Toby Fox's latest release of Deltarune has been a huge hit with fans, containing the second chapter of this beloved game. As a successor and alternate story to his previous hit, Undertale, fans have been finding all of the little secrets and details that have been implemented in this game. Much like the previous chapter of the game, there is a secret boss that can be found in Deltarune Chapter 2, which can be fought against after completing a certain set of criteria.
Like any good hidden boss fight, they are designed to test the player in a way completely separate from the main game. Deltarune is no exception, where a completely brand-new mechanic is introduced in the fight that isn't used anywhere else. However, players were able to find an exploit with this new mechanic, making the boss fight much easier. Most video game developers would intend to patch exploits like this out, but Toby Fox makes the fight more interesting by turning it into a mechanic. The following will contain major spoilers for Deltarune Chapter 2.
Deltarune Chapter 2's secret boss, Spamton NEO, is difficult to fight, where it requires the player to not only dodge some of his bullet patterns, but introduces a mechanic that was previously introduced in Undertale. The player's heart-shaped SOUL can now fire bullets of its own, with a charged shot mechanic that can also be used by holding the Enter or Z keys on the keyboard. However, players quickly discovered that it was possible to use the Enter key to charge while firing with the Z key at the same time, resulting in multiple charged shots being able to be fired at once. As one can imagine, this made the boss fight much, much easier.
Now, most game developers would patch something that trivializes a hard boss fight out since it's a bug, but the game's latest patch turns this bug into something exclusive to the boss fight. If the player fights against Spamton NEO in either the normal route or Deltarune's hidden Weird route, and fires around six to ten charged shots using this exploit, a hard mode will be triggered. This is indicated by Spamton's face smoking and burning red, as well as a horn being heard. His attacks then scale up in damage based on how often the player used this exploit.
This "Big Shot" exploit, named after Spamton's themes incorporating the use of the phrase, was praised for how well Toby Fox turned an innocent bug into a mechanic that fits the game's nature. It's currently unknown if the PS4 and Switch versions of Deltarune have a similar exploit, but there's bound to be a secret uncovered sooner or later.
Deltarune Chapters 1 and 2 are available on PC, PS4, and Switch.