r/DeltaruneDiscussion

To start this off strongly and clearly, I have a bizarre but possibly plausible theory that the "weird route" is actually all a meta revenge plot by the soul against both the Holiday family and Kris. Just keep in mind that I'm basing this off of the popular idea that Dess is the Knight and Carol knows about the soul—they are all working together, aware of the soul and using it for something.

To start, let's look at the actions and potential metaphors in the Snowgrave Route in chapter 2. A main thing in this route is pressure and a "snowglobe", which we see Noelle within much like how we, the soul, are within a "cage" (Kris). This somewhat establishes a deliberate parallel in which someone is being trapped and controlled just like us. Chapter 2 is all about beginning to establish our cruel control over Noelle, IN PARTICULAR, MIND YOU. Note how there are no options to pressure or even react to others in this path like Susie, Ralsei, Berdly, Toriel, etc... We specifically choose Noelle for this.

Next, in Chapter 3, things proceed as normal and seemingly face no change until...The Knight appears. I was just watching a blind playthrough of the "weird route" and someone's attempt at beating The Roaring Knight for the first time in the same playthrough, and something I noticed is subtly increased aggression. Attacks appear only slightly faster but there is a notably brand new move that was either added post-release for no real reason or exclusive to the weird route. What is this attack? It's when The Knight fires a flurry of diamonds from their fingertip before said diamonds stall and burst into additional bullets. HOWEVER, in the weird route, there exists a harsher variation of this move. When the diamonds burst, the resulting bullets are red and home in on you before moving. If the "Dess is the Knight" theories hold water...that means Dess may have an idea of what we've done to her sister in the previous chapter and is showing more aggression than usual because of it. It's not just a "weird route" exclusive challenge. It's a small hint that she has a bad feeling about us, the soul, and is beginning to see a genuine threat. It's now personal. Of course, you're expected to fight back as much as possible in this path. Hence, the additional attack...

Next, in Chapter 4, I think this is where the biggest red flags show. I think that, during the section of visiting the Holiday residence, the original intent during a normal route is to look for a code and investigate the mystery. In the "weird route", however, you ignore this objective entirely. **Your target is Noelle**. You don't care about the code. You don't care about the mystery of the bunker. YOU KNOW what's happening and are now going after someone uninvolved, yet ultimately, intimately related to those who are. You ignored your objective purely to torment Kris and further corrupt Noelle, in particular. There's an obvious conspiracy going on between Carol, The Knight and Kris involving the soul, as the soul is confirmed to be required by Kris to enter the Dark World and seal fountains. This potentially establishes the idea that the soul is being used. It is not a convenient plot device. It was intentionally taken control of by force and is the impetus of a plot by half of the Holiday family and Kris. It's a motive for our increasingly violent and manipulative rebellion. This is no longer about uncovering the mystery. **This is about insidiously destroying Kris and getting revenge against half of the Holiday family through Noelle**. It's also why there's a clear, antagonistic disconnect between Kris and the soul, I.E. the legendary bathroom crashout scene. We're forcing Kris to do something deplorable and against both their will and script, and they hate it on a personal level. They HATE us, but they NEED us.

Finally, there's chapter 5. The beginning speaks for itself. Kris is laying in bed, dead silent and implied to have been there all day. Kris is broken and mortified. The fact you have to forcefully drag them out of bed while there is clear resistance...I think suggests an almost pathetic, silent plea. "Please, no more. Please, stop. Don't make me do anything else." We're establishing a violent rebellion here, fighting Kris for their own autonomy and body. We're fighting to control the plot that Kris and their co-conspirators are losing control of. They thought to use and control us, but "SINCE WHEN WERE YOU THE ONE IN CONTROL?" Is effectively our response. We effectively skip the ENTIRE DARK WORLD of this chapter, further nailing in the idea that our objective is not to solve a mystery but to break a script. The soul broke Noelle and is being made to join her in crossing the river through sheer will and persistence. Through...determination, you could even say.

