The Wonders of Undertale

Today I'm going to write about why Undertale is now one of my favourite games and why. Firstly though a quick update on Revolver and other such projects. Progress is going steadily along with Revolvers graphics as more and more levels become less gray and start looking like actual levels rather than bizarre collections of dull squares. So I've probably got about 33% totally completed and most of the rest started, making new tiles is what takes the longest time to "get right" so going through each level and working out what needs to be added is what's slowing this process down a bit. Still most levels are starting to look much better, so it wont be much longer until I'm done with all that!

What's next though? After I've gone and tiled all the levels I'm going to continue with the writing side of Revolver. Adding all the juicy flavour text and story elements to the terminals and notes you can find in each level to build the world up. This bit should be quite fun and I'm already looking into a way to make the text less, what's the best way to phrase this, absolutely horrible to read. At the moment activating a terminal or collecting a note pauses the game and sends the player to a screen like this:

NASTY BLAND SQUARE!

Let's be serious here, no one wants to look at that every-time they pick up a note. I don't, you don't, the pope don't, we all don't. So what to do? The plan is simple but currently I must admit I have no idea how to execute it. Simply put the game should pause as usual (don't want you getting hurt while reading right?), but instead of this nasty ass square popping up I'm think of simply darkening the screen and having the text appear dynamically, aka letter by letter like in every other game ever. It'll be nicer to look at, probably easier to read and it'll make the whole experience nicer. That's the plan at least.

Now with Revolver talk over lemme throw some words at you:

-Skeletons

-Dating

-Homicidal Entertainment Robots

-Spaghetti

-A Kind Flower

-Genocide

-Puzzles

This is what the fantastical game, Undertale has to offer you.

THE WORLD/STORY:

Undertale is set in a bizarre underground world full of monsters. With locations ranging from ruins, snowy towns, beautiful caverns and lava fields it's a world that feels much large and full of life. The story goes that this world of monsters has been sealed underground for a very long time after a war with humans. The barrier itself can only passed or broken by a being with a "powerful" SOUL. What this means of course you learn as you progress through the story. You play as a human child who has fallen into this world and must now try to find your way out, meeting many interesting & diverse characters along the way and choosing whether to kill them or become their friend.

THE ART:

Just look at it. Ain't it pretty!

Ok, so the game isn't JUST really nice looking vistas but still the whole game has a nice charming retro look to it which unlike some games, doesn't feel like a artistic crutch. It feels like the game was chosen to be made to look like this and often throughout the game the retro graphics are messed with a way that appears quite technical. It's hard to explain but this this game just wouldn't look the same if it were actually on a 16-bit console. It has a modern touch that leaves it looking fresh and often the game has animations (usually during battles) that look really nice.

THE CHARACTERS:
This is one of the many areas where the game truly shines. Undertale is chock full of wonderful, interesting characters, many of which the player can interact with in meaningful ways. From the hilarious skeleton brothers, Sans & Papyrus, the deadly Undyne and the kindly Toriel (not mention many others) Undertale is host to some of the most fantastic characters I've seen in a long time. They all avoid the overly common pitfall of feeling 2 dimensional. Almost all the characters have interests and fears and some have hidden agendas all of their own. It's especially interesting when you the player get to interact with them or get to observe them interact with one another.

THE MECHANICS:

Undertale doesn't play like all those other RPG's. In this game the player has an option to end pretty much every fight peacefully. Get to know the enemy you're fighting and you might be able to get them to lose the will to fight by hugging them, or singing or just cheering them up. The cool part of these mechanics though is the fact that you don't HAVE to do this. If you want to you can just go about murdering everything in sight. Bear in mind that if you do this however you might end up having "a bad time".

THE MUSIC:

Okay, I'm a sucker for a good soundtrack. Games like Transistor, Chrono Trigger, Phoenix Wright and now this. Just give it a listen, you will not regret it.

Sans' Theme

Waterfall

Spider Dance

Hot diggedy damn are those some good tunes. For more either head on to this youtube channel (where I got the above from) or grab the soundtrack either on Steam as DLC, like I did or from Bandcamp here. Learn more about Undertale (and grab a copy!) here: undertale.com.

-Beau

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