![]() ![]() Undertale is very much its own thing, but I’ll be using a number of comparisons to Iji to discuss it. This immediately brings to mind Iji, another Game Maker-made 2D RPG 1 with a moral about pacifism that also just happens to be one of my favourite games. If you’ve seen Undertale’s Steam store page, website, or any other articles or reviews of it – even if you only read one sentence in one of those sources – you’ll already know that the game has a heavy focus on pacifism: it advertises itself as a game where no-one has to die or be destroyed for the player to win. There is no voice acting, but each major character gets their own text-scrolling sound. Sound design is nothing to write home about: the game has sounds for everything you would expect to make a sound, and those sounds sound like they should. This is one of those games where you’ll find yourself searching for a particular boss fight song and listening to it on loop even after you’ve finished the game. The game’s developer is foremost a composer, mostly known for his work on Homestuck, and as a result Undertale’s soundtrack more than make up for any deficiencies in its graphical fidelity. As can be seen by looking at the screenshots I’ve collected for this review, Undertale is also remarkably visually inventive at times, especially in the late-game battle scenes. But everything works decently well together, and the overwhelming charm of the game still manages to come through. Individually, Undertale’s sprites and tiles range in appearance from unremarkable to downright ugly. So let’s start with the non-spoilery, surface layer stuff. Some incidental flavour text which you will now be forced to read for the nth (n>1) time in the actual game. If you’re the kind of person who likes to go into things with absolutely no knowledge of anything about them, then why are you even reading a review? Go play the game already! If you’re the kind of person who can tolerate a few vague, early-game spoilers, keep reading. As is customary with my longer reviews, it’s probably going to end up more of a discussion of the game than a buyer’s guide per se, so take warning: here be spoilers – light and vague at first, but getting heavier as the article progresses. So, once more, this is going to be a positive review. There are a lot of good reasons to get this game, and only a very few questionable reasons not to. Knowing me, as soon as possible can often translate into six months to a year after release once it’s already been talked to death by other, better people, but I digress. That last sentence is overloaded with stuff I like, so obviously I had to check this game out as soon as possible. Undertale is a quirky 2D RPG developed in Game Maker by a guy who did some music for the webcomic/internet thing Homestuck. ![]()
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