Undertale references aside, the story here is notably shorter and almost hollow here, as if the soul is hyper-fixated on something we, the player, were not informed of. There is a particularly strange fixation on harsh control, obsession with Noelle in particular, and a total diversion from the intended script that could all just be a distraction. I think there are some implications that this isn't just us trying to break the script for no real reason. This is a meta revenge plot by the soul that we, as the players, just aren't aware of yet. We're using Noelle, specifically, to hurt everyone involved as much as possible. This is a declaration of war against the ones using us, and as the saying goes...in love and war...

Conclusion/TL;DR: The "weird route" isn't senseless. It's deliberate. It's us breaking the script out of rancor and denying our fate as a tool, but we're disregarding the costs and moral implications. We, the player, just don't realize it yet. Like before, we are not ENTIRELY the soul. We just influence it heavily, and we are expected to meta-game or have "impossible" knowledge.

I remember that in that scene, instead of going to the Ferris wheel, Susie rushes out of Noelle’s room looking excited, and then tells Kris she’ll tell them later, but I’m pretty sure that she never did. Did Toby just forget or can it be inferred?

Hi all, I’ve searched through after coming up with this about a week ago but haven’t been able to find anything expressing this idea so I’ve written up something myself. Genuinely very sorry if it has already been posted! (It’s also super LONG).

This whole thing was inspired by my husband and I debating how Kris knew that Seth would want Berdly’s feather. While it seems like the common consensus is that Seth had prior knowledge of Berdly due to him interacting with the flowers in some way or Asgore telling Seth about Berdly, I don’t think this addresses how Kris would know that offering one of Berdly’s feathers (or more generally “the feather of a true genius”) would be a good bargaining chip for Seth? There’s also some debate about when this deal takes place and the game does explicitly state in the cutscene that it was a deal that Seth and Kris made before the dark fountain was created (so I suspect, as many others do, that this must have been the night before the festival in the light world).

This implies that Kris must have knowledge of Seth’s personality before the dark fountain was created. It is pretty clear that this is the one and only time that these flowers have been present in a dark world based on the last scene we have with the flowers. So, most people seem to agree that their personalities are based on Asgore’s interactions with the flowers and personification of them. We do know that he talks to his flowers based on his interaction with Sans in Chapter 2 (“They’re the first ones I asked! They’re such good listeners, you know. Flowers.”). Some have even speculated that the seven flowers represent different important people in Asgore’s life (Toriel, Asriel, Kris, Rudy, Carol, Dess, and Noelle). However, other than the Aqua/Kris parallels and some of the Rudy/Flowery parallels, I haven’t found that these comparisons quite hold up. That’s not to say that there aren’t some connections (which I’ll go into later), but the analysis that has always made more sense to me is the comparison between the flowers and what they represent about Kris (some examples of analysis here and here).

So my proposition is that the flowers are all childhood imaginary friends of Kris (with one exception) and that this is how Kris knows Seth’s preferences and what will be an effective bargaining chip. The flowers’ personalities are all reflective of the sort of characters that kids make up when they play. We know that Kris has a history of playing with inanimate objects and perhaps even shaping their personalities through the way they play with them (see Ramb’s dialogue about Kris playing with him alongside King, Queen, and Tenna). I think that the flowers personalities do all reflect different things about Kris and their interests as a child. I think they also explore elements of Lightners in Kris’s life.

This would explain a few things:

• The Flowers presenting as humans: I’ve seen a few explanations of this as being a reflection of Asgore’s love for Kris, an easter egg based on the human souls in Undertale, or a reflection of humans being particularly powerful in this universe. None of these explanations have really worked for me but if these flowers are Kris’s imaginary friends, it would make some sense of it. We know Kris struggles to some degree being the only human in a town of monsters. Creating these imaginary friends who are also humans and playing with them would help Kris feel less alone in this sense.
• Connection with Kris: If they created these imaginary friends, Kris would understand their personalities and would have a pre-established relationship with them from their interactions in the Light World, as expressed by the aforementioned scene with Seth and Flowery’s dialogue about knowing how he feels about Kris.
• Ages: The range of ages of the Flowers is based on how Kris envisioned them. It isn’t uncommon for kids to come up with a range of ages for their imaginary friends and characters invented through play. It also reflects some of the ways I believe Kris is using this play to explore their own identity which I’ll go into more below
• Connection with Asgore: I think a natural question that comes up is Asgore’s connection with the Flowers. If he’s the one they are trying to keep happy and impress, how does this work if they are creations of Kris? Well, I think that Asgore began joining Kris in these games with his flowers. I can picture a young Kris telling their dad proudly about the names and personalities of these flowers, and Asgore enthusiastically playing along with his child. As time went on, something awful happened to Dess, and the game with the flowers stopped. Yet Asgore’s fatal flaw is his nostalgia, how desperately he’ll cling to the past. He’s the one who keeps caring for the flowers, who takes them with him when moving from the family home, and who we know talks to them. It would make sense for him to continue treating them as the small humans designed by his child, whose relationship with him is now strained and tense. And so these flowers over the years have grown a stronger attachment to Asgore.

