Undertale

Undertale is a Role-Playing Game by Toby Fox, funded on Kickstarter and released on September 15th, 2015. A demo is available at http://undertale.com/, and a trailer is available here. Is currently available to purchase in several platforms (including Steam), and a port to PlayStation systems (namely PlayStation 4 and Vita), along with an official translation to Japanese, was released in August 2017. A port for the Nintendo Switch has been announced in 2018.

Years ago, Humans and Monsters ruled the earth together. One day, war broke out between the two races and humanity emerged victorious, sealing the monsters underground with a magic spell. In the present day, a small child playing in a cave trips and falls down an enormous hole. They wake up on a bed of flowers in a mysterious place...

Undertale draws heavily from EarthBound and Mother 3, but the core gameplay is very different from typical RPGs. Instead of selecting commands and having the computer calculate hits, each enemy attack brings up a smaller arena where the heart-shaped avatar of your soul must dodge projectiles like in Bullet Hell. In battle, the player can choose to FIGHT an enemy or SPARE them after ACTing in a way that let you do that.

The game has received critical acclaim and a dedicated fanbase has revolved around it, becoming popular among letsplayers. Currently, it is the most well-received video game made on Game Maker.

You can read more about Undertale through the Undertale Wiki, but tread cautiously, as it is chock-full of spoilers.

First, a very special trope:
 * Multiple Endings: There are three major routes in the game, and even mentioning their requirements is a spoiler in and of itself. This tropelist will cover only events found in the Neutral Route. This page also includes examples which apply to Undertale in general, not just to any specific route. Tropes which specifically apply to the other routes can be found here:
 * Undertale/Good Route
 * Undertale/Bad Route


