Friday review delayed to next week

This has been a year of delays, hasn't it? I guess I won't say it enough, but... sorry about that.

I always bite off more than I can chew and make larger articles than I should. I am putting the final touches on a review of a movie about video games, after which there are other reviews to write.

In order to turn in a better product, I prefer to have a week without a review.

Oh, and that review? Ready Player One. That's why the review is so long, I discuss this 140-minute film (Jesus that's long), and compare it to the book.

So yeah, the review is delayed till Spetember 7th.

Steam Pack 13

The thirteenth Steam Pack, huh? This means I’ll have reviewed approximately 52 games through those articles, in the span of about two years. Not actually all that impressive… because I could make more Steam Packs, yet I spend seven articles ranting about Undertale, or six about GTA V… I make things way too complicated for myself. Either way, Steam Packs are a nice change of pace… mostly because I couldn’t dedicate a full article to any of these. I’d run out of stuff to say 1/4h of the way through.

Hm, I wonder if the number will mean anything regarding the quality of the games reviewed today...

Disillusions Manga Horror

Developed and published by StephenAllen, this game wasoriginally made for mobile, and now imported to Steam for the world to play on larger screens. …Okay. Sure, why not. It‘s also this developer’s only game on the platform, and while I usually try to be nicer to a developer’s first game, I still point out the flaws.

This is the story of DiS, a young man with a bad case of the Anime Face, white hair and weird eyes. He’s checking around some kind of haunted house, looking for his friend named Vigil. Couldn’t that Vigil guy get a better place to stay in? But hey, he has sushis, that’s our incentive. First DiS looks for a way in, then when he’s inside he looks for his friend. Then there’s a third chapter that follows a different character, investigator Sui, trying to figure out what exactly happened on the crime scene. Both stories eventually connect in a fourth level, which is supposedly multiplayer.

Why scoring your time in a story event-based plot?

It’s a game in which you explore a 3D environment, looking for “clues” I guess. Each clue prompts the main character to appear on the screen in 2D with his dialogue box, and one of approximately two voice clips each. You’ll grow tired very quickly of each character’s super-limited voice clips. The story progresses as you discover the clues. Exploration is required in order to find everything and “complete” the level proper. Also, for some reason, there’s a timer and you can try to beat your previous best time on any level. Allow me to ask, what’s the point of that? A time challenge for a few levels that are story-based?

Darkness..... yay?

As is to be expected of horror games, this one’s almost entirely set in darkness, the player’s view is fairly limited. The story bits will cause certain things to happen, and the setting will try to be scary. Emphasis on “try”. Because it’s pretty much a failure.

As for the fourth level? It’s only playable in multiplayer. And this game has next to no players whatsoever, which means it’s pretty much pointless to even try. The whole game is really short and there’s not much of a reason to play it more than once, getting a better time just isn’t worth it.

They sure take cops young into the force these days.

Still, as an attempt at taking this mobile game to Steam, I suppose the transition wasn’t done too poorly. The game does keep track of players’ best times for each level, however unnecessary I feel that it is. The game is also, for some reason, compatible with some of the VR sets out there.

I’m all for young developers making their own games, as a way to test the waters. But there is one undeniable truth to game-making: Practice makes perfect, we all start somewhere. Therefore, one’s first games are pretty much always going to suck. I mean, good work for StephenAllen to get something out there, release a game they liked to create, but this 0.99$ game isn’t even worth that price. At the very least, I hope they’ve been learning from their experimentation in game-making and are striving to improve, and release a second product eventually, one that shows the improvements. Disillusions Manga Horror is… just bad.

The Plan

Some Steam games are short, sweet experiences. More of a tech demo than anything else. There’s the ever-popular visual novel, of which some are very short and sweet, and then there are games that aren’t meant to be long. I remember saying before that a lot of free games are short, and kept free specifically because the length means there’s no point in attaching a price tag. This little game is one such example.

In The Plan, by Krillbite Studio, you play a little fly that decides to see the world up there, which really just means you can fly upwards until something makes you stop. Well, okay, there are some things on the way. The fly gets caught in a spider web, and struggles to escape. You can get free pretty easily. And it’s only up from there. Eventually, the fly reaches its destination.

That's a cool design for a sun.

ZAP

That was a lightbulb. When they say “Go into the light”, I don’t think they mean a 60-watts.