How the Flowers reflect Kris and their friends/family:

1. Aqua

This is the first character I want to talk about who shows characteristics we associate a younger Kris with. Aqua is playful, cheeky, and has a fondness for knives. She is chaotic and enjoys messing with Seth in a way that seems to hint at Kris’s fondness for pranks. They share a strong resemblance in their colour schemes that Aqua herself draws attention to. This is something I’ve noticed with children, that they will create characters that are quite similar to themselves when playing with a collection of toys. It would make some sense for Kris to choose a flower in their favourite colour (or perhaps in the colour of their original soul, as some have speculated) to create as a stand in for themselves. It is interesting that Aqua is explicitly female unlike Kris who is non-binary. This could (as some have suggested) imply that Kris is AFAB.

2. Seth

Seth is a character who represents some sort of gender fluidity or non-binary exploration. I suspect this is a reflection of Kris’s own gender identity journey. Notably, Seth has chosen their own name rather than being called ‘Purple’, breaking the naming conventions of flowers to become more human-like, referring to Seth as a human name. I suspect this reflects Kris’s desire to choose their own name. I believe that they weren’t always called Kris, but wanted to choose a more human like name. (This might be a bit of a tangent, but there’s only a few names used by monsters in Hometown that I would consider ‘human names’. These are the Christmas-themed Holiday family and Susie. I think if we consider the Christmas themed names outliers this actually kinda contributes to the theory of Susie being part-human or being raised by humans. That being said, we don’t have much evidence of what conventional human names look like in the world of Deltarune beyond the choice of ‘Seth’). This does also lend itself to the idea that Kris’s original name was the monster-style name Togore, which I just think is funny.

Beyond this, Seth also shows parallels to other characters in Kris’s life. Seth is sensible and studious, something many people presume Asriel to be based on the awards in their shared room and how others in Hometown talk about him. They are also perhaps a reflection of Noelle in this sense. Creating this imaginary friend as a basis for some sort of game may reflect who Kris wants to be in the future rather than who Kris is right now. Kris clearly looks up to their older brother and at the time of creating these characters may have wanted to be like him. They are also likely already questioning their gender identity but not necessarily settled on it (which is why Seth refers to themselves as a ‘King or a Queen’ as a reflection of this.) Based on this, I think the following two characters are explorations of alternate gender identities for Kris.

3. Blue

I think Blue is an exploration of a child Kris’s potential gender identity as a man. Blue, while being male, does not conform to traditional gender stereotypes and is associated with imagery that is traditionally feminine (such as butterflies and wearing a tutu). Kids tend to explore personality traits they see from real life but also use play to experiment with how these traits may look for themselves. Imaginary play helps them to explore their own identity, giving kids a safe space to explore these elements. So Blue being male and happily using male pronouns while embracing more feminine things could represent Kris’s own potential concept of themselves as male while exploring their gender as a child. Blue is also notably quite distinct from Aqua, being much more gentle and sensible compared to her. This could represent some hidden desires of Kris to be more gentle with their loved ones and to be more able to follow the rules.

There are a couple of other similarities between Kris and Blue. Blue is an artist in a different form to Kris’s chosen art form of music (specifically the piano). However, Kris is shown to dance and pirouette during certain Act sections of battle fairly competently (I love their pirouette jump in the Tenna cooking segment so much). Blue is also quite emotionally intelligent, which I believe Kris also demonstrates based on their reactions to some of the dialogue insensitive choices players can make.

Of the colours, Blue and Green are closest to Aqua/Cyan on the colour wheel as well, which I think reflects these two as explorations of Kris’s own identity as a child.

