CheckpointDB Spotlight

Spotlight on Undertale

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A historic, revolutionary RPG masterpiece. Undertale completely redefines the role of violence in roleplaying games, combining wittily written characters and a legendary score by Toby Fox with interactive bullet-hell defense and a story that remembers your choices across save files.

Undertale is a groundbreaking, highly reactive 2D RPG that completely subverts traditional combat by allowing players to complete the entire campaign without killing a single monster. Falling into the Underground populated by monsters, turn-based combat is split into two halves: on your turn, you can choose to attack, use items, or utilize 'ACT' commands to interact with monsters systemically—such as petting a dog, telling jokes to a skeleton, or comforting a ghost. Once satisfied, players can use 'SPARE' to end the battle peacefully. On the enemy's turn, gameplay transitions to a highly creative bullet hell minigame where players navigate a small heart icon ('SOUL') to dodge bullet patterns matching the monster's thematic personality. The game features unparalleled narrative reactivity: the script, dialogue, bosses, and endings dynamically rewrite themselves based on who and how many monsters you choose to kill, tracking your actions permanently across save file resets.

Strengths

  • Unparalleled, meta-fictional narrative reactivity and writing
  • Brilliant and highly creative ACT/SPARE pacifist combat mechanics
  • Legendary, award-winning chiptune retro musical score by Toby Fox

Caveats

  • Extremely short main campaign length (around 6 hours) for RPG fans
  • Very basic and raw 2D pixel textures in early areas

Context

Solely developed by Toby Fox over nearly three years and released in 2015. It became a global cultural titan, praised by critics worldwide, swept game design and indie awards, and is celebrated as having one of the best and most influential chiptune soundtracks in entertainment history.

About

Storyline

This profile combines game metadata, platform information, tags, and collection references to help players decide whether it belongs in their backlog.

Details

IGDB Rating 91
Metacritic 92
Released September 15, 2015
Developer tobyfox
Publisher 8-4, tobyfox

Platforms

LinuxPC (Microsoft Windows)MacPlayStation VitaPlayStation 4Xbox OneNintendo Switch

Tags

Classification CheckpointDB

JRPG

Genres

Puzzle Role-playing (RPG) Adventure Indie

Gameplay

Fantasy Horror Comedy Drama Single player Bird view / Isometric

Keywords

retro psychological horror dark 2d parody turn-based shmup bullet hell female protagonist village

Game Length

Main 7h
Extra 11.5h
100% 20.5h

Appears In Collections

Public Collections