Undertale: A masterpiece in game design

Undertale is the best game I have ever played. While it may only be subjectively better than all the other games I’ve yet had the pleasure to play there is a particular reason that I think it’s the best game I’ve come across. People have cited the characters, the music, the writing and even sometimes the art style as the reason they fell in love with the game. All of those elements are fantastic but one of the least lauded aspects is the reason Undertale stands above the likes of Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid and Team Fortress 2 in my eyes, and that’s actually the gameplay.

Now looking at some of my other favourite games, gameplay seems the one thing Undertale is surely beaten in right? I’ve sunk over 1000 hours into TF2 (with basically no trading at all, I’ve never once been in a trade server) and will likely sink in 1000 more. TF2’s gameplay, to my taste, is perfect, but there’s no story and it’s really a testament to the quality of the gameplay that as a mainly solo and non-competitive type of player I should play the game as much as I do. But Undertale beats it out. Half-Life 2 episode 2 was, prior to Undertale, my favourite game and features a stunning last half hour of semi open world combat that still hasn’t been beaten in terms of the absolute heights Single-player gameplay can be taken too. Yet HL2:E2 is topped by Undertale. Metal Gear Solid 3 I dearly love, featuring what I believe to be the single greatest “Boss fight” I have played or could imagine, the stupidly ambitious fight with “The End” that stood as the best Boss fight by ludological (is that a word? It should be if it isn’t) leaps and bounds in a game filled with some incredible battles (the fight with The Boss was also incredible). And still Undertale’s gameplay wins out. A Gamemaker game beating out a game headed by arguably the most famous Videogame auteur (outside of Nintendo at least) is insane! Yet that is what I’m claiming.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Undertale is a game that styles itself after classic RPGs boasting retro-styled graphics, a charming assortment of very well written tunes and timing based combat mechanics. The reason I say styled after rather than label the game as an actual RPG is for the inclusion of other less traditionally RPG elements that make up the game; in particular the bullet hell that represents your defence against an attack – you don’t take damage if you’re able to manoeuvre your soul (herein represented by a heart) to avoid the attacks. This addition to the formula of the game is a large part of what makes the game what it is – and why it tops every other game I’ve played thus far. More on that later. First a spoiler warning, Undertale is an amazing game, particularly so when you go in blind or at least mostly blind, so if you haven’t played it and are interested in doing so stop reading now! Seriously, a lot of what made Undertale such an affecting experience for me was not knowing what to expect or do in the major encounters of the game, don’t spoil it for yourself, in all likelihood you’d regret it if the game’s popularity is anything to go by.

Undertale’s big moments have been discussed at length and I think everyone remembers these huge moments as defining the game. While the biggest moments are often the best some of the smaller ones were the most affecting for me personally. In the ruins the humour is consistently wonderful, the encounters quite easy and the message seems clear; this is the tutorial. You know what to do in a tutorial and you know what to expect. This is of course turned on its head by your encounter with Toriel, the first really big moment in the game, unless you count meeting Flowey who kind of subverts expectations but (for me personally at least) in a way you expect, a character seemingly as saccharine as Flowey initially presents himself to be is immediately suspect and this suspicion was quickly confirmed. Toriel on the other hand was a surprise, not because I didn’t see the encounter coming, but because it was so confronting that you were tasked with fighting the compassionate, kind and motherly figure that took you through puzzles by hand to avoid the potential danger they possess. The way the fight was set up though was the real kicker.

In a game being given a powerful healing item or something of a similar variety is a classic indication of an upcoming boss fight. I didn’t even think about it though when Toriel lay a slice of pie on the floor of her guest room in which I (the playable character) was sleeping. It was an act of kindness, warmth and seemed entirely natural of a character as obviously kind-hearted as Toriel. This incredible warmth that Toby Fox somehow managed to pack into a few lines of dialogue and a simple 2D representation of her character made it difficult for me to even ask how to leave the ruins, it seemed so ungrateful to want to leave after the over-the-top kindness she offered me. But the game had started to sink its hooks into me and I wanted to progress. So I asked to leave and eventually came to face her in a fight; a fight in which Toriel wants the playable character to survive. A fight to prevent your death at the hands of Asgore who you are told has killed all of the past humans to have left the ruins. The fight is of course the big moment, but the slice of pie was the small moment that really stuck with me, making the fight afterwards emotionally loaded, and tinged with a sort of regret that it had to come down to a fight. A small detail comes to define Toriel after that point as well; you can't call her, come back to the ruins or see her again until the very end of the true pacifist route. For much of the game your cell phone only has the one number and Toriel won't answer your calls, a simple yet truly effective way to demonstrate a sense of loss through game design: a lost mechanic; something you were promised was taken away and I love that the game does this.