4. Green

I think Green is another exploration of Kris’s potential gender identity as non-binary, and I would argue, the character who is closest to modern-day Kris.

Green is presented as kind and generous, choosing to help us out in battle rather than attack. This in and of itself reflects Kris’s own ability to Act in battle, usually providing some sort of helpfulness or kindness to the characters we interact with. Kris is also a genuinely kind character, which we may not always see due to them hiding information from us and just generally disliking this entity that is possessing them. While Kris is complex and makes choices we may not agree with, Kris clearly is conflicted by this and is likely being coerced in some way based on the final Chapter 4 phone call. When Kris acts on their own, while it often to act like a gremlin in some way or to hide information from the player. However, there are some other key moments where Kris acts in kindness without our input. This includes defending Susie from King in Chapter One and the Sound of Justice in Chapter Four, and kneeling to hug Ralsei at the end of Chapter Four. Kris also will prevent the player from making unkind dialogue choices by covering their mouth, coughing, speaking too fast, or mumbling.

Green also doesn’t talk throughout the chapter and instead uses body language and written signs to communicate. Much of Kris’s communication does seem to take place through body language, which Susie is seen to be able to interpret. Kris, too, is presented as a character who is usually quiet and has a ‘mumbly’ voice that they use to communicate. This quiet and mumbly voice is something Kris has always had based on Noelle’s memory, which is worth acknowledging as it seems to contradict the idea that Aqua is based on a child version of Kris. However, Aqua could be based more on Kris’s self-perception and sense of who they are rather than the reality. This means it makes much more sense for Aqua to be a creation of Kris as a child which takes some creative liberties, rather than being someone Asgore created meant to sentimentally reflect his child as they were.

5. Yellow

Yellow is a cowboy, which is another classic children’s character archetype. Kris is also revealed to have enjoyed watching cowboy shows with Asgore when they were younger, meaning a cowboy imaginary friend they created as a child would make sense. Yellow’s sense of right and wrong is also very skewed and childlike, representing some very black and white thinking about justice which is quite common in children.

On a darker note, a lot of Yellow’s comedic sections stem from a strong sense of guilt when he perceives himself as being responsible for hurting someone he loves. This results in self-harming behaviour in an attempt to punish himself. This is a reflection of both Asgore and Kris. Kris harms themselves by removing the Soul to try and achieve their own ends. Kris seems to coerced into this type of behaviour and it is likely related to their working with the Knight/Carol/whoever else. Many see this as a reflection of Kris being responsible to some degree (whether this is just their own perception of the situation or true responsibility is unclear). Asgore harms himself by distancing himself from his friends and family in the pursuit of justice against the Knight (or whoever caused Dess’s disappearance). This is like how Yellow imprisons himself after his attempts at physically harming himself are foiled, distancing himself from those he loves like Blue. I think this character may have been created by both Asgore and Kris as they played together when Kris was a child.

6. Orange

Orange is an interesting character as she seems to represent some of Kris’s discomfort at being a human rather than a monster, while still insisting that she is a human. From this, I conclude that while Kris felt isolated as the only human in Hometown, they don’t necessarily reject their own humanity but struggle more with being physically distinct from the monsters in Hometown. Our evidence of their distaste for their own humanity seems to mostly be rooted in the physical (questioning when their horns will grow in and wearing the fake horns around). The only other evidence we have of Kris disliking being human comes from closing the book showing unfamiliar humans in Chapter 2, which could again be due to disliking human appearance rather than their identity as a human.

There is other evidence of Kris wanting to represent themselves differently, but not necessarily as a monster, but as a dog. (I do know that dog monsters exist in this world but most people see this as Kris being a furry rather than wanting to be a monster. There’s also evidence that pets/animals exist in this universe through games like Cat-Petterz, Noelle’s hamster cage, and Susie’s remark about Kris’s cage being for a bird or something.) I think that Orange represents Kris’s desire to remain human but to physically represent themselves differently, perhaps as a dog. Orange resembles a mouse rather than a dog, which I think is meant to be due to Noelle’s fear of mice. I could picture the two of them playing a game together and Kris using this mouse-like human in the game to prank Noelle.

