Retrospective On UNDERTALE’s Popularity

Retrospective on UNDERTALE’s Popularity

Though it was released almost a year ago, I have the same opinion of it.

It’s about an 8/10, niche RPG game.

If you like the characters and the humor, you’ll probably like it, and forgive it for its flaws.

If you don’t, you’ll probably hate it.

Surprisingly, there are many people who like this type of game. Though I did work hard, there’s definitely a lot of luck involved in having a game become this popular. So, it wouldn’t surprise me if I never made a game as successful again. That’s fine with me though.

Not only did I not expect this level of popularity, but initially, I was afraid of it. I didn’t want UNDERTALE to become tiring for people, or become spoiled before anyone even got a chance to play it. Early on (this was probably excessive) I even tried to contact certain Let’s Players to tell them not to make any content about it.

But, the game became very popular. Unavoidable, even. At the height of its popularity, “not liking the game” felt like a cardinal sin to many fans online. In reaction to these circumstances, others began actively hate the game, creating an endless whirlwind of discourse…

Like a thunderclap to a small dog, all of this attention stressed me out. And every time it seemed to die down, something revived it, such as the GameFAQs contest, the award shows, bizarre theory videos, and so on. At times, I wished I had a way to quell the attention. I felt a strange powerlessness. (And guilt, for feeling stressed when the success of the game SHOULD be something I’m nothing but ecstatic about.)

At the same time, countless wonderful things were happening. People told me the game helped them through a difficult part of their life. Others told me that the game had made them laugh, or cry, or say “I want to be kinder.” Many young kids told me they wanted to create games or music because of it. And, on a personal level, because of its popularity, I have been able to help myself and many people in my life. (And, hopefully, in the future, I can help many other people because of it, too.)

So, ultimately, it’s a good thing that the game reached so many people, and I’m very, very, very, very, very, very, thankful to everyone that supported it, and everyone that helped me make it.

Thank you.

And thank you to anyone who has created fanworks for this game over the past year. I’ve been in fandoms my whole life. I drew Cave Story characters in the margins of my 7th grade history class notes. So it’s amazing to see something I created incite a similar passion in other people.

Someday, UNDERTALE will fade from people’s minds. But, I’m sure in 10 years, some kid who played UNDERTALE will create a game that surpasses it…

I look forward to playing that.

Tomorrow, on UNDERTALE’s anniversary, let’s have a fun time. I am thinking I will open the askbox, and…

Bark.

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7 months ago

I'm a big fan of wizards-as-programmers, but I think it's so much better when you lean into programming tropes.

A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.

The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.

The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.

A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.

A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.

Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.

Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.

Sometimes a wizard will sit down with an ancient tome attempting to find answers to a complicated problem, and finally find someone from across time who was trying to do the same thing, only for the final note to be "nevermind, fixed it".

1 year ago
Well-Worn Hair Band: An Old, Worn, Simple Hair Band. Its Color Has Long Faded, But It Still Has Some
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1 year ago

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

1 year ago
Here's All The Drawings I Did For The Drawabox Spring Promptathon 2024! This Was A Really Fun Event To

Here's all the drawings I did for the Drawabox Spring Promptathon 2024! This was a really fun event to participate in. Good job to everyone who took part. I'm looking forward to the next one!

ps. The second drawing was by far my favourite this time 'round :3


Tags
1 year ago
YEAH SO I GOT INSPIRED, LIKE REALLY INSPIRED SO HERE WE ARE THANKS TO @lost-kinn AND @aryashi FOR THIS
YEAH SO I GOT INSPIRED, LIKE REALLY INSPIRED SO HERE WE ARE THANKS TO @lost-kinn AND @aryashi FOR THIS

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1 year ago

Tears of the kingdom short thingy but *SPOILERS* *SPOILEEEEERSSSSS*

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1 year ago
HAPPY TEN YEARS OF DRAWFEE!!🎉🎉

HAPPY TEN YEARS OF DRAWFEE!!🎉🎉

(i can now confirm these prints will go live on our store tomorrow so be on the lookout wink wonk)

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Putting the Ace in Disgrace

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