I woke to the sound of distant drums and a knot in my stomach. I assumed the game expected me to sit through the whole festival—until I found the bed. You can skip straight to the Dark World if you know where to press.
When a room holds a secret: How to avoid the festival in Deltarune Chapter 5
I’ll be blunt: this is less a glitch and more a deliberate door. If you’ve already completed Chapter 5 once—beat Flowery, seen the credits, and returned from the Dark World—your save file gains a shortcut that takes you past the opening festival. I tested it on Steam and on my Switch save slots; the behavior is consistent across platforms and consistent with how Toby Fox has seeded other surprises in Deltarune.
Can you skip the festival in Deltarune Chapter 5?
Yes. On a new save after your first full completion, do not leave Kris’s bedroom when you regain control. Instead, interact with the bed on the right. The game warns you that you’ll miss story beats. Accept the sleep prompt. The screen fades, and you wake up inside the Dark World—exactly where your second run needs to begin.
This works because the game checks your completed-save flag before gating early content. If you haven’t beaten Flowery and returned once, the bed simply won’t offer the same shortcut. If you’ve seen the credits, your save is flagged and the prompt appears.
Do you need to beat Flowery first?
Yes. Flowery is the completion requirement. Beat Flowery, watch the credits, and then start a new save slot. Only then will the bed present the option to sleep through the festival. I tried hopping between saves on PC and Switch; the completed-run marker travels with the save profile, so keep your completed file safe—and backed up if you care about tinkering.
This trick is like a back door in an old house: the entrance exists only after someone has already walked through it once. Use it when you want to replay the Dark World faster, chase alternate outcomes, or test the new Weird Route variations without slogging through the opening pageant every time.
What happens if you skip the festival?
The narrative beats that played during your original run are not erased; they’re simply bypassed in this playthrough. Most encounters, dialogue, and map states in the Dark World mirror your first journey. Your choices after waking determine the path forward. There’s also a new Weird Route variant in Chapter 5—shorter and odder than the standard ending—that you can reach through different decisions after you skip the festival.
Treat this as a quality-of-life shortcut for replayers and speedrunners, and as a testing tool if you’re experimenting with outcomes. If you enjoy streaming or posting clips to platforms like YouTube or Twitter, skipping the festival shaves minutes off the setup and keeps viewers hooked faster. For archival saves or mod tests, I’ll sometimes keep a completed save specifically to trigger this option.
There’s a small ethical twist: sleeping past the festival removes a handful of small scenes you might miss the first time, so if you’re chasing every scrap of writing or animation, take a complete capture on your original run. If you’re fine sacrificing those ornaments for pace, use the bed and move on. Skipping the festival feels like cutting a ribbon between two scenes.
If you were offered the bed on a fresh save today, would you press sleep and dive straight into the Dark World or keep every festival minute for its own sake?