There’s a second mode that replaces the fly by… Navi from The Legend of Zelda. Hey! Listen! You’re gonna die up there! What am I saying, 90% of players would gladly send that fairy up into a deadly situation.

That's what happens when a fairy loses their Kokiri.

At least, the game is short and sweet, the animations are fluid and the environment is pretty. However, there’s little incentive to beating it more than twice, you complete it in less than 7 minutes - it’s probably the shortest game I’ve ever played for the blog - and, well, since it’s free, it’s probably not worth keeping around once you’ve seen everything there’s to see in it.

The store page mentions that Krillbite Studios made this very short game while they were working on a much larger project known as Among the Sleep, a horror game in which you’re playing as a two-year-old child. The reviews for that one are glowing - check that game out.

To Burn In Memory

I'd say something, but there's nothing to say.

The previous two titles at least felt like games. To Burn In Memory, developed and released by Orihaus (also their only game), felt like an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) novel that could have been sold in any other format. Steam is an odd choice. This entire idea, as a game, is an odd choice. Mind you, the intention is good: As you seek your way through a small city, you uncover more of its history until you come to the end, with a big reveal.

I’ll be honest, my interest in that one was pretty much null. There’s no music, everything is white text on black. There are some background images behind the text, but nothing that the dimmed screen will let you see clearly. Featuring a city that never existed, you supposedly portray a young woman living in those dark times where war is raging, or was raging, and the effects it had on every location and citizen.

Still nothing.

Games that would qualify as CYOA nowadays are better known as visual novels, and I’ve covered quite a few of them for these Steam Packs - except, y’know, visual novels tend to have visuals. In comparison, To Burn In Memory is underwhelming, even if I understand that this system is likely what the developers were going for. This couldn’t even have some sort of music? No? Alright, I guess.

Also, for some inexplicable reason, when I tried to replay this game for the review, I was stuck on the Credits page. Following the instructions of “Click[ing] the scroll on the left bar of the screen” did absolutely nothing, just reopened the Credits page. What the Heck. At least this game is free, there’s that

I’d rather go back to my old CYOA Goosebumps.

Who’s Your Daddy

This one, ironically, I actually wanted to own. The side of me that enjoys black comedy wanted to see what it was like. Developed and released by Evil Tortilla Games (a name as funny as it is random), Who’sYour Daddy is the epic combat of the baby that can’t tell between safe and dangerous, and the daddy who tries his best to look after the little Hellion.

Why is this not working? I know I have no pool experience,
but come on! This can't be so hard!

Both sides are playable. As a baby, your job is to try to kill yourself in ways that the helpless adult in charge must prevent. Meanwhile, as a daddy, your task is to make sure baby doesn’t die. Simple enough, right? Considering this is a competition and both sides want to win, you can imagine the result. The poor, low-resolution house this battle takes place in has seen its fair share of baby deaths.

First off, this title has options for local and online multiplayer, which is already not that bad. Outside of the normal mode, there are larger modes involving multiple babies and/or daddies, such as Family Gathering or The Great Dadlympics. Not special enough? You can create your own mode! There are options to customize your baby and daddy, which is decent.

Because "Take Care of Baby" wasn't enough.

Wanna play alone? Not a problem! There is a single-player mode consisting of 20 challenges, 10 for each actor, in which you must complete tasks in the shortest time possible. Your best times are recorded to the hundredth of a second.

So far, you might think this is ending the article on a high note, right? Well… not quite. Everything else falls apart after you play a few rounds. The music is one of the only elements to be consistently decent here. The graphics? Low-resolution, cheap and pretty lame. CGI graphics like these looked bad even on home consoles of the late nineties.

The oven is on, a bottle of pills is laying about, the
pan is upside-down, the meat on top of that, and some idiot
is opening cabinets and drawers around me for not reason.
I'm doing parenting the right way.

Next up is the gameplay. The physics are broken. Grabbing items is difficult and setting them in places is just as tough. You need precision in order to interact with some items surrounding you, and the camera complicates matters. It’s also very easy to get trapped in some places by simply having drawers and pantry doors open and close. And some players take full advantage of these limitations. I distinctly remember getting trapped in the kitchen by a player opening doors around me. Yes. There are many more examples of wonky physics here, but discussing them would take pages and pages. There’s some creativity to the various challenges you can play in single-player. However, playing them highlights the problems with the game’s physics; here, you don’t have other players to worry about while you complete your mission, so the issues are more noticeable.

