How did Undertale get so popular? This is a genuine question. What aspects about it made it reach and resonate with as many people as it did? Why do other similar games fail to achieve even a fraction of its popularity despite doing some things "better" or more refined? A lot of people say it's the memorable and iconic characters, music, and design philosophy, but what exactly made those things memorable and iconic in the first place? The whole thing is really fascinating to me, and I want to understand how the stars aligned to make this happen.

People often forget the demo, which was much more unique and charming piece of free media at the time, before it developed into a full game.

>>714228616 (OP)
Toby Fox worked on Homestuck, he got to import a pretty sizable fanbase right from the start

Like with any successful thing: astroturfing and industry connections

Some things you have to understand:
>Toby Fox was HUGE in the Homestuck community, which contributed a significant amount of hype for his project from that alone (remember, the original Kickstarter had a reward tier of "Your fantroll becomes canon", which should tell you everything about who was pledging support early on).
>When the demo released, the only characters we knew about were Frisk, Flowey...and Toriel, who captured the heart of hundreds of furry artists for being an extremely rare example of a furry mother character. No one will admit this outright, but many were drawn to Undertale from a piece of Toriel porn.
>The bullet hell RPG combo was unlike anything anyone had ever seen, and was very unique in its execution at the time. It offered a whole realm of possibilities for enemy and boss battles, which was (and still is) a rarity in new games.
>The idea of sparing enemies was also extremely novel, since very few games offered that as a gameplay mechanic - usually, if you wanted to spare an enemy, you just ran away and got zero acknowledgement for it. "Pacifist runs" for games were challenges, memes that didn't have any bearing on the games as a whole.

>>714228616 (OP)
Undertale was more unique around the time it had originally come out. Sure, there were comparisons to be made to games like Earthbound or Cave Story (moreso the former than the latter), but there really wasn't much of anything like Undertale when it was new. UT's relatively unique tone, presentation, and gameplay went a long way towards making it popular with people who weren't necessarily into the kind of games that UT is ostensibly part of the same genre as, like bullet-hells or RPGs.
Plus, the writing for the game's story and characters simultaneously gave a lot of interesting details while also leaving certain things open to interpretation, which let people's imaginations run wild with the setting and characters, which is why UT has an insane amount of fan content compared to a lot of other things.
Basically, Undertale got popular for a lot of the same reasons Homestuck got popular, except it got way bigger than Homestuck ever did by virtue of being a 6-8 hour long game as opposed to a 8000+ page webcomic.

>>714228616 (OP)
It was only 10 dollars

>>714228616 (OP)
>What aspects about it made it reach and resonate with as many people as it did?
the enemies have actual personality, the bullet hell is composed out of creative shapes instead of silly blobs and checks/acts are more interesting than a bunch of stats

Because of Homestuck. Ignore every "Toby worked himself to the bone all his life" copium huffing lucklet.

>>714228616 (OP)
all furry games sell well unless you put an insane price tag on it

>>714228616 (OP)
what all the other anons said, plus:
The game's aesthetic is what liberalism thinks it is, as opposed to what liberalism has become.

>>714228616 (OP)
It was literally the "quirky earthbound inspired indie game" meme, released at the perfect time when that millennial hipster shit was part of the cultural zeitgeist.

Nowadays it maintains its popularity thanks to gay furries.

>>714231339
>The game's aesthetic is political
What the fuck lol

>>714228616 (OP)
Game remembers the shit you do and dialogue changes based on that, it gets people to wanna keep poking at things to see what else changes.

>>714228616 (OP)
>Why do other similar games fail to achieve even a fraction of its popularity

did you actually play it? theres nothing like Undertale, not in the narrative sense atleast

for me personally, that was the spice, its one thing for a game to have a good story, funny jokes, greats characters and ok gameplay, but to tie it all together with the whole narrative about saving, its genius, i remember the first time i played it, it almost felt like Toby was reading my mind every step of the way

plus everything felt so reactive, every stupid action you made had consequences even if its something very little

thats actually i feel Deltarune lacks, your actions seem like they yield no consequences

>b-b-b-but thats the narrative point!