 * Adorkable: Quite a few characters qualify, but this is especially the case for Papyrus and Alphys.
 * Papyrus is a skeleton with aspirations to hunt humans, but despite his choice in career, he comes across as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
 * Alphys is a straight-up Otaku who spends way too much time on social media and nerds out over her favorite anime.
 * All Lowercase Letters: frequent in characters, and used as a shorthand for depression, judging that the characters more prone to it are Napstablook and the self-deprecating Alphys. Sans seems to be the exception, as he is part of the all lowercase speech group but his Meta Guy qualifications make credible that he is so lazy he just doesn't bother capitalizing things.
 * Arc Words: "Determination."
 * "It's kill or be killed."
 * "You're gonna have a bad time"
 * A Tragedy of Impulsiveness:
 * The backstory:
 * Big Bad: Asgore Dreemurr, king of the Underground's monsters. His goal is to gather seven human souls and shatter the barrier keeping the monsters locked in Mt. Ebott so they can finally be freed from their imprisonment and exact their vengeance on humanity. In fact, it seems that.
 * Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
 * seems like an innocent, adorable little fellow, but right after meeting them they try to trick the player into getting seriously hurt.
 * While not a malevolent example, fits the bill. Sure, there were no intentions of ever putting you through real danger, but
 * Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Papyrus and Sans, respectively.
 * Cute Monster Girl: This trope is more incidental than anything; the majority of monsters, male or female, are cute to some degree.
 * Eldritch Abomination:
 * Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The trope is played with Sans and Papyrus. At first look you may pin Sans as the Foolish (what with being completely committed to slacker lifestyle) and Papyrus as the Responsible (being the housekeeper, constantly reminding Sans of his responsibilities), but there are details that muddies the issues, like Papyrus' actual personality being actually quite naive and childish, while Sans seems to be the actual breadwinner of the household and is more responsible that he initially seems.
 * The Friend Nobody Likes: Jerry, a deformed, butt-ugly monster who has a random chance of appearing in one of the enemy mobs in Snowdin's outskirts. All he does is act boorishly and annoyingly towards the other monsters, who will celebrate with the player should you choose to ditch him.
 * Hello, Insert Name Here: As is typical for any game in the JRPG genre, you start a brand new game by naming the character. It then proceeds to subvert the trope, by making every monster in the underground refer to you as "Human" or "Kid" or other various generic terms of endearment. (Your chosen name still appears in your status and in the battle screen.)
 * There is a twist, however: Nobody calls you by that name because
 * Hopeless Boss Fight: There are several in the game (though most are technically minibosses), and every foe that uses this trope also plays with it differently.
 * The first Hopeless Miniboss Fight is . You can attack them if you like, but once their HP falls below 50%, they reveal that
 * The next Hopeless Miniboss Fight is, and is probably the foe that zig-zags the trope the most.
 * They also can't be hurt because, though unlike the foe above, this one doesn't even pretend to be fazed by your attacks. You can, however, progress the fight by , causing them to become more and more agitated until they.
 * After that, they then pull out their ace-in-the-hole, they stubbornly refuse to end the fight, content to just keep you trapped in the battle screen forever. Thankfully,  swoops down in the nick of time with their . Mad Dummy decides that it's just not worth the trouble, and floats off.
 * Each encounter against Mettaton the entertainer robot ends up being a single-subversion of the Hopeless Boss Fight. Because he is made of metal, his body is immune to attacks (and if you Check this foe each time, the game snarkily points out that this fact has not changed between encounters). However, each encounter ends with Alphys turning the tables on him through different means than simply killing him. Though, you can finally kill him for good sould you choose.
 * Finally, there's the Neutral Route's final boss.
 * Leitmotif: Nearly every song in the game draws from a small pull of recurring melodies.
 * Manly Gay: The duo of Royal Guards stationed at Hotland are this to a T, especially the guard who speaks like a stereotypical "bro". Defeating them peacefully has you.
 * Mood Whiplash: Undertale undergoes this near the end, several times. It ends up being not as lighthearted as before, to say the least.
 * A minor one occurs in the MTT resort, during the Dinner with Sans event. The scene is more melancholic than most of the interactions with the character to that point,.
 * My Beloved Smother: When you first meet Toriel, it seems that her character is being built up as this... and it is, in the most benevolent sense. She's just a sweet and overly-protective old monster lady with no ill will at all.
 * My God, What Have I Done?: This is how the player is expected to feel when stands before you in the Final Corridor, and proceeds to lay down the truth for you.
 * This relevation could occur much earlier for the player; if you decide to grind in an area an end up killing a lot of monsters,
 * This also turns out to be how feels about
 * Obfuscating Stupidity: fits this to a T. Like everyone else you meet, he comes off as incredibly goofy and impossible to take seriously, which is why it's all the more startling when he takes off the metaphorical mask and speaks frankly with you.
 * Occam's Razor: The factor resulting in the acceptance of certain theories such as Gaster being Sans and Papyrus's father or Narrator Chara.
 * Rated M For Manly: Should you wish, you can flex at certain monsters, one of which (The merhorse Aaron) will return the favor. In fact, two monsters can be peacefully defeated through flexing:, and
 * As for specific characters, there's the buff flex-happy Aaron, the beefy Royal Guards, and especially the hot-blooded anime hero-wannabe Undyne, who at times during her battle will suplex a boulder for no reason other than because she can.
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni: The two skeleton brothers, Papyrus and Sans. Their clothes even indicate it. The former is a bit hyperactive and very passionate, the latter is laid back and lazy.
 * Second Place Is for Winners: in the Snail Race minigame, the best prize is obtained if you manage second place, on the logic that your snail mistakenly believes they won and Napstablook (the one running the game) doesn't have the heart of correcting the poor animal out of their mistake.
 * So Unfunny It's Funny: Papyrus, Sans, and many other characters will often tell really bad jokes, which do end up being funny nevertheless.
 * Stop Helping Me!: Toriel, during the Tutorial Level. Then later on, Alphys is very insistent on helping you. Both these instances end up making a lot of sense in-universe though, the more you find out about these characters.
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Undertale is a very clever game, where a lot of dialogue changes depending on player actions, down to some incredibly minor ones.
 * One example: there are over 70 variants of the neutral ending, wich depends on how many monsters were killed, which and how many bosses were spared, and whether the player keep their original equipment or not.
 * Tsundere:
 * When interacting with the cactus in Toriel's home, it is described as "Truly the most tsundere of plants."
 * Much later on, in Hotland, you encounter a monster called Tsunderplane, a miniature airplane that acts like a stereotypical tsundere, and wears a mob-cap with a ribbon resembling the one worn by Chitoge Kirisaki from Nisekoi. The way to peacefully defeating her, of course, is to get her all flustered by
 * Undyne's behavior towards the player ends up being quite tsundere, should you attempt to befriend her. Though arguably, it's more of a different "dere".
 * Tutorial Failure: Flowey's tutorial parodies the trope; the player will likely find that they've learned nothing from it. Then Toriel comes in to pick up the slack; she's a bit more informative, though the player might be somewhat frustrated by all the hand-holding.
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change: The idea of having bullet-hell minigames in between your turns is already novel enough, but every so often, a new mechanic comes along to shake things up.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: While Asgore has ordered his Royal Guard to hunt down and kill human children, it's out of hopes of freeing his people who have been imprisoned underground for millennia.
 * Undyne as well. She's a ruthless nutcase who will stop at nothing to hunt down the player and brutally kill them, but she's VERY passionate about helping free monsterkind from their underground prison and has some choice words for you should you kill certain monsters. If you've been playing rather violently up to this point, her murderous rage certainly comes off as justified.
 * Even Toriel has shades of this: she's willing to kidnap the player and keep them holed up in her home forever and reacts violently should you defy her, but she genuinely wants to protect the player from Asgore.
 * Wrong Genre Savvy: In a way, the player may befall to this, specially when playing blind. Play in a way typical of a traditional gamer, ignoring the Mercy mechanics (and the game slogan), and you are for a nasty shock . The game is intended as a Deconstruction of JRPG mechanics and 100% Completion.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: While Asgore has ordered his Royal Guard to hunt down and kill human children, it's out of hopes of freeing his people who have been imprisoned underground for millennia.
 * Undyne as well. She's a ruthless nutcase who will stop at nothing to hunt down the player and brutally kill them, but she's VERY passionate about helping free monsterkind from their underground prison and has some choice words for you should you kill certain monsters. If you've been playing rather violently up to this point, her murderous rage certainly comes off as justified.
 * Even Toriel has shades of this: she's willing to kidnap the player and keep them holed up in her home forever and reacts violently should you defy her, but she genuinely wants to protect the player from Asgore.
 * Wrong Genre Savvy: In a way, the player may befall to this, specially when playing blind. Play in a way typical of a traditional gamer, ignoring the Mercy mechanics (and the game slogan), and you are for a nasty shock . The game is intended as a Deconstruction of JRPG mechanics and 100% Completion.
 * Wrong Genre Savvy: In a way, the player may befall to this, specially when playing blind. Play in a way typical of a traditional gamer, ignoring the Mercy mechanics (and the game slogan), and you are for a nasty shock . The game is intended as a Deconstruction of JRPG mechanics and 100% Completion.