Rock Video
Are you ready to ROCK HARD!?
Susie, Chapter 3
Rock Video (JP: ロックビデオ) (also called simply Rhythm Game (JP: リズムゲーム) internally[1] and in Castle Town) is a minigame in Tenna's TV Time show in Chapter 3. It is first playable in Round 2 after completing the Island Board from The Legend of Tenna. It also reappears during Tenna's final encounter at faster speeds and as short segments.
Rock Video can be replayed in the Green Room's Arcade, where only Raise Up Your Bat is available. Starting in Chapter 4, this minigame is playable in the TV Studio if all Chapter 3 recruits were found, with up to three selectable songs of varying difficulty.
The gameplay features Susie, Kris, and Ralsei playing as a band in a rock concert, with a "LIGHTNERS LIVE" sign behind them. Susie plays the drums, Kris plays the guitar, and Ralsei sings.
This physical challenge is akin to a rhythm game; as the song progresses, notes cascade down lanes for all three character's lanes. However, only Kris's lane, which is the middle and blue-colored lane, is under the player's control. By pressing the CONFIRM or CANCEL button, or alternatively, the LEFT and RIGHT button, Kris plays one of the two keys. The inputs must be timed to hit the notes as they drop onto the highlighted strips. There are also hold notes where the key must be held down for its duration.
In order to gain score, Kris must play notes with the correct timing. Continuously hitting notes generates a COMBO. If a note is timed perfectly, it disappears in a yellow glow (referred to as "gold notes" in-game) and grants more score. Holding down a long note also continuously gains score for the duration of the note (but a regular note and a hold note behave the same for COMBO). Missing a note resets COMBO to 0 but does not subtract score. Not holding down a long note for long enough does not break COMBO (but the player does not get the unheld part of the note's score). Hitting a note that is not there has no effect. Score gained is directly relevant to the rank earned after finishing the board, or, during Tenna's boss battle, the amount of POINTs earned.
The POPU & LARITY Lights are a metric indicating how close the player is to failing the minigame. The spotlights, in two rows of three, all shine blue starting at half-POPULARITY. They dim from the top-down as notes are missed and POPULARITY is lowered, turning red when only the last bottom row is lit, and the challenge ends prematurely if they are completely dark. Inversely, the spotlights grow a brighter shade of blue from the bottom-up as Kris continues to perform without missing notes. When reaching maximum POPULARITY, a small applause SFX plays, and the spotlights flash in different alternating colors.
When playing the minigame at the end of Round 2 and in the A-rank room, the POPU & LARITY Lights start with low POPULARITY, with only the last bottom row lit red, as a result of Susie's poor performance. In Chapter 4, when replaying the minigame in Castle Town, the Lights start at half-POPULARITY.
Raise Up Your Bat is the track playing for this minigame at the end of Round 2 and in the A-rank room. There are three different versions of the first guitar solo that vary in difficulty, depending on how well the beginning of the song was performed. Specifically, if the beginning is well-performed, the solo matches the one featured in the official soundtrack; otherwise, the difficulty of the solo lowers with how dim the POPU & LARITY Lights are when reaching that point.[2][3] This adaptive difficulty is only present in Raise Up Your Bat and occurs anytime this track is played for the minigame, in either the Round 2 version or subsequent replays, and in either Normal or Hard difficulties.
In Round 2, losing 5 times makes it so POPULARITY cannot run out, which makes it so that Z-rank can be easily attained by doing nothing.
During the final encounter with Tenna in the Cold Place, a version of this minigame is playable with notable changes. The track used is It's TV Time!—the background music already playing during this encounter—with the chart being synced in real time to the background music mid-battle. Only a brief segment of the track is played at a time.
The POPU & LARITY Lights have no effect in this version. Instead, for each time the player makes an error, a MISS is marked down in the lower right of the screen, for up to three MISSes. The party then takes damage for each MISS, once the minigame concludes. During Tenna's final attack, in the consecutive guantlet of minigames, each error instead immediately deals damage to the party. This matches how the other minigames in Tenna's battle work. If three MISSes are made, the minigame immediately ends.
Hitting a note adds 1 POINT to the score in the fight, and every 4 gold notes hits adds an additional POINT.
A speed multiplier is displayed next to Kris's lane. This multiplier determines how fast the notes are dropping and how far apart they are spaced out (so their actual timing does not change and still matches the music track). The multiplier goes from 2× to 2.5× to 3×, jumping up in speed for each subsequent time the minigame is played without any MISSes.
Ralsei and Susie's segments in this minigame are ignored for scoring, and mostly exist for aesthetics.