I KNOW, doesnt mean its better

>>714231591
That's cool, thanks. I never played the game but I like to make games and try to come up with new and creative ideas, so this helped me.

>>714229985
>(remember, the original Kickstarter had a reward tier of "Your fantroll becomes canon", which should tell you everything about who was pledging support early on).

you are confusing that with the homestuck game kickstarter

>be markiplier live on stream
>Play undertale
>Kill a monster because its icky and mean and as a natural reaction upon seeing the kill option
>fanbase begins sending death threats to him and his family because he didn't do a pacifist run from the first go
amazing

>>714228616 (OP)
Aimed at the tumblr crowd.

>>714231073
this but i'd add that the demo was better than the full game

>>714231656
>did you actually play it? theres nothing like Undertale, not in the narrative sense atleast
>nothing like undertale

its called Earthbound

>>714231656
you need to play more video games anon

>>714232601
The fact that the only consistent comparison people make for Undertale is a game that came out about 21 years before it isn't a bad thing, it just goes to show that there was basically nothing else like it during that entire timeframe.

>>714228616 (OP)
It's a very well written game.
That is really like 90% of its appeal, I tried playing that Undertale Yellow fangame and I really couldn't get past how bad the writing was.
It really showed me how much of the appeal of the actual game is the weird dissonant and humorous dialog.

It's an interesting combination of lessons learned from the Homestuck story, interactivity, community and virality, plus the built-in marketing, connections, and merchandise team of Starmen/Fangamer actively helping it succeed.

Plus it's really for that weird but unique combination of "kid-friendly" and "quirky earthbound" kind of audience that really doesn't get games made in it because nobody really gives a fuck. I think it would die if it released today, we're too far from the 16-bit nostalgia days.

>>714231725
No, the Undertale kickstarter had that tier too, referring to fan designs as "fantrolls" as a joke. That's how So Sorry, Glyde, and Muffet were added to the game.

Gay autistic furries. That's pretty much it. It hit the same chord that MLP does, complete with the "theme" of the game being basic bitch morality lessons that people will pretend are deeper than they are.

>>714228616 (OP)
because 2015 sucked for games and it delivered an experience that plants crave

>>714232709
true, every time someone posts something like that, it turns out they didn't play that many games.

>>714232710
Or rather you probably weren't alive when earthbound came out so its le greatest written story of all time to you and your generation when for those of us who were there and remembered refered to it as an "earthbound-like" or "earthbound-clone" when it came out. One game I remembered being more unique was FNAF

>>714231667
https://youtu.be/eekHDb6X5_c?si=4kZTyGmnCnh820YB

It's a really short game if you're looking for inspiration if you don't feel like it there's a billion videos on YouTube showing all the dialogue and ending changes and stuff

>>714233429
This. It was one of the first games made for plants. A pioneer in the plant-type genre.

>>714233585
Buddy, there wasn't a man alive when Undertale came out who didn't know what Earthbound was, that was well past that initial era of people hating it for whatever reason. I figure most people who played Undertale probably played or at least heard about Earthbound, especially given the fact that Toby Fox himself made a ROM hack for it.
The fact of the matter is that even when you consider Earthbound's existence, that's still just two games in the same general style, which still means that Undertale was fairly unique around the time it came out.
Yes, I know about Mother 1 and 3, but those aren't as tonally similar to Earthbound, so I wouldn't really consider them for comparison here. That, and Mother 3 never came out in the states, and still generally doesn't enjoy the same level of popularity as Earthbound does, outside of people constantly begging Nintendo for a localization.

>>714232601
>>714232709
did you play the game, legit question

because every time i seepeople bitching about Undertale they never mention the finer details of the game

>>714228616 (OP)
Porn and memes

>>714228616 (OP)
It's a straightforward game with plot, gameplay, final boss and even if parts are cringe, you can kinda ignore it. Surprisingly, 80% games at the time fail'd at even that and that's how it got to success. Adding to that, it had its own quirks to propel itself >>714231591 and that's that.