Speaking of Noelle, I think Orange’s desire to become more brave over time is a reflection of Noelle’s personality. Noelle is presented as being fearful (particularly when she was younger) and easily scared by Kris. However, she is also shown to enjoy being scared and the feeling of being comforted. She became more brave throughout the Chapter 2 Dark World, being able to stand up to Queen by the end. Similarly, she becomes more brave and is able to stand up to Carol in Chapter 5. Orange also runs to her ‘big sister’ when she is frustrated at Ralsei’s treatment of her, which is something we know Noelle did with her own big sister when tormented by Kris. So, I think Orange reflects both Kris’s desire to appear different and less human, and Noelle’s desire to be braver. I think this imaginary friend was created by both Noelle and Kris as they played together as children.

7. Flowery

I also believe as part of the game, Asgore created one of the flower characters himself. This is Flowery, who reflects Asgore’s nostalgia again, being a human version of Rudy and who constantly plays to Asgore’s nostalgia throughout the chapter to try and keep him happy. This is in contrast to the way the other flowers try to please him, who use more child-like methods of showing him what they’ve been working on or trying to get him to play with him. That’s because the other six flowers reflect the childhood need for parents to notice their children and validate that they have done a good job. Therefore, I think the other six flowers reflect Kris’s method of trying to please their dad, whereas Flowery more directly reflects Asgore’s own desire to live in a nostalgic fantasy rather than appreciating the here and now. This is what leads Asgore to not really notice that something is very wrong with Kris (especially in the weird route).

I also think this explains why Flowery’s design is a lot more human-like. I get the impression that Kris as a child actually had very little exposure to what other humans look like, with little awareness that they are not a monster and won’t have horns grow in. However, Asgore could have much more easily encountered other humans at college, or during Kris’s adoption process, or at least seen them in the How to Care for Humans book. Flowery’s design is just generally quite different to the other flowers, which to me indicates that his character was created by someone other than the other flowers.

Anyway, that’s my theory about the flowers! Let me know what you think, sorry it’s so long!

Chapter 5 was one of the best chapters gameplay-wise, and has a great story of escapism to tell. It is an incredibly well made chapter, but when put in the context of the overall game, it feels like it completely ignores that Chapter 4 ever happened.

Chapter 4 was one of the best chapters yet, and it’s overarching narrative of fate and how our choices have already been decided is incredibly well put together, culminating in the most intense battle to date: the Titan.

But then, you play Chapter 5, and it is just such a stark contrast to what happened the night prior. I like the idea of a chapter with a calm before the storm, a break before the big finale, but it just wasn’t executed well. It felt like Susie and Ralsei forgot everything about Chapter 4, the looming buildup of the past few chapters was just gone.

Chapter 5 had a great story to tell, with the narrative of the flowers having their own dreams and us ruining that dream despite keeping ours, but I feel that it could’ve been implemented into the overall story much better. In fact, it would’ve been as easy as a few lines of dialogue.

Near the beginning of the chapter, in the Garden, one of the people in the Fun Gang could have mentioned how they should take their minds off of things that happened in the previous night and try to have fun here.

This would set up an overarching motive over the whole chapter to try and have one last fun adventure. It would define the chapter as a break chapter, similar to how the recent newsletter defined it as “one last fun adventure before the sun goes down completely.”

This overarching motive would have to be maintained throughout the chapter, which wouldn’t be that difficult. During one of the dialogue scenes in the Castle where we are one on one with one of the party members, there could be dialogue mentioning how scared Ralsei is of what happens next, or talking to Susie about how we can’t let the Knight keep capturing people.

Just dialogue like this once or twice in the chapter, to maintain that buildup from the previous chapters and make the previous chapter feel more real.

And this overarching motive would end at the end of the chapter, where Flowery dies and the Knight captures Asgore. Things are still serious because of the looming prophecy, which would be mentioned again, and it would make Susie’s feelings at the end of the chapter feel way more real and justified.

Chapter 5 was an amazing chapter, it has the best gameplay to date by far and I love the story it tells, I just dislike how much it clashed with Chapter 4 and feel like it would have worked better this way.

so, as we know Noelle probably will join the party again in chapter 6 and we can abort the weird route, so what happens if we abort the weird route in chapter 5 and start freezing more enemies in chapter 6 with Noelle?