"Dead By Daylight: Babies Are Monsters" Edition

I remember doing the first daddy task, which involved picking up the toys scattered in a room and putting them in the toy box, and constantly struggling to do so. The less I say about the time I tried to cook meat the better.

The toys won't fit in the goddamn box!

When it comes to interacting with the surrounding world, Who’s Your Daddy tries to have the basics… and that’s about it. There are many ways for babies to die, and daddies to prevent that, but there’s not all that much.

All of these issues obviously carry on to multiplayer as well. The main 1-vs-1 mode is alright, but the Battle Royales (8 players) can lead to many of these physics issues used and abused easily. That’s saying nothing of many glitches that can be exploited. I tried the Dadlympics mode, and it doesn’t even indicate what you can try to do in order to achieve the daddy tasks that are required to win the match.

That is not how baby works.

And of course, the fairly small player base means it’ll be difficult to amass even enough people for an 8-player match. Not to mention that to play Baby Versus Daddy online, you have to go in and wait for someone who wishes to play the role opposite to yours.

Honestly? I don’t recommend it. However, if you absolutely want to try it out, it’s over here for about 5 dollars. Maybe for some players it’ll be so bad it’s good. Maybe it was designed to be cheap and bad, because nobody would put that much effort on a game where suicidal babies must be saved by overstressed fathers.

But hey, it’s out there.

Next week, something better. Or so I hope.

Steam Pack 12

Well! Time for a few more.

While I was playing Undertale for my review (which mercifully ended last week), I would sometimes switch to different games, mostly the short ones in my Steam collection. Throughout 2016 and 2017, I have collected a large amount of games, in no small part thanks to at least two large Humble Bundle… well, bundles. The advantage is that I’m not running out of games anytime soon. Problem is, with my job, my time for gaming is severely limited.

I could just delete every game that I got from those bundles that I’m not sure I’ll like, but then I’m passing judgment on games I’ve never even touched yet and that’s not right. I then used some website that tracks the average length of games, as dictated by various users, and decided to go for the shortest games in my collection - today in particular, those that were also gained through bundles.

Let’s get this started!

Potatoman Seeks the Troof

In this game made and released by Pixeljam, you are a little character on their quest for the TROOF. What’s TROOF? It’s TROOF misspelled. It’s never spelled in any other way as TROOF. Weird TROOF though. Can you handle the TROOF?

Did this cactus just jump and multiply in the air??

This retro-styled platform game is… um… special, but in a good way. Like all the games today, it’s fairly short (only four levels), but it does things in a different manner. On your first playthrough, all bets are off - everything will try to kill you. By which I mean, a LOT of objects on your way will behave in completely unpredictable ways. This guy does nothing to attack you? Wait till you jump past him, then he shoots. These are just normal cacti? Look, this one jumps too! And that one over there, it springs out multiple copies that fly off!

Are these birds pooping eggs at will?

Oh, and surprises such as these are just the common element of this game. From a desert, we move to a jungle with banana-tossing monkeys and egg-pooping birds, followed by a city populated entirely by people exactly like your character. Following that, there’s a level taking place on an alien world, and then it ends in a large room and, in order to find the Troof of the title, Potatoman has to gather meaningless pyramids around this level. Once that’s done… uh… That’s an ending I’d rather not explain. Mostly because it’s inexplicable.

Is this a city completely populated by clones of... ME???

The game plays really well, staying simple with nothing to worry about aside from moving around and jumping. The catchy music and the nice graphics are a great throwback to the 8-bit era. As for the difficulty… oh boy. As I said, your first playthrough will be one surprise after the next, with loads of moments where you wonder what the Heck just happened. It doesn’t exactly become easy on the next playthrough, but knowing the surprises makes the experience much easier.

Where are those dumb meaningless pyramids?

It’s sold for 3.99$ USD, which I would argue is a bit much for how short it is. But hey, it can give you about an hour of content, I guess that’s not so bad. Depends how much time you spend raging at the various bizarre moments this platformer has to offer.