>>714234495
>What? You actually play more than one video game and don't revolve your life around it and are able to make intuitive judgements about a game before playing it because of that?
>Jesus fucking christ some people have the nerve

Shitty tranny game that gets sucked off by zoomoids as being the greatest game. It also had the homestuck base to suck from

>>714235061
ok, mention 2 other video games where saving and loading is a pivotal part of the plot, not that the characters recognize they are in a video game, but rather that you, the player, can just load a previous place in time, on top of that, decisions you made during gameplay you didnt save end up having effects on the gameplay you are experiencing now

this has to be a pivotal part of the plot, the story literally doesnt worth without this element

can you name 2 other games that do this? i know morrowind kind of does this, but its really only framing the fact you can load and save as a part of the setting, nothing more

are you really this afraid of giving credit to a moderately popular game? how pathetic

>>714235436
Rent free

>>714228616 (OP)
It's just very very very good.

Any video game that instantly provokes visceral reactions to it, like the ones happening ITT, is OK in my book.

>>714228616 (OP)
not a staggered release like deltarune

>>714235465
>give two examples of games using a gameplay element which only barely a few fucking games use except for the one and only game I play and talk about religiously as well as its sequel making 30 threads per day about on /v/

>>714231728
it wasn't a stream
he read comments to get spoiled but got his feefees hurt

>>714236573
>t. headcannon

Honestly for me the combat system was much more engaging than what i expected, i got hooked from there. The story/character stuff was secondary.

>>714236516
This is barely even English anon just give the guy his point

>>714228616 (OP)
It's fun, it's SOULful, it has a 10/10 OST, and it's cheap. What else is there to understand?

>>714228616 (OP)
Goat mom porn.
You know it, I know it, everyone who entered this thread knows it.

>>714231728
As much as I like the game I find it's western fans insufferable.

>>714228616 (OP)
On top of what everyone else has already said, the soundtrack carries hard. I personally was introduced to the game through hearing a couple of the songs on youtube and being blown away, making me want to play the game that they came from.

>>714229389
The demo (ruins area) had kind of a quaint 2000s flash game charm to it which the full game doesn't have as much. The rest of the game is a masterpiece though.

>>714237705
If there is something that Deltarune has improved a ton compared to Undertale, is the music. Undertale's music was already very charming, but it really feels how he has gone all out with Deltarune. Chapter 4's soundtrack and the Roaring Knight's theme are amazing.

>>714237705
100% agree. The game's writing is generally pretty good but the music sells the emotional beats far beyond what words alone can accomplish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CeYNJ-s0Kw&list=RD8CeYNJ-s0Kw&start_radio=1

The hallway lore dump would have felt like a rushed mess if it wasn't for the OST.

>>714237843
Deltarune is the game he actually wanted to make, Undertale was just a test to see if people would like his games. So Deltarune's soundtrack comes much more from his heart.

>>714228616 (OP)
It's always amazing how anti-social people like OP simply cannot understand the power of social networking. Toby had many hands in many pots already, had an established rep thanks to Homestuck, perverts kept making fanart of popular thing and then Sans entering Smash established that Toby is just a lucky mother fucker. You can't beat luck and dude rolled several 20's with timing, knowing the right people and not being retarded on social media.

>>714228616 (OP)
1. Cheap but unique-looking JRPG with actual gameplay. It's also an actual RPG in ways most RPGs aren't which is unexpected.
2. Catchy music that gets rearranged and its motifs get used all over the place so it ends up familiar to the player.
3. Funny dialogue. Toby is a meme lord and the game's full of recognizable tropes and archetypes. If you watch dozens of different people stream the game, it's incredible just how often the majority of players notice small jokes and intuitively pick the same voices for characters or deliver lines the same way.

Not every joke lands, the game has lots of flaws and imperfections, but it's just generally a very fun and relatively unique experience.