Ralsei's lane has three sub-lanes, with notes extending out for a certain duration to simulate Ralsei's singing. During Raise Up Your Bat, Ralsei changes the lyrics to a more family-friendly version. When Ralsei does not have a singing segment, he instead claps along and watches Kris. During Knock You Down!!, since the track features no "vocals" at all, Ralsei's lane is instead populated with rhythmic percussive notes to match Ralsei's clapping. Ralsei always hits his notes and maintains a full combo, but this does not affect scoring or overall gameplay.
Susie's lane has two sub-lanes, identically to Kris's lane, with the notes designating when Susie is meant to hit her tom drums and cymbals. In Round 2 and in the A-rank room, Susie rapidly and haphazardly bangs her drums during Sound Check and Raise Up Your Bat, causing her lane to darken and be crossed out in red; the POPU & LARITY lights start out with only one-third of the bulbs lit red as a result. During Tenna's boss battle, Susie not only plays the drums normally, but also full-combos her section every time. When replaying the minigame in Castle Town, Susie occasionally drops her own combo, but this does not affect scoring or overall gameplay.
When replaying the minigame in Castle Town, these songs can be played in both Normal Mode and Hard Mode:
- Raise Up Your Bat – The main playable track in Chapter 3. This track is used for the "physical challenge" at the end of Round 2, and it is the only track available when choosing to replay the minigame in the A-rank room. Its best rank and score in Chapter 3 (including the "physical challenge" played in Round 2 as Normal difficulty) can be transferred into Chapter 4.
- It's TV Time! – In Chapter 3, this track is only playable during Tenna's final encounter, in specialized short segments. Can be replayed in full in Castle Town, starting from Chapter 4. Unlike Raise Up Your Bat, its best score in Chapter 4 in all difficulties would be 0, as it is never played in full in Chapter 3.
- Knock You Down!! (Rhythm Ver.) – A slightly modified version of the original track for this minigame. Exclusive to Castle Town, available starting from Chapter 4.
- 4rd Sanctuary – A heavily modified version of The Third Sanctuary full of what seem to be intentionally nonsensical rhythms. Exclusive to Castle Town, available starting from Chapter 5.
These songs are approximately in difficulty order. Raise Up Your Bat has the fewest (guitar) notes at 280, It's TV Time! has 501, and Knock You Down!! (Rhythm Ver.) has 480 but is the only track to require both inputs simultaneously (hitting two notes at the same time and also holding one note while hitting another).
There are also a couple of tracks that are only playable once, in Chapter 3:
- Sound Check – Fully charted and playable, but only during the optional tutorial section for the Round 2 version of the minigame.
- NOW'S YOUR CHANCE TO BE A – An extremely sped up and distorted fragment is played during the "bonus round". The track is not properly charted, with the only input being a single extremely long held note on the right side. The track and the chart greatly slow down a few seconds in, and the game ends before the note can be completed.
Several tracks are partially setup to be played in Rock Video, but are unused or otherwise not playable, with most of these having incomplete or even entirely nonexistent charts.[4]
- MIKE, the BOARD, please! has a guitar chart which is used in-game, but only as an unplayable demonstration when viewing the minigame's instructions.
- Doom Board is entirely charted, but this chart is never used. The Third Sanctuary is entirely charted for guitar only, but it is also unused.[5][6]
- Ruder Buster[7][8] and Vapor Buster[9][10] are both partially charted, with each having about 5 seconds of guitar charting.
- Rude Buster,[11] Field of Hopes and Dreams,[12] A DARK ZONE,[13] and Flower Man[14] have code to allow them to be played in Castle Town, but do not have charts at all.
When choosing to replay the Rock Video minigame in the A-rank room or in Castle Town, the player can choose to play songs in hard mode. In hard mode, the window to hit notes and the grace period after missing one is severely reduced, but while the POPU & LARITY Lights are fully lit, all notes receive a point bonus of +10 when hit. The charts are the same.
Note: If the points earned perfectly matches any rank requirement, ?-rank is rewarded instead.
| Song | Rank | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Raise Up Your Bat | T | 28000 |
| S | 25000 | |
| A | 22000 | |
| B | 18000 | |
| C | 14500 | |
| It's TV Time! | T | 47000 |
| S | 44000 | |
| A | 41000 | |
| B | 37000 | |
| C | 33500 | |
| Knock You Down!! (Rhythm Ver.) | T | 45000 |
| S | 43000 | |
| A | 40000 | |
| B | 36000 | |
| C | 32500 | |
| 4rd Sanctuary | T | 24000 |
| S | 22500 | |
| A | 21000 | |
| B | 18500 | |
| C | 15500 |
Rock Video mechanics, charts and the chart editor were developed by Taxiderby.[15] The team initially planned to have only one chart, but because of the flexibility of the system they managed to get two more charts done for release.