Toriel is perhaps the most difficult of all the encounters of the game for the pacifist player when they first play Undertale. I say this because although you are given hints as to how you can spare her it’s not obvious at all and requires effort, actual effort to press the spare option as many times as you have to in order to finally spare her. Of course you can’t actually die in the fight, but having seen the *Stay Determined* mantra far fewer times in the ruins than you will have later in the game the player is likely not to understand just what the game means by the difficulty you’ll face in trying to “be good”. This fight is of course teaching you that very fact; it’s not going to be easy just because you refuse to fight the enemies you encounter and Toriel is a powerful embodiment of why you don’t want to hurt the creatures you come across; they aren’t out to get you, they just have their own motivations that sometimes lie in the path of your own and negotiating the differences in goals, personalities and views is part of the gameplay. That’s what makes the gameplay so thoroughly excellent; the enemies feel real. Every other game features enemies that feel either like cartoons or faceless targets that exist only to be killed. The characters in Undertale are ridiculous, yes, but their motivations are human and relatable without exception and always unique. This emphasis on the notion of unique characters is further backed up by the gameplay; Shyreen’s bullet hell mini game involves avoiding musical notes, Papyrus’ is littered with bones, Undyne’s with spears and Napstablook really doesn’t feel up to it right now. No character has the same attacks (with the exception of Asriel, Asgore and Toriel which adds to the emotional weight of the fights with Asgore and Asriel in a wonderful way) and every character feels real in a way that totally subverts the expectations established by the cutesy art style and design. Undertale’s gameplay is better than any other because the real fight is with your ingrained expectations built up in other games. It plays on a level that goes beyond the mild breaking of the 4^th wall many games love to do and actually says something with it other than just a display of telekinesis at the hands of Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid. Your save game becomes a large part of the story towards the end and is recognised as a weapon that can be used against you (such as in the Photoshop Flowey fight). The very fact that the game is, well, a game is a big part of the narrative and that can’t be celebrated enough.

So, now that I have outlined what made the game as affecting as it was to me I can actually get back on to the reasons that Undertale is more than just a game I love, it’s one with a great deal of intelligence and maturity that goes into the establishment of reward systems and consequences that actually have meaning. Going back to the Toriel fight I spared her the first time. Perhaps the only reason I could stick with continuously hitting the spare action was because a Froggit told me that sometimes you will have to spare a creature even if their name hasn’t gone yellow. If you play, explore and actually pay attention to the game, you are rewarded consistently (well at least if you’re going the pacifist route, I couldn’t possibly bring myself to kill or even watch someone else killing even a single enemy in the game, I’m basically a tree hugging hippy if a game lets me be one, so I can’t say if the rewards are still the case if you are some kind of heartless monster killing everything in sight). In fighting Undyne her refusals to take mercy from “someone like [me/the playable character]” were worded in such a way that they reminded me of the mercy option I hadn’t yet used; to flee.

The rewards aren’t always so tangible and are frequently just amusing gags (still always worth it though) but the rewards for paying attention to the game are at their best in my eyes in the True Laboratory on the path to the true pacifist ending. Aside from having two of my favourite tracks in the game, the area boasts the Amalgamates, creatures made up of the bodies of enemies similar to ones you have already faced. Recognising these similarities is what allows the player to understand what actions they need to take to placate them and it’s genuinely rewarding to know which creatures’ traits would make up the ones you need to address with your actions. Endogeny is the most simple of course as an amalgamation of various relatives of all of the dog characters the actions to take should be rather obvious at first glance. However Lemon Bread and other amalgamates are less easy to recognise if you haven’t been paying attention to the enemies you’ve faced in the past, and once again I feel rewarded for having interacted closely with the game. Indeed the closer I felt to the game, its message and its characters the more rewarded I felt. It seems silly that rewarding the attentive and more involved audiences is unusual somehow but I think it actually is; in many a game the more time I spend with it the less content there seems to be; interactions are one-offs or the same every time, Undertale really gives you as much interaction as you want. Talking to characters at different times during your play through frequently grants you new dialogue, references to your actions and references to other NPCs that add a real sense of community amongst the game’s residents that goes beyond just seeing them in Grillby’s.

As for the consequences of your actions when they aren’t positive, again, I can’t really say, I played a “true” pacifist run on my first play through and legitimately feel upset even considering the notion of harming any of the remarkably relatable collections of pixels and letters that populate Undertale. I won’t talk about how these reward systems change when you’re playing any form of violent route because I didn’t and can’t imagine doing so in the future. I know perfectly well that they aren’t alive, real or capable of being hurt, but the emotions (and there’s quite a lot of them) that Undertale’s characters inspire are as genuine as those I’ve had for real friends. The comparatively limited dialogue and animation somehow manages to inspire emotions more tangible than any “AAA” game I’ve played, leaving them feeling cold in comparison to the effort of a one person (with a little help from a few other people, not to devalue their contribution) team in Toby Fox.

Human is the word I would use to sum up the game. The game, its residents and everything else about it feel human. The writing, characters and design feel human. The interface, music and the gameplay all feel human. Undertale is intensely personal but also immensely accessible, tightly designed while feeling effortless in its execution. Undertale is a masterstroke in every sense and is one of the few games that truly deserves all of the praise it receives.