact it is largely unfinished: "Toby Fox and his team have really accomplished something incredible with Deltarune and its new chapters, even if that accomplishment isn’t quite finished just yet. The fact that what appears to be a halfway point in the story can leave off on such a phenomenal and high-stakes note after roughly 20 hours still has me reeling knowing I’ve yet to see the true depths of where this adventure will lead."

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

Like The Witness before it, Order of the Sinking Star uses a simple puzzle structure as a vehicle for unexpected problem solving. Pushing blocks around a grid to press a button or reach some exit is far from a new concept, but neither was sliding a line around some symbols, and that was hardly “the point” of developer Thekla, Inc.’s previous masterpiece – and while the demo I played didn’t reveal all of its secrets, that certainly seems to be the case here as well.

Order of the Sinking Star is really many block-pushing games in one. There’s an overworld with its own lead character that has to figure out how to even reach each of its self-contained levels, all of which are sorted into different areas of the map representing various stories, characters and mechanics of their own. Those ideas will eventually blend together (though they didn’t yet in the parts I played), and it’s already clear that this is more than just a glorified level-select screen as I saw tantalizing secrets waiting just out of reach.

I started by heading north to play as the Hearty Heroes of Hauling, a fantasy-themed area where I controlled a handful of different characters at once, each with a unique way to interact with the movable blocks and monsters that blocked their path. Swapping between those characters to guide them to the end of each stage was very different from the levels of The Mirror Isles to the east, which instead had me command a single person who could warp through and copy himself with the help of some pushable magic mirrors. And that was different still from The Promise to the west, which was a more futuristic setting that stitched together multiple puzzle screens into a single, infinitely looping level rather than individual stages. (The southern area, Skipping Stones to Lonely Homes, wasn’t available in the demo at all.)

One thing I appreciated across all the areas is how often my usual puzzling instincts didn’t seem to apply. I’ve played so many games like this over the years that I can typically look at a level and pretty quickly intuit what is going to need to happen, even if I don’t necessarily know how to actually do that thing right away. But Order of the Sinking Star kept me on my toes more often than not, making me figure out solutions that weren’t what I was expecting. That’s not to say it’s super challenging, it just felt like its designers never settled for the “first” answer or idea they could come up with.

Any one of these areas likely could have been sold as its own game and still made for a pretty fun evening of puzzle solving, but they add up to something impressively imposing when taken as a whole. I completed all of the available demo levels in about four hours – that’s already larger than some entire puzzle games I’ve played, and I felt like I was barely getting started. Order of the Sinking Star’s open-world map seems huge, too, so it’s hard to even guess at how much I didn’t see (but I’m sure it’s a lot).

Of course, the flipside of having such radically different designs in a single package is that it’s a lot more noticeable when one idea isn’t as fun as another. I really liked quick-swapping between the Heroes of Hauling depending on which of their abilities I needed at any given moment – be that pushing, pulling, or full-on teleportation. So when I got to the blander island setting that followed, its mirror puzzles were noticeably less entertaining – still clever and well-designed, but just not as fundamentally interesting as the areas that came before or after.

That said, it’s hard to tell which ideas will or won’t hold up over a longer playtime, especially because Order of the Sinking Star already did a great job of introducing new ideas and then testing your mastery of those concepts within this demo. It’s also notable that I didn’t get to see what is supposed to be one of the primary pitches of this split-story structure, which is that levels will eventually blur the lines between each world and the unique puzzle mechanics along with them. Like I said, none of the areas I tried felt like half-baked ideas waiting for this twist to occur, so I can see the complexity of even its simplest tricks ramping up substantially in the later levels.

I am also extremely curious about how the overworld and larger story will eventually come into play. Order of the Sinking Star isn’t trying to be as sneaky as The Witness was in terms of hiding additional puzzles in plain sight – that is to say, it’s made quite clear from the jump that the overworld is a bit of a puzzle in itself. But that doesn’t mean I fully understand what might be hidden up its sleeve either, and I am excited for an opportunity to go digging further. If the way I devoured this demo is any indication, the full game is one I’m not going to want to put down.

Tom Marks is IGN's Associate Reviews Director for games. He loves card games puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

My long-dormant memories of International Superstar Soccer 64's stilted commentary reawaken instantly. I haven't heard it for 25 years, but before the final whistle in the first World League match I’ve played since childhood, I'm reciting every repetition – "No foul the referee says! The referee says play on!" – and mimicking the jarring tone shifts between canned phrases.

"He's hit it with his … left foot! ... ENGLAND… are on the scoresheet!"

It's laughably clumsy compared to modern sims but every line is delivered with timeless, infectious gusto. The commentator is one of the most committed voice actors ever. He's too invested in big moments to care about voice cracks and his pithy phrases after each goal, delivered with weight and verve – "Incredible comeback!" … "That must be the winning goal!" … "and the gap has widened!" – capture and amplify mid-match momentum shifts.

The more I play ISS64, the more I'm convinced the rest of the game is equally timeless.

Advances in tech and decades of refinement make many older sports games unplayable, at least for me, but what I intended as a nostalgic jaunt during the World Cup has turned into a new obsession. I'm already 20 matches deep in ISS64's signature 70-match World League tournament and I've won the game's not-World-Cup twice on the hardest difficulty.

One goal I score for England against Argentina encapsulates its joy.

