Carmen Puchulu, Staff Writer
For those of you seeking an interesting, spooky (but not too scary) videogame this Halloween, I highly recommend that you take a look at Undertale.
It is a role-playing game (RPG) and is very similar to Earthbound in certain aspects: it has a simple, pixelated art style and features a child as the main character. It appears cutesy at first and then becomes a little more twisted.
You play as a human who has fallen into a monster world, and your main goal is to find a way home. Along the way, you find out about the monsters and how the world you are trapped in was created. You’ll meet an interesting set of characters too, outside of the monsters.
Undertale is also puzzle-heavy, but the puzzles are not too frustrating difficult to solve. You might need to step away and come back to the game sometimes, but not because it’s unenjoyable. The game requires you to think hard to solve certain pieces of it. Undertale won’t bore you with too much deep thought, though. The interesting dialogue and puns make the characters’ speech bubbles more fun to read, unlike some RPGs that can drag on.
In fact, it’s hard to avoid all of the puns packed throughout Undertale. While you play, you can pay attention and see how many jokes you pick up on. There are also plenty of secrets hidden throughout the game that can be found, which makes the game’s world rich and fun to explore.
One aspect of this game that makes it unique from other RPGs is its battle system. In Undertale, you can choose not to fight enemies you face. It is possible to not hurt anyone at all, if you choose, and that might lead to a different outcome at the end of the game. In most RPGs, it is normal and even encouraged to kill everything you face. In this game, you get to make that choice.
Does Undertale sound boring or too simple? It isn’t as easy as you might think. There is a challenge for sparing the lives of the enemies you face; puzzles that you have to solve to spare their lives. Sometimes, it feels like it would be simpler to just kill the enemies, but the game has a way of playing with your morals and stopping you from killing. Unless you’re just kind of evil.
That leads to one of my favorite parts of this game. The choices that you make are important. The lives you spare, the lives you don’t – how many times you die and try to fight an enemy again.
All of your actions all accounted for, and depending on what you do over the course of the game, you can change what happens at the end. As it turns out, this is the greatest message of this game—it’s a metaphor for real life, in a pixelated package.
Every action comes at some price. The question is: are you willing to face the consequences of your actions, for good or evil?
The music is also something worth mentioning. It’s reminiscent of older, electronic, chiptune music from Super Nintendo games, but darker and more complex. The game’s creator made all of the music, so each song fits where it occurs in the game very well. It’s very diverse in range; some songs are peppy, some are mysterious and some are made to encourage you to fight. It’s even enjoyable to listen to the music even outside of the game; it works perfectly as background music while working on homework.
I encourage that you check this game out. Why not? There is a free demo of it on http://www.undertale.com/ so anyone can get a feel of the game.