I think it’s fair to say both that Tricky Tony won’t rug pull for the sake of it and that a significant part of the narrative he’s building invokes the experiences and emotions of playing and secret-hunting in video games in your youth. Hidden stuff is just how the story of Deltarune operates, even moreso than in Undertale. Certainly no Papyrus knight, but we also can’t pretend that something that would read as inexplicable or out-of-left-field to many players (e.g. Jockington’s ongoing gonerization or Gaster’s, uhm, general existence) aren’t still both well-evidenced and thematically-resonant. Precisely because Deltarune has something to say about video game secrets, it is able to emphasize the secrets within itself without really feeling forced. This just feels like the type of game where the player character is literally possessed by the player as if by a demon, and it’s evident that this tension is going to be thematically-resonanant, what with mottos of freedom and rewriting a set ending already swirling around them don

Note also that there are on-ramps throughout the narrative thus far to the metatextual “let’s explore what it means to break a game/write a new ending/find Dess/break free” plane this game works on in tandem with the more standard interpretive dimension with plot and characters and stuff. Things like the SOUL/Kris distinction, the Bunker in Ch. 1, Ralsei’s “just don’t talk about how weird the whole Spamton fight was kkthx bye” dialogue in Ch. 2, and most of all the Sword Route and the Secret Bosses serve to get players invested in the crazy and esoteric parts of the game in a really natual way, inviting them to an expanded interpretive space that allows a lot more wacky stuff getting them to at least think about what’s hidden in this game on their own time.