By dint of its commercial success and huge cultural impact this is one independent game that I consider a must play. It was even voted as the best video game ever made which made some people really mad. I held off for a long while as I wasn’t sure how well I would be able to handle the combat and I’m not a big fan of these Japanese RPG-type mechanics. As it turned out, I did indeed love the story but had a horrible time with the combat even after doing everything possible to make it easy for myself.

In a world in which monsters are trapped underground after a ruinous war with humans, a human child falls down a hole into this underworld. A bed of golden flowers breaks the fall and a seemingly friend talking flower welcomes the player. But of course the flower turns out to be treacherous and tells you that down here it’s killed or be killed. Then a motherly humanoid cow-like monster takes you in hand and walks you through a couple of puzzle-areas. As you discover over the course of your explorations, the underworld is populated by numerous monsters and you can deal them either by fighting or by peacefully interacting with them. You also learn that the monsters are prevented from leaving their prison by a magical barrier and in order to break open this barrier their king Asgore needs to collect seven human souls. It just so happens that he already has six, from humans who have fallen down the same hole and then died, and you make the seventh.

Naturally there’s a whole lot more to the story than that and what I absolutely love about this game is that here story doesn’t mean grand plots and extensive fantasy world histories but the relationships and feelings of the various characters that are all too real and affecting. The simple graphics and whimsical tone of the game belie the depth of the character development involved and how much thought went into how all these characters are connected to one another. It’s easy to mock the childishness of characters like Papyrus or Undyne once you get past her scary exterior or the innocent Monster Kid but lead designer and writer Toby Fox is an incredible storyteller who evinces powerful emotions with simple scenes and small snippets of dialogue.

Crucial to this is player choice. I’d read ahead of time that it’s possible to play this game as a pacifist, but to be honest after meeting Toriel and seeing the nature of the underground world, it didn’t feel right to me to attack everyone I met. None of the monsters seemed truly hostile so I naturally fell into the habit of finding ways to appease them without fighting at all. Even someone like Papyrus who seems intent on capturing you comes across as more of a joker than anything else and of course your interactions with the Monster Kid nicely contextualizes the deadly threat that is Undyne. It’s all so well calibrated. Yet I’ve read that if you do kill some of the monsters or all of them, the entire game changes as a result and you get vastly different responses.

Another way that the game makes the storytelling more effective is that the video game mechanics themselves are part of the story. The player’s ability to survive past deaths by reloading from a saved game file is explained by having Determination. Various characters have some memory of events even though they didn’t happen due to a restored save game. The primary antagonist is aware of this ability and actively references it. Combined with the morality mechanics and how the player can take advantage of restoring a save game or resetting the game to change prior decisions, it makes for an excellent deconstruction of the RPG genre. For example, after finishing the game as a pacifist, the game is aware of the average gamer’s penchant to replay the whole thing all over again while taking the opposite route. It asks you whether or not you’re willing to take away the happy ending of all of the characters and I just couldn’t do it.

Plenty of people have also praised the combat mechanics. For my part, while I can appreciate the creativity involved I’m absolutely rubbish at bullet-hell type games. I just don’t have the hand-eye coordination, reflexes and experience with these games to find this type of combat much fun at all. I only managed to pull through by grinding for the super expensive Temmie Armor and making copious use of health restoring items. On the other hand, I found the puzzles scattered throughout the game to be really easy. I still liked the combat sequences because they involve a lot of interaction and dialogue with the characters involved but I don’t actually enjoy the combat itself.

Finally there is the music which is very simple but effective and emotive enough that YouTube is full of musicians playing compositions from the game. I can hardly believe that a single person is responsible for almost the entirety of the game: the mechanics, the writing, the art, the music etc. All in all I would happily agree that this game is a true masterpiece and a fine piece of evidence that video games can be considered art. It’s true that its effectiveness relies on the player being habitual video gamers so it’s pointless to recommend this to people who aren’t already gamers. But I am heartened by seeing how many people there are out there who do get it.