Toby Fox

An American composer of music and creator of video games, Toby Fox first drew widespread attention through his breakout 2015 indie title Undertale, whose score recalled the timbres of 1980s arcade staples such as Mario Bros. and Dig Dug. His stylistically wide-ranging soundtrack for DELTARUNE, Chapter 1, issued in 2018 and encompassing orchestral and choral passages alongside playful computer textures, electric guitar, and atmospheric effects, entered the Billboard Independent Albums chart. Two years later the follow-up DELTARUNE, Chapter 2 placed inside the Top 20 of both the Soundtracks and Heatseekers Albums tallies.

Before Undertale appeared, Fox had already contributed music to Andrew Hussie’s online comic Homestuck, which he joined while still a high-school senior in 2009. The game itself, centered on a child journeying through an underworld crowded with monsters in hopes of resurfacing, reached Windows and OS X platforms in September 2015 and moved a million units by April of the next year. Fox also supplied its entirely electronic-keyboard score; the resulting soundtrack emerged on the Materia label in 2016. After CrazyGroupTrio’s 15-minute EP Undertale: Arranged on Piano, Iam8bit released the fuller Undertale on Piano in 2017, spotlighting pianist Augustine Mayuga Gonzales.

Fox next co-composed the music for Hiveswap, the 2017 video game drawn from the Homestuck universe. DELTARUNE, Chapter 1 advanced his Billboard profile when its soundtrack climbed to number 41 on the Independent Albums chart. Torby Brand’s piano adaptation appeared in 2018 and was succeeded by another CrazyGroupTrio version. Pokémon franchise composer Hitomi Sato reimagined Fox’s material for Game Freak’s 2019 release Little Town Hero, after which Fox scored the 2020 title Dweller’s Empty Path (also known as Escaped Chasm 2), developed by Undertale artist Temmie Chang.

When DELTARUNE, Chapter 2 arrived in 2021 its original score reached number 11 on the Soundtracks chart and number 14 on the Heatseekers chart.