A short clip of Rock Video is first teased in the DELTARUNE Nintendo Switch 2 Announce Trailer on April 2, 2025.
- [Susie] Are you ready to ROCK HARD!?
- [Ralsei] Umm... c-can we rock soft?
- [Kris is given a choice between "Strike a cool pose" and "Strike a glamorous pose"; this does not affect dialogue]
- [Tenna] That's right! Get out your lighters for the LIGHTNERS, ladies and germs!
- [Tenna] Because it's time for a crashing, banging, booming, crooning...
- [Tenna]
!!! - [Tenna] Oh, Kris! Remember DECEMBER? Oh, that little musical prodigy...
- [Tenna] Remember when she'd grab the remote and swap it from cartoons...
- [Tenna] ... to that WILD music video channel Toriel FORBID you to see?
- [Tenna]
- [Tenna] Dess, rocking her guitar and singing along with those nasty, nasty songs!
- [Tenna] Didn't you all think she was just so... COOL?
- [Tenna] HECK! Maybe you could get her to come back and watch again sometime!?
- [Tenna] Haha! Just kidding! Anyway, are you ready to ROCK!?
- [Need instructions]
- [Tenna] No worries! It's so SIMPLE, a FAX MACHINE could do it!
- [Tenna] When the MUSIC starts, notes will flow from the top like HONEY.
- [Tenna] When the NOTES hit the MARK, press with good timing to PLAY them!
- [Tenna] [(CONFIRM)] (or [(LEFT)]) will play notes on the LEFT!
- [Tenna] [(CANCEL)] (or [(RIGHT)]) will play notes on the RIGHT!
- [Tenna] Make sure to HOLD the button for those LONG NOTES!
- [Tenna] Got it, Kris?! Good! That's all you gotta know!
- [Tenna] SUSIE and RALSEI will be doing their own things, so IGNORE THEIR PARTS.
- [Tenna] That being said, MUSIC is a TEAM SPORT! If ANY of you play bad...
- [Tenna] The POPU & LARITY LIGHTS will darken! And if they go black...
- [Tenna] It's LIGHTS OUT!!!
- [Tenna] NOW, how about a SOUND CHECK!? This one's just for practice!
- [After sound check]
- [If Kris played well]
- [Susie] Hey, we make a pretty good band.
- [Ralsei] ...
- [Ralsei] (Kris, the two of us will need to play perfectly...)
- [If Kris played poorly]
- [Susie] Hey, Kris, way to make us fail the song.
- [Ralsei] (I'll... just try to sing as loud as I can...)
- [If Kris played well]
- [After post-sound check dialogue, or upon selecting "Don't need instructions to rock"]
- [Tenna] ALRIGHT! SOUND: Checked! DRUMS: Loud! BOYS: Fluffy!
- [Tenna] RALSEI! Got those lyrics ready!?
- [Ralsei] Umm, they seem a little... inappropriate. Do I have to...?
- [Tenna] TOO BAD! NOW, AUDIENCE! Give it up one last time...
- [Tenna]
- [Ralsei] Wow, they loved it! I'm starting to feel like a real rocker!
- [Susie] Yeah, that was sick! Though, uh...
- [Susie] Lucky I was carrying you guys. We barely passed.
- [Ralsei] S-Susie...? Are you serious right now...?
- [Tenna] Wow, looks like the band's already splitting up due to drama!
- [Tenna] That's how you know we've got a REAL winner on our hands, folks!
- [Tenna] Anyway, BOARD'S OVER! So without further ado...
- [Tenna] Let's see those RESULTS!!!
- [Loss #1]
- [Tenna] Ralsei! You sang brilliantly!
- [Tenna] Unfortunately, everyone else was... terrible!!
- [Tenna] (Or maybe it was just some cutting-edge progressive rock.)
- [Tenna] But don't worry. I, your loving agent, have booked you ANOTHER show!!
- [Tenna] It starts in...
- [Tenna] What!? 3 seconds!?
- [Tenna] Well, what are you doing!? Go and
again!
- [Additional losses]
- [Tenna] Oh no! Another GAME OVER!?
- [Loss #2]
- [Tenna] The audience would be throwing tomatoes...
- [Tenna] ... if we didn't use them all on the cooking show!
- [Tenna] Alright, one more try! Let's again!!
- [Loss #3]
- [Tenna] Hey, this isn't time to practice your free-form jazz!