Particularly how flowery starts the fight with the knight? He brings out another enemy literally realying on normal game mechanics to get the fight going. If the game mechanics are part of the fantasy of the dark world and the knight can ignore the made up stats of flowery, can the night ignore the fantasy of a dark world? He dose cause actual damage to flowery from inside the darkworld hum.. it just makes me wonder would this imply the knight is fundamentally different from both a lighter like susie and darkners? Could susie ignore stats if she was in the right mindset? She dose definitely \*want\* to indulge in the fantasy of the dark world.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say Deltarune is bad at all. I absolutely love this game, and I'm sure everyone here does too. But looking at how Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 threw massive shade at the fandom's theories about Mike, it makes me anxious that Toby might throw a total curveball right when it matters most. Even though it turned out to be great in the end, the secret boss in Chapter 5 was just so heavily gag-oriented that it genuinely caught me off guard at first.

That being said, there are a few things I’m really hoping to see in the upcoming chapters. For one, a battle with Seam after collecting five Shadow Crystals, or a fight against Susie in a 'Side B' route (how hype would it be if we got a remix of 'Vs. Susie'?). I also want to see Mike show up as an actual plot-relevant character, rather than just being a meta-joke at the fandom's expense. Plus, things like having a battle in the Light World with the exact same UI as UNDERTALE. There’s a whole laundry list of things I want, but I’ll stop here.

Is it wrong for me to want these kinds of fan-concept tropes? Maybe I'm just chasing too much 'aura' in the story, but I can't help but crave that absolute peak fiction.

Edit: When the hell are the r/DELTARUNE mods gonna lower the karma requirement to post???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

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Going to preface this by saying I don't really listen to many theories, if any. I can't catch up with them, so I don't know if any of this has already been talked about at length or not.

However, I see a lot of people linking the roaring knight to Dess, Gaster, Papyrus (?), Rudy, Carol... Etc. Though I'd definitely considered Carol due to her odd behavior, the way she talks to Kris, the horns! etc... I'm starting to make a bit of a crack theory. Maybe Dess and Carol are a red herring while we're forgetting the part where "Asriel is coming back from college" is told to us from the very beginning of the story.

He feels like such a prominent part of the puzzle, and yet I rarely see people tie him to this.Aren't there also parallels to Asriel? Even design wise, it's not too far off from the God of Hyperdeath. The hollow chest, the holes in the hands, the shoulder pads (?) The motif of hopes and dreams, but inverted?

From the very start of the game, we see a very intentional presentation of Asriel without even knowing his character:

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He's a medalist, multiple award winner, distinguished graduate, talented artist! We then learn he's a bit of a nerd, he loved Dess, he was a great part of his community, with a great reputation...

But all of these are external observations and anecdotes of Asriel, never his internal perspective. Even Kris' perspective on Asriel is idealized, heroic, even.

We never see who he is objectively. Looking at the Dreemurr family as a whole, they'd collectively been dealing with a difficult family dynamic... For years. And if Undertale taught us anything, it's that Asriel as notorious for shouldering everyone's burdens with a smile. (And as a churchgoer, wouldn't he also be just as aware about the prophecy? About anyone being the hero?)

What if Asriel lied?

What if he had never gone to college, and instead hid from everything in the shelter? What if he'd also been suffering from the family slowly coming apart, the times they'd enjoyed becoming distant memories, Dess disappearing, maybe without him knowing why... (or maybe, they'd escaped together?) What if he was just as lost as Kris is now, and Toriel/Asgore didn't notice?

The Knight's sword is made of shadow crystal, which Seam (Asriel's worn plushie, which Kris returns to the house, by the way,) reveals are failed dreams. (Side tangent: It's also really interesting how you can still interact with Seam despite him not being in the supply closet. Is castle town the town itself? Is that what "ROOTS" are, given the literal display of a home surrounded by trees? Ralsei's ability to go into any dark world certainly supports this. Did it start in their bedroom?)

