Undertale

I finished Undertale's True Pacifist route at 2am and sat in silence for a full minute before closing my laptop. That almost never happens. tobyfox built something that operates on two levels simultaneously: a charming, pixel-art RPG about a child navigating an underground world full of monsters, and a slow-burn interrogation of every habit you have brought from a lifetime of playing RPGs. It is disarmingly funny right up until it isn't, and the shift lands because the writing earns it. The combat system is the engine that makes all of this work. Battles are turn-based, but when enemies attack, control shifts to a bullet-hell dodge sequence inside a small box. Every enemy type has its own attack pattern, and those patterns are designed to reflect the monster's personality, a frog that literally hops at you, a music-obsessed robot that fires musical notes in rhythm. On your turn, instead of just mashing Attack, you choose from a per-enemy ACT menu: compliment, flex back, tell a joke, pet, flirt. Figure out the right sequence and you can spare the enemy without landing a single hit, earning zero XP. That EXP abstinence is the whole point. The game reframes leveling up as a measure of how many lives you have ended, not a progression reward. It is a small mechanical twist with enormous narrative weight. There are three main routes: True Pacifist (spare everything, befriend the cast including Toriel, Sans, Papyrus, Undyne, and Alphys), Genocide (hunt every region clean, including Snowdin Forest, Waterfall, and Hotland), and a Neutral middle ground that gives you a messier ending reflecting your mixed choices. The community consensus is almost unanimous: play Neutral into Pacifist first. The Genocide route hits much harder once you have grown attached to the same characters you are now systematically erasing, and the Sans boss fight, widely considered one of the toughest in modern indie gaming, only lands its full gut-punch in that context. Completing Genocide also permanently alters any future Pacifist save, a deliberate design choice that makes the game's consequences feel genuinely irreversible. The honest criticisms are real. The mid-dungeon puzzles are mostly filler and a few running jokes overstay their welcome. The pixel art is functional rather than expressive for most of the game, though the endgame sequences use that minimalism as a weapon. The Neutral route is essentially a tonal orphan, neither satisfying on its own nor as emotionally rich as the two bookend routes, so in practice you are looking at two meaningful playthroughs. At 6-8 hours each that is still a very reasonable investment. The soundtrack, composed entirely by tobyfox, is a legitimate reason to play with headphones on, every track is purpose-built for its moment and several of them have become reference points in game music discourse. If you have been burned by games that promise meaningful choices and deliver a coloured ending slide, Undertale is the correction. Choices here propagate forward, change dialogue, close off content, and in the Genocide case, break the fourth wall in ways that feel genuinely unsettling rather than gimmicky. It is short, it is weird, and it will occupy more mental real estate than games ten times its length.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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