Chapter 18: The Gaming Experience

Game Development: Starting by Healing the Players 

Chapter 18: The Gaming Experience

After Chen Xu announced the existence of Undertale.

Ordinary players hadn’t noticed anything unusual yet. They simply felt that the battle had escalated.

This wasn’t just a war of words anymore.

They were going at each other with knives drawn!

But to the game media, who had seen all kinds of situations before, the whole thing felt like getting hit by a Chihuahua.

Good grief. They had originally thought this was just a hot-blooded young man standing up and firing back directly.

But this was clearly a carefully planned publicity stunt!

Knowing that, however, didn’t mean they could afford to miss out on the traffic brought by such juicy drama.

Under reports from various media outlets, the popularity of the two games, Undertale and Bloom, soon began skyrocketing.

………………

July 15.

Undertale officially went on sale through the official game platform’s store.

Compared with Zhong Mei’s Bloom, Undertale had launched three days earlier.

That gave it a head start.

Quite a few game designers and players were watching closely to see how Undertale would perform.

After all, this wasn’t another gentleman’s game like Mirror.

Although Mirror had performed exceptionally well, it was ultimately an 18+ game.

Now everyone wanted to see exactly what kind of quality Chen Xu’s new game, Undertale, actually had.

At the editorial office of a media outlet called Game Time, Wu Tian, who had only recently joined the company, was sitting in front of his computer preparing to review Undertale.

It was just an ordinary indie game, but its recent popularity was impossible to ignore.

The only thing that irritated Wu Tian was that today happened to be Sunday, which meant he had to work overtime.

“Whatever. I’ll just put up with it. At least I get overtime pay.”

Looking at the time, Wu Tian sighed.

He remembered what his editor-in-chief had told him before:

“The company pays pretty well for overtime. Just bear with it.”

After tidying up the clutter on his desk, Wu Tian launched the game called Undertale.

A simple logo appeared at the beginning against a black starry background, with the words “Nebula Games” displayed prominently.

Below them was a line of English text.

After a brief black screen, an old, yellowed illustration appeared.

It depicted a little girl holding a long-haired creature, though her face was impossible to make out.

Standing beside her was another faceless animal. Judging by its appearance, it looked somewhat like a rabbit, a dog, or perhaps a sheep.

Looking at the yellowed illustration, Wu Tian began speculating.

It was almost like a comic.

The opening sequence began turning the pages.

“They couldn’t afford to make CG cutscenes, so they used a comic-book style to tell the opening story? That’s actually a pretty decent approach.”

Wu Tian made his guess.

Just from the opening alone, he already had a fairly good impression of Undertale.

At the very least, there was a pretty good chance that his overtime shift today wouldn’t turn into torture.

The illustrations continued turning.

Background music began playing.

It consisted of simple notes, but it had a surprisingly nice quality to it.

“Long ago, Earth was ruled by two races: humans and monsters.”

“One day, a war broke out between the two races.”

“After a long and bitter war, humanity emerged victorious and sealed the monsters underground.”

“And now, many years have passed…”

“Mount Ebott — 201X. Legend says that those who climb the mountain never return.”

It was a simple introduction to the setting, with nothing particularly remarkable about it.

After giving the protagonist a name, Wu Tian watched as the character awoke in a field covered with yellow petals.

Following the controls shown earlier, Li Ye guided the character forward.

After reaching a large doorway resembling the entrance to a castle, he walked inside.

A small sunflower appeared.

“Howdy!”

“I’m Flowey!”

“He he he!”

“Why would you make me introduce myself?”

“Pretending you don’t know me is very rude.”

“I guess I’ll have to teach you how to be polite.”

“Flowey has no choice but to teach you personally. Are you ready? Let’s begin!”

What a strange character.

Looking at the sunflower-like flower in front of him, Wu Tian thought to himself.

“LV means becoming stronger… shouldn’t that be ‘level’? What the heck is ‘LOVE’ supposed to mean?”

Looking at Flowey’s dialogue, Wu Tian was a little confused.

Was it just trying to be mysterious?

And what the hell were these “Friendship Pellets” supposed to be?

He had a feeling that this little flower was not a good guy.

Wu Tian thought to himself, and the events that followed soon confirmed his suspicion.

Accompanied by a sinister laugh, the little flower, which had initially appeared friendly, revealed its vicious side after telling him that LV could be increased by touching the Friendship Pellets.

The moment he touched one of the white pellets, his HP instantly dropped to 1.

“You idiot! In this world, it’s kill or be killed! Who would pass up such a wonderful opportunity?”

“Die!”

As expected, the next part should be someone coming to save him, right?

A standard scripted death scene from an RPG.

Looking at the heart-shaped icon surrounded by countless white projectiles, Wu Tian remained completely unfazed.

He had more or less figured out the game’s combat system. It was similar to the bullet-dodging mechanics found in rhythm games.

But the way the story was arranged was a little clichéd.

Wasn’t this just a traditional RPG?

Sure enough, the moment the barrage of projectiles was about to hit him, his HP, which had been reduced to just 1 point, suddenly returned to full.

At the same time, the projectiles representing the attack disappeared.

Flowey also wore a completely bewildered expression. After putting on an exaggerated facial performance, the little flower was directly blasted away by a ball of fire.

A female figure with sheep-like horns appeared and rescued the protagonist.

“What a cruel creature. How could you torment such a helpless little child?”

“Don’t be afraid, child. My name is Toriel. I am the caretaker of these Ruins.”

“I come here every day to see if anyone has fallen down. It has been a very long time since a human came here before you.”

“Come. Let me guide you through these underground ruins.”

“This way.”

After a brief conversation, the female sheep named Toriel led Wu Tian along the path ahead.

She taught him how to solve puzzles and operate various mechanisms.

She also told him that when encountering enemies, he didn’t necessarily have to fight them. He could also choose to persuade the NPCs instead.

The puzzles themselves were extremely simple: pushing ordinary rocks around, memorizing which tiles to step on, and avoiding the leaves.

“While this isn’t exactly a torturous journey, the quality is so boring. It’s not even as fun as the match-three game in Mirror.”

Wu Tian sighed.

When he encountered another monster, he didn’t choose to talk to it or show mercy.

Instead, he immediately entered combat.

Up to this point, the only things he had found genuinely interesting were Flowey’s exaggerated facial expressions at the beginning and the combat system.

Although it used a dodge-the-bullets style of gameplay, different monsters had different attack patterns.

For example, when fighting a frog, it was literally a frog hopping around inside a rectangular box.

The combat style matched the monster’s appearance remarkably well.

“I just hope this game isn’t ridiculously long and tedious. I want to get off work early.”

With another sigh, Wu Tian shook his head.