>>714228616 (OP)
It did everything right to make an average emotional teenager become obsessed with it, and that’s not a slight at the game, it’s actually impressive what it achieved in that regard.
In short, it’s patient zero of modern day fandom brainrot. Every big obnoxious fandom that has come out since Undertale has come from something that was inspired by dunderdale.

>>714237843
As much as I love the undertale ost, I just hate enemy approaching, it's probably the one song on the soundtrack I actively dislike and when you compare it to rude buster?, it makes the normal battles in deltarune a lot better than the ones in undertale, the bosses are still better in undertale than in deltarune though

>>714238592
I'm not crazy about Rude Buster either desu. From Now On though? Holy shit, that song's a banger.

>>714238585
>It did everything right to make an average emotional teenager become obsessed with it
Just for clarity’s sake, what were those things specifically? Asking for a friend…

undertale's OST sounds like it's trying too hard to be ZUN and EarthBound

>>714228616 (OP)
For me it was a decade of playing touhou games, followed by an understanding of the implied narrative of the game's mysterious green shirted CHARActer, then lastly settled by understanding the core central theme of undertale is not what every retard thinks it is: muh mercy, but in fact, letting go.

To summerize my findings in the TL:DRest way possible for all newfags and tumblr tale haters.

Undertale is another Links awakening, but marin is 6 people instead of just 1, and link gets to talk to you through narration instead of an owl.

>>714238585
>it’s patient zero
that was Homestuck

>>714237338
>that tail
holy FUCK and I thought the doe had me questioning if I had a new fetish or not

>>714239193
Oh. I never played Link’s Awakening, could never get into any of the Zelda games I tried. So I guess I’ll never understand Undertale

Because unlike a lot of those indie undertale wannabe games that failed, Undertale is more than the sum of it's parts. It also has a dedicated, focused creative behind it who isn't mentally ill (or at least doesn't make it public and also a deep part of their personality). Toby also doesn't kneel to fags or chuds and just does what he likes (rose in deltarune being censored not withstanding, but i honestly think he changed that because he felt it didn't portray what he wanted it to well enough. Either way the guys got a 99-1 score of not backing down, so.....). And lastly, toby just allows his games to exist. He isn't trying to make a political shit flinging media dump designed as a game, he's just making a game with the stuff he likes (gay women, spooky shit, good music, silly goofs, interesting story).
Toby also writes good dialogue, says alot that it took until i played Anthology of the killer and fucking stars in time of all things to get to what felt like real, fresh dialogue from an indie game. And stars in time takes a long time to actually get to the good dialogue, it's vapid tumblr nothing burger dialgue before the big game things start happening.


Tl;dr Play anothology of the killer, pirate stars in time

>>714239442
you should give links awakening a shot, like undertale, it's not that long. play the GB version if you want harder difficulty. undertale is actually shorter, but has a lot more reading, which i think gameplay focused underage anons might be turned off by

So what was the deal with Tropic of Love? Why did no one like it?

>>714229985
>The bullet hell RPG combo was unlike anything anyone had ever seen, and was very unique in its execution at the time. It offered a whole realm of possibilities for enemy and boss battles, which was (and still is) a rarity in new games.

But he did very little with it. Game just feels like Warioware in the end

>>714238861
Starts out as something innocent that reminds you of childhood, then it takes a turn in an interesting direction and becomes a story with some pretty heavy themes with damn good execution and a respectable level of emotional maturity.
It never goes full-on “kiddy gloves off”, there’s basically never any blood or swearing, the whole time it feels like you’re still playing an innocent childhood game and the characters still act believable, but it’s just a lot more reactive to your choices than most kids games are willing to be, and it really makes you feel like these characters are alive.
Throw in some cleverly written meta stuff and banging music for all the hype moments and you got a pretty good game.