- [Loss #4]
- [Tenna] C'mon... Just imagine you're at that big hippie concert!
- [Tenna] ... You don't know what I'm talking about? Nevermind!
- [Loss #5+]
- [Tenna] That's it!!! That's it!!! I'm paying off the audience and reviewers!!!
- [Tenna] Your POPULARITY will never drop!!! Go wild!!!
- [Tenna] That's right! A MUSICAL CHALLENGE! And this time, it's...
- [Tenna] Oh God. Oh God, it's coming.
- [Tenna] The music is coming.
- [Tenna] I can't stop it...
Rock Video poster featuring Kris
Kris before starting the minigame
Susie before starting the minigame
Ralsei before starting the minigame
Gigi D.G.'s concept art of Kris's rockstar outfit
Gigi D.G.'s concept art of Susie's rockstar outfit
Gigi D.G.'s concept art of Ralsei's rockstar outfit
Rock Video artwork by Temmie Chang
Character pose concept art by Taxiderby
- Ralsei singing is referred to as
politein the files. When holding down the last note in It's TV Time!, Ralsei has a unique sprite where the singing becomesrude, after which he becomes embarrassed and cover his mouth. The sprite for this is referred to ascuss. - A chart editor for Rock Video exists in the game, though it can only be accessed via SAVE file editing, and causes a Dogcheck screen in Chapter 3 (though it does not in Chapter 4). This editor has some limitations:[4][16]
- The editor supports editing and playing all 3 charts of a song, including the ordinarily unplayable Drums and Vocals. However, Vocal charts have a third button that the game does not support.
- Only certain songs can be loaded into the chart editor without further modification. Which tracks are available differs depending on whether the room is opened in Chapter 3 or Chapter 4.
- Just like in the unmodified game, it is not possible to make a chart for specifically Normal or Hard difficulty. Both difficulties always use the same chart.
- Inputting UP, CANCEL or MENU while Kris, Susie, and Ralsei are rising from the stage causes them to rise up faster, while DOWN or CONFIRM makes them rise slower. The sound effect that plays raises and lowers in pitch in turn.
- Each button pressed adds or subtracts 0.5 from the speed multiplier (pressing multiple buttons stacks), with the final result clamped between 0.5× and 2×.
- If a combo's length surpasses 999 notes, the combo counter displayed on the lane simply reads "BIG" instead of a number. Since no available guitar/vocal charts in-game have over 999 notes total, the only ways to see this occur in normal gameplay are either to let the tutorial demo in Round 2 run for a long enough time,[17] to return to Castle Town at the end of Chapter 4 to play Raise Up Your Bat, where Susie is replaced by an autoplaying demo which plays the entire drum track perfectly, or play before getting Susie in the beginning of chapter 5, where the same thing happens. (Despite It's TV Time!, Knock You Down!! (Rhythm Ver.), and 4rd sanctuary having more guitar notes than Raise Up Your Bat, they have fewer drum notes.)
| Game edition | Version tag | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| Deltarune Chapter 4 | v1.03 | Knock You Down!! (Rhythm Ver.)'s impossible note was patched. |
| Susie and Ralsei no longer erroneously appear in the Rock Video minigame in Castle Town at the end of the Chapter. |
- 1 2 Various assets, for example,
room_rhythmgame_editor. - ↑ Raise Up Your Bat - easy guitar solos (Deltarune Chapter 3) on YouTube
- ↑ gml_Object_obj_rhythmgame_Step_0 script, line 542, Chapter 3
- 1 2 Deltarune on TCRF
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_song_load script, lines 160–172, Chapter 5
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_notechart script, lines 3960–4405, Chapter 5
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_song_load script, lines 87–95, Chapter 4
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_notechart script, lines 3269–3289, Chapter 4
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_song_load script, lines 97–104, Chapter 4
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_notechart script, lines 3291–3343, Chapter 4
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_song_load script, lines 117–126, Chapter 4
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_song_load script, lines 128–137, Chapter 4
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_song_load script, lines 185–197, Chapter 5
- ↑ gml_GlobalScript_scr_rhythmgame_song_load script, lines 174–183, Chapter 5
- ↑
By the way! Did you! Know! I made the Lightners Live minigame for Deltarune! The mechanics, the charts, the silly details — everything but the music, writing and final art was me. I even built an entire chart editor from scratch, because manually timing each note sucks so so bad #deltarune
— @taxiderby.coven.cafe on Bluesky, June 20, 2025. - ↑ [TCRF] Deltarune Chapter 3 Unused Room - room_rhythmgame_editor on YouTube
- ↑ Deltarune - BIG Combo Counter on YouTube