Undertale

Honestly, it is wild to think that Undertale came out over a decade ago, and yet absolutely nothing else has managed to replicate what it did. When you first boot it up, it looks like a fairly simple, quirky indie game with basic graphics. It seems like it is just going to be a silly adventure, but honestly, that is just a clever disguise. Beneath the chunky visuals and the goofy jokes is one of the most brilliant, emotionally devastating, and genuinely smart pieces of fiction ever put into a video game. It is a total trip. The setup is pretty simple on paper. You play as a random kid who trips and falls into an underground world packed with monsters. They were trapped there by humans ages ago, and you are just trying to find a way back home. In literally any other game, you would start attacking everything, farming points, and treating every enemy like a walking target. But Undertale completely upends that expectation. It gives you a "Mercy" button. You can talk to monsters, flirt with them, tell them jokes, or just figure out what is bothering them until they don't want to fight you anymore. You can literally play the entire game without killing a single soul. And man, the game does not let you off the hook for your choices. That is the real magic of it. It doesn't just track your decisions through explicit menu choices; it actively watches how you play. If you accidentally kill a monster, feel bad, reload your save file, and spare them instead, the game actually remembers. A character will notice. It gives you this incredibly eerie, surreal feeling that the game itself is alive and judging your actual morality. It works so well because you genuinely learn to love these characters. Toby Fox has this insane ability to make you laugh out loud at a skeleton named Papyrus who is obsessed with spaghetti, and then turn around and break your heart five minutes later. Characters like Toriel or Sans feel less like video game NPCs and more like real, deeply flawed people with their own anxieties and histories. You do not want to hurt them because hurting them feels like betraying a friend. And we have to talk about the music. Toby Fox basically composed the entire soundtrack himself, and it is a masterpiece. Songs like "Megalovania" are legendary for a reason, but even the quieter, ambient tracks hit you right in the chest. The music does the heavy lifting for the story, changing and shifting based on your exact vibe and choices. It sticks in your head for days. At its core, Undertale is a massive wake-up call about empathy. It challenges the lazy way we treat violence in gaming and makes you sit with the weight of your actions. It is funny, weird, tragic, and absolutely essential. If you haven't played it yet, you are seriously missing out on a masterpiece.

I was an Undertale larper for almost 11 years... I was missing such a peak game for so long. A timeless masterpiece. I love all characters, all osts, all game mechanics. Thanks for childhood. Looking forward to play Deltarune.

Actually the greatest indie game ever made. I cannot believe it took me 11 years to play this absolute cinema.