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Obviously there's no reason to assume that the Deltarune game maps for Hometown are complete. It seems reasonable to assume that if Hometown could enjoy a "real life" existence, it'd be bigger than the few buildings and streets we see. The picture or map of Hometown glimpsed in Town Hall suggests at least there's more houses than the game bothers with drawing. There's another good on-screen reason for assuming the town is bigger than shown: Hometown is capable of hosting a traffic jam.
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"Maybe Hometown lies on a highway," you might say. "Maybe it's outside traffic." But as depicted, there can be no outside traffic: Hometown has only one road leading off the map, and so far that one road has always been blocked. Hence it's clearly implied that the traffic jam is internal to Hometown—there must be many more drivers than you'd expect, given how few buildings are seen in the game graphics.
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I feel like emphasizing: there's apparently only one road out of town. One other road leads off the map, but it's to the mayor's house, so presumably that's a dead end private road.
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Almost no external entities or places have been mentioned so far in Deltarune dialogue. The unnamed "college" which Asriel is said to be attending—which may or may not be the same college where Rudy and Asgore were pals—is, I think, the only outside place clearly indicated. There's no mention of other towns or cities, no mention of any government aside from the local mayor, no talk of a state or district or country...strictly speaking, we can't even really be sure that Deltarune takes place on Earth. None of the schoolrooms contain something I'd expect to find in a school somewhere: a map of the whole nation or the world.
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Hometown's chief links to anything external to the town are through entertainment. The kids play games that are clearly analogous to big-name franchise games from our Earth, e.g. "Super Smashing Fighters". The games must come from somewhere; same with the anime and the TV broadcasts. Presumably the Internet worked at some point and was capable of connecting to some sort of outside world.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's NO citation of a year or calendar date in Deltarune dialogue. The closest thing I can remember to the mention of a date—aside from the numerous references to December and Christmas—is the notice for a "Sadie Hawkman" dance. "Sadie Hawkins Day" is 13 November in the United States, but it should be mentioned that a "Sadie Hawkins dance" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadie_Hawkins_dance) doesn't need to occur any particular day.
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The only professional establishments seen in Hometown comprise the following: two restaurants, a grocery store, a schoolhouse, a library, a hospital, a church and churchyard, the police station, Town Hall, and Asgore's dismal flower shop. The flower shop is the only specialty store to be seen. There's no movie theater, office buildings, hardware store, bookshop, clothing store, no place to get games or electronics; there's no public transport, no buses or trains; no electrical infrastructure visible; and Officer Undyne isn't sure there's a bank.
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The mysterious bunker is almost as far away from the south edge of Hometown as the Dreemurrs' house, which defines the visible north edge of Hometown.
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The abandoned schoolroom full of toys is, I think, vaguely suggestive of decay or decline. Why was the room abandoned? There's perhaps a hint that the room has been water-damaged—the upper walls are discolored in a manner suggestive of leaks through the ceiling. The school isn't very big and yet feels it can do without an entire room...perhaps Hometown's population is falling, or the town is too impoverished to permit the room's renovation.
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The winged-orb "Delta Rune" symbol is seen three places in Hometown: the Church (which goes unnamed), the door to the schoolhouse, and the Dreemurrs' home.
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The Monsters of Hometown, quite unlike those of Undertale, seem to be unaware of magic—Noelle seems quite taken when she learns about the possibility of healing spells in the Dark World, which only makes sense if the Deltarune Monsters aren't used to magic. This leaves the Monsters' physiology somewhat mysterious. If they're flesh and blood after the fashion of ordinary animals then why would any Monster regard human physiology as weird? ("Does it hurt to be made of blood?") And why would there be ghosts like Napstablook or Monsters like the green fire elemental in QC's Diner?
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The morphology of Deltarune's Monsters seems more constrained and less wildly varied than in Undertale. There's no talking rocks or dancing mushrooms, no Froggits or Vegetoids or cute little volcanoes. There's creatures who seem to be based on inanimate objects (cf. Woshua or Tsundereplane) such as are common in the Underground, but they're only to be found in the Dark Worlds. Almost all of the Hometown Monsters we see are humanoid.
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There's a curious hint that Hometown is aware of Christianity, even though their Church of the Angel seems to be distinct. Just what the Church practices is very thinly sketched indeed—there's an Angel, said to have "power" and implied to have the ability to furnish guidance, and that's about it. The mention of "sick Fruit Juice" might imply some teetotaling version of Holy Communion but it's not even clear that the Fruit Juice is part of the liturgy; maybe they just serve it on the side, like the free coffee after Mass from my Catholic churchgoing days. But somehow Asriel learns of the concepts of sin and confession—now, sin and confession are perhaps not unique to Christianity, but "Christian" is what those words connote to a Western audience. So, where did Asriel learn about these things?
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"God" and "Hell" are both commonplace expletives, it would seem.
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Oh, I've forgotten one important place implied to exist outside the boundaries of Hometown: the Sea, of which Onionsan makes a strange mention. ("The beach" also comes up in dialogue but it might simply refer to the shore of the lake at the east edge of Hometown.)
So, what does all that add up to? Heck if I know.
~Chara of Pnictogen