But what is the Troof anyway? Is it that there is no universal Troof? That everyone has a different Troof? Is it that the universe at large would rather keep the Troof hidden from you? Maybe the Troof, after all, is that you’re just a lil’ potato in a big world.

Quiplash

These are no ordinary board games!

Some games have no single-player mode and can only be played with others. I’m not big on them, but some of them are fun. Especially the Jackbox ones.

Jackbox games are a unique concept; from your app on Steam, you can invite others to join your game, then you all connect on your phones to play. The game can be on a single screen if everyone’s in the same room, or shared through a streaming website that everyone watches and plays along to. These games are known for their comedic tone and the sheer amount of fun you can have by playing them with plenty of friends.

...double trouble?

Quiplash is fairly simple: You’re given a few questions or lines to complete, and you type in your own responses on your mobile. Then one prompt shows up with the two answers given by random players and all players (as well as any audience members) vote on their favorite. The winner gets points. This goes on for two rounds. Then, the third round has a single prompt and everyone gives their own answer to it. At the end of the game, the player who has the most points wins.

Pick your favorites!

Obviously, the funnier you and your friends are, the better this game will be. Of course, you can play a round and discover that you and your friend wrote roughly the same answer. It happened to me a couple times. It’s also much better to play Quiplash with more players and an audience, which means it’s a perfect party game if you’ve got a lot of guests and they’re all carrying smartphones (which is very likely). You can also set up a game through Twitch or any other streaming website, if your friends are all over the world. However, like all games that are improved by streaming them (like Choice Chamber, reviewed in a previous Steam Pack), it’s more than a little boring if you can’t gather more than 3 players and at least a few audience members to watch and participate in the voting.

And of course, your fellow players and the audience
can rocket you to the top!

There isn’t all that much to say as far as the music and graphics go. The smiling avatar characters look good, and Schmitty, the announcer, will frequently throw in little jokes between rounds, which is par for the course for a Jackbox game. In the options, you can turn on a family-friendly filter, increase the length of rounds (if you’re streaming Quiplash), go fullscreen, enable/disable the audience, or demand that all players are logged on to Twitch.

And much like every Jackbox game, the system may be confusing if it’s the first time you’re playing any of these, so there’s a handy how-to guide explaining how to get into the game with your smartphone and get this party started. Good stuff! I wished I could have long, fun games of Quiplash with up to 8 players. I need a bigger Twitch audience, I guess.

Quiplash is 9.99$. Be sure to check out the other Jackbox games too!

ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS

Speaking of games that are much better in multiplayer… this one at least has a single-player mode in which you can battle against CPU opponents. ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS (yes, that’s the title) is a game developed by Loren Bednar and Radial Games Corp, which is also the publisher.

Shiny. Pretty.

ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS is… um… okay, let’s go for simplicity. It’s a game in which you control a rocket flying around an arena, shooting missiles and rockets at opponents. It’s a competition. You control the rocket with WASD if you use a keyboard (but the game really, really recommends a gamepad) and use weapons with X and C. You have a nice choice of arenas with colorful obstacles, and the music is some good ol’… er… recent techno. Is there dubstep in there? I think so. I’m a prog metal peasant, I don’t know those newfangled music genres. Each rocket has three Hit Points and the goal is to take down every opponent by shooting at them and bringing their HP to 0. I think it’s also possible for CPU characters to regain HP even after they’ve died, if they manage to hit one of the remaining players.

Lights across the dark, the most colorful Space ever.

That’s the best I can muster for gameplay. The controls annoyed me pretty quickly. I personally thought the rocket was a pain and a half to control. The computer opponents, having a better grip of their flight, seemed also to be much better at aiming than I was - basically, if I hit anything, it was out of sheer luck. I generally was not a fan of the experience even if, admittedly, the graphics look really nice (the rockets leaving a trail of light behind them is a nice touch), the music is bearable, and there are more modes and options than you’d expect from such a deceptively simple concept.

I'd play with friends, but they'd have to be at home.
BTW, I am using official images, because my recording
of the game s all blurry.

Might as well talk about the various modes and features this game has to offer to justify its 6.99$ price tag. You can mod a new mode for yourself, but there’s a single-play mode, a tournament mode and a Zen mode in which you can roam freely. You can play with teams, and the game is compatible with just about all the controllers you can think of. There’s only one problem: The multiplayer? It’s local-only. No playing with friends across the Interwebs.

