I know this piece is shorter than a lot of what I’ve written recently, but so much of what makes Undertale work is better discovered for yourself. The scenery in this game is absolutely stunning. When Moon: Remix RPG Adventure was re-released on the Nintendo Switch, Toby Fox made a tweet saying that it was a big inspiration for Undertale (though I have yet to play it myself, I’ve heard some great things about it), and according to the Wikipedia article I pulled the platform information from, other inspirations include Mario & Luigi, Touhou (hence the bullet hell mechanics), Brandish (a game I’ve never heard of before working on this piece but looks very much up my alley based on screenshots), and Mr. People have called it a spiritual successor to Earthbound and at first glance it definitely seems very much that way, but it’s so much more. In addition, Undertale takes a lot of inspiration from a number of other games. It feels a little bit like the Mel Brooks approach to comedy where you throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks, but all of the jokes are in the same vein so at the very least you can’t help but smile.

The descriptive text, the monsters’ behavior, even the signs and the player character’s observations. See, Undertale is one of those games that just oozes personality from everywhere. I can’t begin to tell you why this particular bit of text makes me laugh so hard, but it does. It might be tricky, but once you get the hang of it you can absolutely do it. You can get through the entire game without killing a single monster. This sets Undertale apart from a lot of other RPGs: no one has to die. You can fight, perform an action (ACT), use an item, or spare the monsters you encounter provided you’ve met the right criteria (MERCY). Combat happens via random encounters like you would expect in earlier Final Fantasy titles, but fighting itself is done in a number of ways. You’ve found your way into the Underground, a place filled with a number of monsters such as the above ghost and Froggit and separated from the human world by a magical barrier. The core gameplay of Undertale revolves around your character, the fallen child whose name you choose (I went with Jazzy, but you have six characters to play around with.

We sat down, she watched me play, and before long I fell in love. I was still reluctant, but I could tell that she wanted me to give it a try, so I accepted. So around Christmas of 2015, my younger sister asked me if I would play Undertale if she bought it for me.

Undertale steam mac os