Best Games of 2015: Undertale

A game released this year that took the gaming world by surprise. At first glance, Undertale doesn't look like anything special. It's old-school aesthetics look like they were designed by someone who loved Earthbound, and beyond deeper analysis, it seemed like it was a typical, classic RPG. But Undertale was everything but.

Sure, you could play it traditionally, fighting enemies as you go through the story, but Undertale had a really unique mechanic where you actually got to talk your way out of each battle. In fact, the entire game could be beaten this way, enabling a completely violence-free run. But this mechanic goes beyond simply offering an alternative to battle, it also weighs heavily on the story, since you can get completely different outcomes based on whether you're doing a genocidal run, a pacifict run, or mixed.

Undertale's world is fantastic since every encounter is meaningful. In a typical RPG, an enemy ghost is something you naturally do combat with, defeat and gain XP. In Undertale, a ghost might just be a bit depressed and needs an uplifting conversation. Because here, enemies aren't really enemies, they're characters, all with different personalities.

And hey, Undertale is currently 20% off on Steam during the Winter Sale, so make sure to pick it up!

Undertale on Steam