It’s not for me. I’m not sure I’d recommend it either, but if you want to try it out, go ahead.

Thirty Flights of Loving

Looks like an action game. Sort of.
More like an action walking simulator.

Blendo Games presents what’s basically an interactive short film known as Thirty Flights of Loving. Three friends in a world of cube-headed people are planning the greatest heist of their lives. They’ve spent the longest time planning their robbery. It involves, among other steps, driving a plane, infiltrating a wedding, and fleeing in a busy building. Oh, and there are staircases involved here and there? To justify the title, I guess?

In order to mimic the aesthetic of a movie while still being interactive, the game is cut into “scenes”. It may feel jarring at first, as you are going through a scene at one point and then you’ve shifted to a different location, different piece of plot. It’s a bizarre mix of “In Media Res” and time-shifting narrative with flashbacks and such.

Carrying a wounded guy in public and getting no help.
Fair enough for the big city.

A heist that needs a confectioner? I'm sold.

There are scenes that favor watching over interacting, such as the wedding segment where a drunken protagonist watches the ceremony unravel, with the other guests suddenly floating in the air… somehow. There’s another segment that mimics a shootout against drones, but you can only move around while your wounded ally, whom you’re carrying from the crime scene, is shooting back. It’s still possible to visit most rooms and find various details on the larger story.

After the final scene proper, you are now free to visit a museum area containing important pieces of the short, allowing you a closer look at some elements of the plot. On top of that, beating the “game” a first time unlocks the Developer’s Commentary, which means you can read many interesting observations from the maker of this interactive fiction, how the floating guests came to be, why an orange is peeled at one point. Details like those matter, you know? The advantage of that second mode is that you’re no longer bound by timing and you can spend as long as you want in each scene - though, yet again, the museum at the end is one of the most interesting areas as a result.

Also, so many stray kittens.

It’s not a bad concept, but it’s very short and doesn’t offer much in the way of gameplay. It’s like an action-packed walking simulator in the end. I personally preferred the Developer’s Commentary mode. The animations, the music and the graphics are pretty nice. The cube heads are a weird idea at first, but you get used to them. I also feel the need to point out that you won’t get the full story unless you bother looking into every scene for the extra information. Also, the scenes are presented in disorder and it can get confusing if you try to figure out what’s going on.

I don’t believe this is worth the price tag of 4.99$. It’s far too short, even if you beat it twice to read the Commentary. Still, there are good ideas in here and I would like to see a similar concept in the future, another interactive short film. But I don’t recommend it at its full price.

Well! This covers all for today. Next week, I have four more games to talk about, and it will be the 13^th Steam Pack! I can already feel my luck slipping away at the mere mention of that number…

Undertale (Part 7)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

(Spoilers: The finale of the story has been described in Part 6. This here is a collection of secrets, gimmicks and other fun stuff about Undertale, followed by my final words.)

As the previous… er… 14,000 words indicate - Christ, that was a long review - Toby Fox’s programmed marvel Undertale contains more content than one player is likely to ever see. There are paths you won’t see unless you persevere, details you’ll likely miss out on, and even more bonuses in the code, in the debug mode, when you actually cheat through…  Let’s go through a few things I found out by myself while researching information on this game, to make sure I was getting most facts right.

Okay, so first off: This game keeps track of your progress through the Underground thanks to the various save points, but did you know that it’s basically all they do? Let me explain. You save so that you don’t have to start over from the very beginning, that much is simple. The saving spots serve more as respawn points than anything else. But the game seems to be constantly keeping track of everything you do during your playthrough, even between saves. If a character has a long monologue at some point in the game and you die before saving after that monologue (because those tirades tend to be from bosses), then the character will skip some of that monologue on the subsequent tries.

That's what you get if you come back to fight him again
after defeating him twice already.

The game will also often keep track of when and where you close the window. Flowey’s early-game comments tend to reflect these decisions. I remember killing Toriel accidentally, resetting, and being told by that sociopath of a flower that I reset because I felt bad. Undertale hardly ever forgets. As for Sans, if you reload to the previous save point multiple times after hearing his judgment in a Pacifist run, he might eventually give you a special item… Similarly, on No Mercy, he keeps track of the number of times you lose against him (up to a point) and will even acknowledge if you reopen the game before the fight against him, after you've beaten him, if you're trying to kill him again.