Toby Fox was 22 when this game came out and it feels like he knows more about writing and emotions than your average 35 year old dev. Most older devs are still stuck writing the same ol “YOUR ACTIONS DON’T MATTER BECAUSE LOOOL REAL LIFE DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT” and everything ends on a depressing note, which is gay and stupid. That’s something Toby was able to think up when he was 16 and making a cringey Earthbound hack that he later went on to hate.
The amount of control you have on the outcomes in Undertale makes it infinitely more interesting and poignant than your average “ur choices dun matter lol” game cynicism-fest.
Undertale isn’t a jab at JRPG or video games, it’s a celebration of those things and is made with genuine love, and its enthusiasm is infectious.

>>714228616 (OP)
If Undertale came out today exactly as-is except without the creator's prior fanbase, even if no other game was doing what it was doing, it would fail on 9999/10000 timelines.

>>714229389
>>714237820
the demo also made you think the meta elements would be more present than they wound up being.
>the game knows you save scummed oOoOoOo
but nearly all of the content you unlock by reloading saves is all concentrated at the beginning (ruins, the demo) and the end (Sans).

>>714238585
you're retarded there where tons of things that came before undertale. pokemon is a good example.

>>714228616 (OP)
My best friend worked on Undertale. As part of my Catholic faith I literally work on making it pure enough for Heaven, so decent people are drawn to a sense of its deserving to have been gifted to the Pope.

It does connect to my dreamland called the Underrealm I saw in spiritual visions as becoming real in Heaven after all.

>>714240839
Okay by “modern day” I meant like, the last 10 years. The era of tumble sexymen and video game songs with lyrics specifically.

>>714240963
>he doesn't know about the pokemon and digimon lemons
zoomie chan...

>>714240839
Pokémon fans didn’t have their own heavy-duty mental illnesses that will be medically categorized in the future

>>714241326
theres.. no way i can break this anons innocence. I concede the arguement. there's no point in winning this fight even if I can do so easily.

>>714228616 (OP)
It had a hook, a hot furry woman, good music, and a demo where the public could see all these things for themselves
Sometimes that's all you need

>>714238585
>it’s patient zero of modern day fandom brainrot
>what is Homestuck and My Little Pony

>>714240590
Most of the bosses have different dialogue if you fight them and then reload, don't they? At least I know that Undyne and Papyrus did for sure.

>>714241816
>>714240590
How did this technically work? Did it save again when you quit or create another save file or what?

>>714241534
This is almost true if X=3, 33 years after 1993 would be 2026 and we’re halfway there.

>>714240963
>video game songs with lyrics specifically.
>he didn't have Rawest Forest stuck in this head for nearly 20 years at this point

>>714241917
It created and referenced an external file separate from your saved game, and stored certain events in that file (i.e. killing Toriel). When you got to parts of the game that were relevant (i.e. the part after you kill her where you talk with Flowey), it checked that file for what details you'd seen/done (i.e. if the flag for you killing her is in there, Flowey says he knows what you did)

>>714242116
Simple but clever. I gotta try these games

>>714235465
anon, if you know the plot of Earthbound, you'd immediately know that he was full of shit. He's going for the lowest hanging shitpost fruit and you bit on it.
If you genuinely want games that play with the idea where your ability to save/load are canon to the wider narrative, there's Lobotomy Corporation. But that's less of the game including you as a videogame player as part of the point of the story by flashing a mirror at you, and is instead more of inflicting some of the player character's agony onto you so that you start to be as detached as he is and the story going batshit in its own korean way.

>>714235465
Save The Date
Funnily enough it released five days after Undertale's demo came out so there must have been something in the water around that time.

>>714239193
I think you got the deepest layer's central theme but Undertale works of multiple layers with their own thematic points tied to each ending.
Layer 1 is the direct story about what happens when you play blind with the main thematic focus being the unraveling of the general RPG Tropes
Layer 2 is all the saving and reloading stuff, you not likely to catch it on your first run but after the game forces you to engage with Undertale as a World and Characters quite literally requiring the player to get to know the individual characters better. Even more so if you run into the soft walls of Torel and Undyne for a pacifist first run.
Layer 3 which you picked up on is when, presented with a full understanding of the power to save are reload start pushing the game to its limits for which you are rewarded with a greater understanding and new content but lose the attachment to Layer 2 both thematically and mechanically.