If you put Asriel in the role of the knight, he could have a lot of motives for failed dreams- especially to use as his weapon, his tool to move forward. Dess, Asgore's distance and obsession with the dark world, the divorce, the Holidays growing more detached, things falling apart around the family, Kris acting incredibly different after getting possessed, and maybe, just maybe, lying to the others about going to college, and hiding in the shelter instead. It's especially possible now that we learn that Asgore was especially involved in studying it, meaning Kris wasn't the only Dreemurr invested in this.

What if he just wanted... To run away, and create a dream where life goes on, their family and friends are all together, Toriel recognizes that Asgore was telling the truth, and he can find Dess in the deepest, roaring dark? It's also possible Kris played with the card darkners, Seam, and everyone else... With Asriel. As an escape from the world that was crumbling around them. (Makes me think about Mancountry.)

If the knight is Asriel, it makes even more sense why Kris is doing the absolute best to keep anyone, us included, from finding him. Deleting numbers, avoiding opening the door knowing "a large person could fit inside" the chapel, avoiding the guitar...

"Susie... must not get... guitar..." Because if they found Asriel here after lying about being gone... Everything would fall apart with questions, right?

Asriel likely knew about the shelter code from Dess.

And, if you look at the ominous call Kris had received back in Ch 4, you get lines like:

.. Kris... dark world... no soul... can't...
"...need... soul..." 
Without... soul... Kris... will..."

Doesn't it sound like they're talking to someone else besides Kris?
And... Don't they almost sound concerned for Kris...?

I think that Asriel is just as likely to want to escape his role, like Kris, Noelle, Susie, and everyone else in this story has tried to in their own ways, using the Dark Worlds.

That, or the vessel we'd made in Ch. 1 went amok and Kris wants to swap us out with whatever it can give in order to free itself from control. I'm sticking with Asriel for now.

EDIT: Other things of note:
Asriel has proven to have a lot more going on than we'd been able to glean from flavor text alone, and Ch. 3 hints at this the most- we think he likes "Green Lizard" and he prefers "Sword Magician" in time. We think of him one way, and the game subverts our expectations of him, already telling us not to expect to know the full story.

Kris seems most defiant when it comes to protecting others, but otherwise seems quite defeated when it comes to Kris' quality of life. Whenever the Knight or clues about the knight's true identity come into play, Kris tries especially hard to forget, distract us, or forgo interacting with the world entirely. This suggests more rapport than just "Carol is telling Kris to find her daughter."

The Roaring Knight is extremely versed in moving around the dark world- and has Dark/Star attacks that can only be defended against in part with the shadow mantle. Dark/Star certainly seems to fit the bill of the God of Hyperdeath's space-themed battle.

The Ch3 fight.
The Roaring Knight rejects their mercy, but is exceptionally merciful to Kris, only attacking Kris to make the battle convincing despite pulling punches when dealing max (999? seem familiar?) damage that doesn't heal with turns to keep them from interfering and getting their way via defeat/sparing. The battle itself is overly favorable between Kris and the Roaring Knight- Roaring does little damage and Kris willingly stays down.

Kris barely does damage even with good weaponry. Despite being so protective of family and friends, Kris makes sure to leave the door open and watches idly while the knight carries Toriel away.

Kris offers a cue only the Knight can pick up, coughing before the end of the battle. Wouldn't the knight have to know this is one of the few ways Kris can openly act?

In Ch 4, we know the Knight had opened a fountain when the church was empty due to the rainfall. But when we go into the final battle... We see that the Knight had been moving around, stopping us from fighting directly... And looking for someone. It could be a Holiday, sure... But it could also be Asriel, because again, Kris knows who could fit behind the door. Kris starts to tell us things like, "Then again, you never liked looking closely."

EDIT 2: I misread, Seam is not in the Dreemurr home! It appears he is still in the supply closet. I still believe that there is a strong argument for castle town, mancountry, and similar dark worlds having been started at home or school.

Seam feels like such a big part of the puzzle, too; he actively understood and awaited the coming end of the prophecy (potentially even the world) since Ch1. He proves time and time again to be an incredibly powerful magician- more than Jevil or any of the mizzles, making him another example of well-loved items being stronger: Flowery, Seam himself, the family TV, etc. (Could Ralsei be a well-loved item by Kris, hence his odd infatuation with Kris? Or... could Ralsei be something connected to US?)

That's all for now! Thank you for reading!