Undertale (Part 6)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

I've gone through the Underground, I'm battered and bruised,
but I don't have a single speck of dust on me.

(I’ve said it for the last 5 parts - if you haven’t played Undertale and don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now! In fact, the mere word that precedes the entirety of this part is a major spoiler. Avert your eyes if you refuse to learn about…)

Forgive mistakes... up to a certain point.

So you’ve gone ahead and showered them all with kindness. You proved to Goatmom that you could go out in the great big world. You were determined to go past the loud skeleton. You valiantly fled from the spear woman until she needed your help, and you helped. You faced the mercantile spider-woman and the most famous robot alive with the optional humanoid upgrade. Your trip ended with a true battle against a King with nothing left to lose, only for it to be topped off by a duel against a maniacal flower. Whom you ALSO defeated with kindness.

Where do you go from there? Well, after the ending of regular Pacifist, Flowey tells you what you may have missed out on in order to achieve the best ending. It involves befriending most major characters. Toriel, that’s done. There’s also Papyrus, Undyne and Alphys.

River Person makes backtracking easy.
Can I call them Charon? No? Aw.

How weird would Undertale be if it actually had a
fishing game, eggs to care for, stats on the Underground,
a crime-fighting minigame and an Annoying Dog detector?

To befriend Papyrus: come back to his house in Snowdin and talk to him, then check everything around his house and then in his bedroom, and then a dating sequence will be initiated. Yes, really. You can date a skeleton? Best game ever! The dating simulator has a whole bunch of useless options, but it’s not really a simulator. It’s mostly Papyrus chatting with you and thinking everything you do makes you even more enamored with him. Watch out Papyrus, or your ego will grow so big you won’t be able to leave the house anymore. This scene is pretty funny, but whatever happens, it ends with Papyrus explaining he isn’t romantically in love with the protagonist… but still gives them his phone number.

How are phone bills down in the Underground?
Probably not all that expensive.

From now on, you can call Papyrus almost anywhere in Snowdin, Waterfall and Hotland, and he will have either advice about the place or some funny comment to make.

I mean, sure, but is she ready to hang out with me?

To befriend Undyne: This cannot be done on even a Neutral route, because the killing of even a single monster will be nasty enough that she’ll refuse to have anything to do with you past your boss fight with her. Makes sense, she IS the captain of the royal guard after all, her sense of justice is powerful. How to find her on Pacifist? In Waterfall, look for the scary house that resembles a sea monster, it’s the home of the scary woman that resembles a sea monster. If you’ve befriended Papyrus already, he’ll be waiting in front of the house and will let you come in when she opens. No, she’s not salty because you saved her life… just a tad bit miffed, is all.

Undyne, you're a fish woman. You might want to
rethink that.

Papyrus leaves Undyne alone with the human child after challenging the fish woman to become friends with the human. That’s the only way she’d accept - she’s too badass to turn down any challenge! So at first she still seems to be rather passive-aggressive about her earlier defeat. I mean, she sure likes to point those damn spears at the child. However, from there she offers them a drink, then later teaches them to cook pasta in the only way she knows: The EXTREEEEEEME version! So extreme, in fact, it ends up burning her house.

Thankfully she takes it well, and says she’ll be off to live with Papyrus for a bit. From then on, if you call Papyrus at any point, there’s a likely chance Undyne will add her own two cents to the topic being discussed.

..She's talking about a garbage dump. It makes sense in context.

Go on a date and then kiss already!

To befriend Alphys: On the way from the MTT Resort to the Core, after she’s been befriended, Undyne will ask the player to bring a letter to Alphys’ lab in Hotland. So we do, and when Alphys reads it and opens the door, all she sees is the protagonist, believing them to be the one who wrote the letter. Oopsie.

And so, after some preparing, she takes the protagonist on a “date”, which devolves into roleplay between the protagonist and Alphys so that she can learn to express her feelings to Undyne, whom she has a desperately obvious crush on. And when Undyne shows up, Alphys spills all the truths to her crush. Thankfully, it ends with Undyne accepting Alphys as she is, and swearing she'll help Alphys in accepting herself, too.

Geez, Alphys, no need to be so dramatic.

