Toby Fox


Robert F. "Toby" Fox is an American video game developer, composer, and voice actor. He is best known for developing the role-playing video games Undertale and Deltarune.
Fox's early work consisted of developing RPG Maker games and creating ROM hacks, including the EarthBound Halloween Hack. Fox then moved on to composing music, including for Andrew Hussie's 2009 webcomic Homestuck. In 2015, Fox created Undertale, which became a breakout hit and pop-culture phenomenon. It has received nominations for a British Academy Game Award, three Game Awards, and D.I.C.E. Awards.
Following the success of Undertale, Fox went on to compose music for several other indie games, as well as contributing to the soundtracks of Super [Smash Bros. Ultimate] and the Pokémon video games. From 2018 onwards, Fox started development of Deltarune, an episodic video game set in a parallel universe to ''Undertale.''
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Early life and education

Robert F. Fox was born on October 11 1991, in Manchester, New Hampshire. Fox has stated that as a child, he took music lessons, including piano and trumpet. When he reached middle school, he decided to start playing piano again, performing gaming soundtracks by ear. He later studied environmental science at Northeastern University and graduated in 2014.

Career

2008–2009: Early work

Fox's earliest experiences in game development included using RPG Maker with his three brothers to create RPGs and ROM hacks in high school. One of his early projects was the EarthBound Halloween Hack, a Halloween-themed ROM hack of EarthBound, which released in 2008. He then moved on to compose music for Andrew Hussie's 2009 webcomic Homestuck during his senior year of high school. While he did not initially respond when Hussie started a Music Contribution Team in April 2009, Hussie took note of his work when Fox started uploading piano covers of the webcomic's music on the MS Paint Adventures forums. Fox was production coordinator of Homestucks soundtrack, composing a version of "Megalovania"; he credited this with giving him experience with digital audio workstations.

2013–2015: ''Undertale''

Fox's most well-known work is the 2015 role-playing video game Undertale, which he also composed the soundtrack for. Undertale sold more than 3.5 million copies, becoming a "breakout hit" and "pop-culture phenomenon". Undertale has received nominations for a British Academy Game Award, three Game Awards and D.I.C.E. Awards. Fox worked on the entire game independently, besides the art assets to avoid relying on others. Fox recruited Temmie Chang to work on art for Undertale. Fox conceptualised the character designs for Undertale during college, drawing them in his notebook.
Following its release, Undertale garnered an extensive fanbase. Fox commented that he did not mind if people stated that they did not like Undertale, saying that it was "not for everyone". In 2016, YouTube personality MatPat gifted a copy of Undertale to Pope Francis. Also in 2016, Fox wrote that his personal opinion was that Undertale was still "niche" and deserved an "8/10" review score. He also became a contributor to the A Profound Waste of Time magazine. Fox was then chosen to be part of the 2018 Games Forbes 30 Under 30 list for his role in creating Undertale; by which point had sold over 2 million copies.

''Super Smash Bros.''

The success of Undertale, especially in Japan, afforded Fox the opportunity to meet Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai. Sans, a character from Undertale, was later included in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as a Mii costume available through downloadable content, along with an instrumental composition "Megalovania", for which Fox provided a new arrangement.

2018–present: ''Deltarune''

On October 30, 2018, Fox posted a request for fans of Undertale to check its official Twitter account in 24 hours. The following day, Fox released the first chapter of the followup to Undertale — ''Deltarune — for free under the guise of a "survey". In a Twitlonger post, Fox shared more details regarding it, including that he does not wish to spend longer than seven years on the project. Fox expressed interest in assembling a team for Deltarune, stating that "Since I haven't started assembling the team yet I have absolutely no estimation of its completion". Fox also stated that he had been working on the project since 2012, and that the idea for Undertale developed from Deltarune during production.
On June 12, 2019, the first chapter of Deltarune had been playable for several months, Fox expressed on his Twitter account he had hope he would complete the rest of Deltarune, saying: "Slowly I'm writing and drawing it all out." He stated that he had already written about 50 songs past Chapter 1. On September 17, 2021, Fox released the second chapter of Deltarune for free since "the world has been really tough for everybody recently", referring to the struggles of the COVID-19 pandemic. He released the next two chapters, 3 and 4, bundled in with the first two as a paid game on June 4, 2025; future chapters will be added to it as free updates for owners of the paid version. He is currently working on Chapter 5, which is set to release in 2026. Deltarune'' is set to have a total of seven chapters.

2017–present: Composing and voice acting

Fox has composed music for the 2017 Homestuck video game Hiveswap, Undertale artist Temmie Chang's short narrative game Escaped Chasm, and Game Freak's 2019 RPG Little Town Hero, the last of which was arranged by Pokémon composer Hitomi Sato. He also composed a track for Pokémon Sword and Shield, and multiple tracks for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. He also remixed Ed Sheeran's "Celestial" for Scarlet and Violets expansion The Indigo Disk. In 2024, he partnered with Japanese game developer ZUN for the Touhou Danmaku Kagura Phantasia Lost downloadable content, which included a track that combined the Touhou song "U.N - Owen Was Her?" with Undyne's boss battle theme "Battle Against a True Hero" from Undertale.
Fox has done voice acting work for multiple television and web series. In 2023, Fox had his voice acting debut in the animated television series We Baby Bears. He plays a skeleton named Jared in the episode "Polly's New Crew". Fox as stated that its "been a dream of to be a voice actor in cartoons". In 2025, Fox voiced John Egbert in the Homestuck animated pilot.

Influences

Fox has described himself as being mesmerized by the music and atmosphere of Final Fantasy VI. Other Japanese role-playing games, such as EarthBound, Secret of Mana and Super Mario RPG served as major inspirations; Fox looked up to Yoko Shimomura's works in particular. Her song "Megalomania" for Live A Live was particularly inspiring for Fox. He originally intended to use a cover of the song in a game, but he got tired of transcribing it and eventually made a new song called "Megalovania". Fox discovered the Touhou Project series at a very young age. During middle school, he downloaded the demo versions of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Perfect Cherry Blossom. He played a piano rendition of the Perfect Cherry Blossom track "Necrofantasia" at his church's summer camp. Fox has cited the Ace Attorney series as an inspiration for him, particularly in characterization.

Personal life

Fox is secretive and does not typically do interviews. He has chronic wrist and hand pain that regularly disables him from programming and composing, and often relies on speech-to-text software as his computer input method. In September 2020, Fox cited a flare-up of this pain as a factor in the delayed development of Deltarune second chapter. Fox can speak Japanese.

Works

Video games

Guest composer only

Hiveswap Friendsim YIIK: A Postmodern RPG Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – DLC onlyPesterquest