I've switched from the messy default 3-5-2 formation to a custom 4-2-4, with two deep-lying midfielders and two advanced wingers (tactics are surprisingly flexible). Platt, my white-haired enforcer, dives into a tackle near the centre circle, then fires a through pass down the right wing to the onrushing Charlton. Jink inside one defender, sprint past another and cross, the ball heading for the goalkeeper – "there's a fight for aerial domination!" – before curling away towards the penalty spot. Keegan, my best striker, settles under it, leaps, and rams a header into the near top corner past the already committed keeper.

"Goal! Ah, Goal! Goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!"

I replay it step by step. First, the tackle.

Slide tackles are magnetic. If you're within lunging distance you can steal the ball, even if the attacker has beaten you for pace. Like many bits of ISS64 it's designed for fun over realism, enabling impossible goal-saving tackles. I love when football games capture the panic of last-ditch defending and the relief of finally hacking it clear, and ISS64 does that better than most, pinging shots off the goalkeeper, the post, and sliding defenders, both teams throwing themselves at the loose ball.

Then, Platt's through pass.

The ISS series would later morph into Pro Evolution Soccer, whose through passes felt slicker and more incisive than FIFA's and helped it become the best football series of the early- and mid-noughties. ISS64's through balls are more choreographed: pressing the button lasers the ball towards a predetermined destination, often too hard and often straight at a defender. But you can sense the roots of what's to come. When everything lines up, when your centre-midfielder cuts the pass perfectly inside the full-back and your dashing attacker meets it in stride, you feel like a genius.

Charlton, on the wing.

Skills in ISS64 are flashy but pointless. Simply changing direction as a defender approaches by tilting the control stick is almost too reliable. You can slalom at a jog straight from kick-off to the opponent's box, even on the highest difficulty. But what the game nails, and what many games that came after it would miss, is the unstoppable momentum of a sprinting footballer. A sprint is a commitment, and a flat-out winger can't suddenly twist 90-degrees and keep running. Here, you must conserve your dash, curve your dribble rather than zig zag, and always plan ahead, knowing when to cut your sprint short to nip inside a defender and when to barrel on, nudging it past them.

To the byline, and the cross.

For the past decade in FIFA, now EA FC, if your striker is free in the box, crosses with roughly the right power and direction will home in on their head or foot, netting satisfying goals. In ISS64 the satisfaction is different: crosses aren't fully manual but they require more precision. The window for ideal power is narrow and there's no on-screen indicator, so you cross by feel, an extended button tap rather than a full hold – all while concentrating on exactly where you're pushing the control stick to find your striker.

Thankfully, curving the ball can salvage a wayward cross, but it's fiddly. After the cross you fully let go of the control stick and then tilt to swerve and dip the ball. You're simultaneously directing your striker to meet the cross and aiming your header. The finger gymnastics are too much for my N64 controller's single, shaky stick – and so when I somehow pull it off, it feels like a big achievement.

"With International Superstar Soccer, Konami has even surpassed their own line of soccer games on the SNES in most aspects. The graphics, play control and the addition of inspired features such as the "through-pass" make this one of the most versatile soccer games ever created. The only real complaints I have are about the lack of a license, the inadequate manual (they don't even explain some of the stats displays, such as the players' color meters that show how good they are at defense, attack, etc), slowdown in the four-player mode (and the target colors), and the just above average crowd cheers.

But apart from those minor quibbles, this is easily the best third party game for the N64, and has no problem standing right up there with the Miyamoto classics. From the ultra-realistic graphics to the addictive multiplayer championships, Konami has made an entry into 64-bit gaming that will not be forgotten for a long time." -- Peer Schneider, 09/04/1997

Read the full International Superstar Soccer 64 review here.

Jump, and header.

Like all shots in ISS64, headers are bullets. In theory, the longer you hold the shoot button, the higher your shot and the greater margin for error – but in practice, it's small variations on thwacking the ball at the top corner. Every goal is emphatic, but keepers are menaces on higher difficulties and can reach every part of the goal, leaping between posts like monkeys between tree trunks. Maneuvering them from their starting position, such as by coaxing them towards a curved cross or by dribbling across the box, is your best bet.

And when my header thumps the net I'm rewarded with the glee of the commentator – "A vital goal for… ENGLAND!" – plus a giant gold "GOAL" that pops on screen as the ball crosses the line, and a charmingly twee celebration (I've seen dozens of imaginary babies rocked to sleep).

Not everything about ISS64 holds up, though.

Injury time at the end of each half lasts forever but has a knack of ending as the ball falls to your striker in front of an open goal. A lack of jockey or pressure button while defending means that if you misjudge your angles, attackers can slip by while you just stand there. One-twos, assigned to a dedicated button, simply don't work.

And the superpowered goalkeepers force you towards repeatable and abusable tactics. There's a particular save animation, one arm up like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, that repels anything close-range. Long shots are equally impossible unless you sprint directly sideways along the edge of the box and shoot (I must've scored hundreds of goals this way when I first played ISS64).

But I can forgive it because the ways you can score – rebounds, headers, dribbling around the goalkeeper, and free kicks – are still rewarding, as is the build up play that leads to them, whether that's tiki-taka passes or those pinpoint crosses.

Yesterday I booted up the free-kick practice mode, the commentary replaced with light, bouncy music that felt just as nostalgic. I pinged balls into the area from every angle, mastering power and curve, scoring headers, volleys, and bicycle kicks – and a few direct shots into the top corner.

Before I knew it, 90 minutes of real time had passed. I was seven years old again, fingers sore from wrestling the N64 controller, grinning with glee. International Superstar Soccer 64 really is timeless.