For the record, these sequences have loads of laughs, I am just skimming because I don’t want this to be a gigantic article. I don’t do the scenes justice, you gotta see them for yourself. Past that point, after Alphys is back at her lab, she's nowhere to be found, but she has left a door unlocked in there for you, claiming she has unfinished important business to take care of. The human child can then step in that room (the one that previously masqueraded as a bathroom) to find… the True Lab.

The elevator crashes down and we end up in a scary decrepit laboratory. Screens on the wall tell a story of a creepy experiment involving sickly monsters about to die and turn to dust, and extracting Determination. Oh yeah, Determination is a measurable force that can apparently be captured or collected in this world. Alphys seemed to partake in these experimentations where the sick monsters were injected Determination to survive. Only problem is, it seems to be incompatible with them.

Where do all these speech bubbles come from?
What the f..............................?

It's... it's... incomprehensible!

Things went wrong. And as we explore the lab, we encounter more creatures that seem like bizarre mashups of monsters met throughout the Underworld. Those Gigyas things, that bird, this fusion of dogs… and somehow, THE DOGS ARE THE HOLES BETWEEN THE LEGS ON THIS THING. That’s the sort of Eldritch incomprehensible monstrosity that the most famous fantastic horror writers would struggle to describe. These things appear to break the game itself when you face them. You won’t always figure out what monsters they’re made from, but the Act prompts should be familiar enough to let you figure out how to spare each of them.

This venture through the lab forces the child to pick up four colored keys and insert them in the corresponding colored slots, which also causes encounters with the creatures, known as Amalgamates. They’re about to close in on the child when Alphys shows up and calms them down. She explains her entire situation. Mind you, there were also two particular screen entries that said Alphys tried to inject Determination into a flower in the Queen’s garden… which is also where the ashes of Asriel Dreemurr, Toriel and Asgore’s child, were buried…

I'll take "Innocuous phrases that cause instant panic"
for 100, Alex.

Leaving the True Lab takes us directly to New Home, with the elevator unusable, blocked by vines. There’s no way but forward. Getting to Asgore, we’re about to open with the fight… except before the first blows can even be dealt, an offscreen fireball strikes him, and in comes Toriel. Followed by most of the main cast of the game: Papyrus, Sans, Undyne, Alphys! All our friends are here! Nothing could ruin this moment! That’s when Papyrus, who’s stated to have been the one preparing this gathering, was informed to make it… by a little flower.

And that’s when they all get captured by vines. Flowey pops up, same old jolly self as ever, saying that he has been doing all this so he could “win” against you, the player. Because he is far too aware of his limited existence as a video game character, and if you win, you’ll leave. Psst, Flowey, let me introduce you to something: It’s called Replay Value, and Undertale has tons of it. On the opposite end of the scale, if you cheat the game in order to always win and never allow the player to, then the player will leave - and might not come back. AKA, your plan gives exactly the opposite results.

When Flowey tries to deal the finishing blow, the friends you’ve made throughout the story spar the attacks with their own, protecting you. They then throw out some words of encouragement, and most monsters you’ve Spared in random encounters also appear to boost you back to full health! However, in response to this. Flowey reveals his final plan: Absorbing the souls of all the monsters in the Underground. (See, this is why the real ending is unobtainable if you kill as much as a single monster down here: Without ALL the souls, Flowey couldn’t do this.)

Cut to a young goat child. Asriel Dreemurr, the child of Toriel and Asgore, is back in corporeal form after spending so long as a little flower. …Aww, isn’t he adorable?

FaceRig model by ScottFraser.
Now you can emote as Asriel too!

However, as he tries to call out to his human friend (the original fallen child), he reveals a new form for himself, a much more demonic one, powered by all the monsters souls of the Underworld. Final boss!

That... That is not the cute goatboy from earlier!

Not much can be done just yet, but your hopes and dreams let you reduce the damage you take or gain loads of special healing items. And the battlefield has gotten… blurry. God damn it, was this too much for OBS to record properly? Would you look at all those flashy attacks? It’s almost cartoony. And what else reinforces the cartoony feel of this fight? If you go down to 0 HP, your soul will literally pull itself back together and refuse to give up the fight.

Undertale: Now in Technicolor!

That's nothing, wait till he's-a firin' his lazor.