>>714239995
>he did very little with it
Did you play the game, anon? You spend half the fucking game interacting with the "bullet hell" battle system, each encounter being fairly unique. Or are you upset because it's not ikaruga levels of "hard" and you're just butthurt it's even called a bullet hell in the first place (it's not, it's an rpg)?

>>714228616 (OP)
I think the game was just executed almost flawlessly, from the intro screen to the numerous hooks. The contrast between flowey and toriel, who ultimately turns out to be her own son. Flowey knowing about resets, namely the one after killing Toriel. The immediate and strong introduction to Sans and Papyrus after leaving the ruins. You can just go on and on. It's a good fucking game, and it felt different from other similar games. The ambiguous lore with no correct answer but that seemed like it might have one was also intriguing.

>>714228616 (OP)
Good music, decently unique twist on classic RPG formula, kinda unique spare or kill.
The story was overall pretty good and outside of Alphys there aren’t really any glaring flaws, maybe Hotland was a bit boring to navigate but that’s about it.

I dont even like the characters or the gameplay but I like Undertale. I think its mostly the music

>>714229842
>Homestuck
>pretty sizable fanbase
lol no
most of the people who found out about undertale found it after big lets play youtubers did a few months after launch
people who knew about it before then were definitely people who knew toby through homestuck but even at the time they were the minority by a wide margin

What are some other cool things it did besides detect save scumming? I don’t wanna buy the game because I don’t have a job right now so I can’t hah

>>714243315
The best way to put it is that the Homestuck fanbase generated enough buzz to push the game into the Youtuber attention sphere.
Early adopters one could say

>>714243493
pirate it then, also, it's like one dollar right now

>>714243493
there's demos for both undertale and deltarune

>>714243315
>people who knew about it before then were definitely people who knew toby through homestuck
Or through the Earthbound forums or through just being into indie games by the time the demo dropped.

>>714241816

>>714243493
Plays around with the UI and meta elements surrounding it. For example, there are instances where the characters you are fighting interact with the UI elements (usually in their favor), and in a certain route, you can do the same. It's rarely used, so it works well as a subversion.

>>714243493
Some of the bosses and enemies will switch up the game on you, instead of just being a bullet hell they'll mix it with a rhythm game or a platformer or galaga.

>>714228616 (OP)
Furries

>>714243493
i think the thing that most impressed me was the fact that most if not all of the game's mechanics are diagetic
it's a little forced in one particular place but overall it's handled quite well and even the bad use of it was enough to blow my mind as a teenager watching a letsplay in early 2016, who at the time had never even considered the possibility that a video game could weave its own gameplay mechanics into the narrative itself to such a degree that you can't have one without the other
undertale also does a good job at keeping track of what the player does
usually this takes the form of different endings but this can happen in smaller ways too
like if you kill a certain boss and then backtrack to her house the flavor text changes to acknowledge the fact that she's dead
there's also the genocide run, of course, which makes the story veer so wildly off the rails that it left a major impression on pretty much everyone
there's a reason megalovania entered the mainstream public consciousness and became a meme, and it's not because it's the funny bone guy's song

>>714245634
>and in a certain route, you can do the same.
it's at the end of all the routes, just in different forms

>>714235465
Zeroranger
Void Stranger

>>714247797
>released 3 years after undertale
>released 8 years after undertale

>>714247918
nice goalpost shifting

>>714247797
>>714247962
Don't use good games to shitpost anon.

>>714228616 (OP)
Soul

>>714248008
spoilers man

>>714247962
i'm not >>714235465 and don't have a stake in what he's arguing, i just thought these games in particular weren't a great choice when the prompt was "games that make saving/loading mechanics diagetic" and both came out after undertale
like why would you not accuse either of those games of being as derivative as undertale if not more so

>>714248149
okay retard

>>714248290
that image doesn't apply to this situation at all

>>714235465
Nier
Xenogears