It’s impossible to lose against Asriel Dreemurr. ...It does take a lot of the epic out of the fight when you know you can’t actually lose it. Thematically, is it justifiable? Definitely. Just a wee bit of a letdown in difficulty, though. Even then, the best you can do is constantly spare him, then use Hope and Dream in the ACT menu. Eventually he calls all of his power in an attempt to end you, but it’s still not enough, so he moves on to his true final form: Asriel, Absolute God of Hyperdeath. I mean, wow, this is a Saturday morning cartoon villain title. And it’s understandable: Outside of this grown-up look he gave himself, he’s still actually just a kid.

Someone should parody that and have different motifs appear
in the wings instead. Plaid, duckies, Spongebob, whatever.

His attacks are still flashy, but this time you can only struggle if trying to ACT. That is, until the text boxes seem to lose faith… before regaining a bit of hope, and when we return to the fight, the ACT command has been turned into the SAVE command. And from it, you can access the lost souls of the friends you’ve made on the way! Each one of them uses attack patterns they’ve displayed in their own fight, but that’s not what matters - all that matters now is to use various actions in the ACT command in order to bring back these lost souls’ memories. Hug Toriel, remind her of your pie preferences. Crack bad puns at Sans. Reassure Alphys. Spar with Undyne.

One chuckled, the other groaned. A third soul inside Asriel,
a woman, started laughing uncontrollably.

At 00.0000000001/20, I am pretty much dead.
Yet I keep reaching for you.

The attack patterns aren’t even all that difficult, either. Before you know it, the lost souls have recovered, all six of them. And with this, you suddenly get to call out to try and save a seventh person - Asriel himself. Despite his pleas, despite his desire to “win” against you, his willingness to keep you around forever in this “game”, the human child keeps reaching for him. Even after Asriel unleashes an insane attack that takes away the FIGHT, ITEM and MERCY options and leaves the player’s soul with literally one billionth of a Hit Point (geez, talk about breaking the scale), he can’t bring himself to end this. You keep trying to save him and he eventually admits that what he’s doing is wrong.

I forgive you.

And this makes him end his own game and revert back to young Asriel. He apologizes a final time and, with all the souls of the monsters within him, he calls forth his immense power to break the barrier leading outside. The human child, Frisk, now comforts him a bit before Asriel goes. Dammit, I promised to myself that I wouldn’t cry this time! Mission failed, again!

After Asriel is gone, Frisk wakes up among his friends from the Underworld. Everyone has been restored. And on this, they are ready to walk up to the surface. See the outside world again.

But even if this game is about to end, that doesn’t mean there isn’t much else to see. You can take as long as you want before actually getting to the ending. You can visit all the way back from here, Asgore’s castle, to the Ruins, and most NPCs will have new dialogue for you. You can freely spend an hour or two re-exploring this whole world to see what monsters now have to tell you.

Welcome to your new Overtale.

And on this, we can cross the barrier, which brings everyone outside to see the sunset for the first time in forever. After much of the cast leaves to explore this large open world, Toriel wonders if the protagonist will stay with her. You can accept or refuse. If you accept, you are officially adopted by Goatmom and given nightly deliveries of pie. If you decline, you still get a nifty photo of the major characters all together.

Maybe it’s Sans’ chance to become a stand-up comedian. Hopefully the human audiences aren’t too marrow-minded. And if he’s talented enough, he could recite Hamlet! “Alas Poor Yorick” would be awkward, but imagine the other famous soliloquies! “Tibia not to be, that is the question!”

I have a weird feeling that there’s a skeleton laughing his butt off in another universe right now.

"But I really wished you wouldn't.
Everybody is happy now.
You'd be taking that away from them.
And make me into a psychopath again.
So, please, don't reset everything."

Although, if you reopen the game after this ending, you hear from Flowey again, who begs you not to do a True Reset of the game. This will erase everyone’s memories, bring Flowey back to the sociopathic self he was, and erase the good moments you’ve had. Oh, believe me, If I were to True Reset this game for the second time, I guarantee you that my next playthrough will be True Pacifist again. Part of me feels like I wouldn’t like the Genocide route at all anyway. I promise I will never play this game as anything else than Pacifist. Goodbye, Asriel.

And, well, that should be the end of this review… but wait, what about my final words?

Oh, simple: It’ll be in Part 7. Bonus!