5 years...

It sounds like a short time, right? Many people and games have lived for a longer period – 10, 20, 50, 80 and more years. Against the background of the entire history of humankind, 5 years is nothing at all. Just what can happen in the lives of millions of people from all over the world that it changed them forever in such a small period of time? Well, it turns out that it can do a lot. Moreover, it can take one year and one game to change everything. And even if these aren’t millennia of history, during which cataclysms and peaceful lulls took place, but during these 5 years another, alternative history of humankind was told: the story about Human and Monsters.

❤️ Year 1 – Ruins. 2015-2016

 In the autumn, when warm days gradually became rare, but before winter it was still a month and a half, thousands of players fell into a crevice in Mt. Ebott and ended up in the Underworld. They learned the story of two races that once lived on the Surface, but once they quarreled and divided the world in half: the entire upper world went to humans, and to monsters a small piece of land under one mountain. It was an exposition of the players’ history.

When the players, as a small child in a blue sweater with two stripes on the belly, yellow skin and a neutral face, got up from the flowers, they went straight. They met Flowey, a small flower with an always smiling and friendly face. He deceived them and tried to kill, but suddenly came a tall woman in purple, with funny ears and horns, like a goat. She extended her hand to the players, like a loving mother, and led them into the depths of the cave. There they met the first monsters, learned how this world works, and spent some time in Toriel's house. However, their desire to return home was stronger than anything the goat mother could give them, and so they left her, entering the rest of the Underworld. This was their tie.

The players left the Ruins and headed to the cold winter Snowdin. There they met a duo of skeleton brothers, different in many ways, but at the same time close to each other – Sans and Papyrus. The first one wanted everything from life: fame, friends, vivid sensations, while the other wanted nothing but sleep and ketchup. The players went through them, the forest and a cozy city and went to the ever-rainy and gloomy Waterfall. A fish without an eye and in armor began to threaten their lives, cursing for the fact that people took the Surface from her and monsterkind. The warrior's name was Undyne. But the players went through her too. Then they saw a view completely opposite to the previous place: red-hot magma under their feet, red stones, mechanisms and pipes, spewing out clouds of hot steam. All this time, they were accompanied by a nervous and shy Alphys, the scientist who created the robot, who was now filming a reality show about human survival in the Underworld. After passing through the last, star number for the robot, the players got into the elevator and drove 19 seconds to meet the inevitable – the battle with a king of this world, who wanted to break the Barrier with a power of 7 human souls that separated People and Monsters for years. But now everything had to change. He was determined and not ready to back down. This was the main action for players.

However, Asgore - the king - didn’t know that everything would somehow end not in favor of the Monsters, for he died from Flowey's petals, all this time chasing the players and watching their actions. The flower consumed all 6 Human Souls and became the god of nightmares, whom the players still defeated. After that, they could go through the Barrier to return home. This was their culmination.

In the deep darkness the phone rang – it was Sans. Players took the tube and for the sad pianos they listened about what happened after they left the Underground. They heard about coups, despair, jokes about the dog-ruler, loneliness and more, and few of the players couldn’t hold back their tears. If they could only, they would respond to all who they left, but the charge of the phone almost sat down. Sans and those who stayed in live handed over to the players, and those remained alone with one with darkness, in which Flowey appeared and he understand you. It was the end for players ... Or it wasn't?

It turns out that they could solve everything in a different way. Loading the last saving file or making a complete reset allowed them to return and enter other paths. So, after a peaceful passing, they learned that Undyne isn't always so angry and she's a very good and caring friend, Alphys has her skeletons in the cabinet, and skeletons themselves also store some secret. And now the players again turned to before the king. He started the battle, but here ... they were saved by Toriel. And not only by her – all their friends came to save them. Everything could’ve been fine, because now you were not alone, but then Flowey came, with the intention of subjugating the whole world again. At this moment, all those whom the players met on their way and with whom they were kind, came to the rescue. Flowey absorbed all the souls of monsters, and it turned out that all this time he was Asriel – the long-dead son of Asgore and Toriel. In the end, the players saved all their friends, and then Asriel himself. He destroyed the Barrier and freed all the monsters, giving them and the players a Good Ending with credits, but ... His days were numbered. And he was the only one who didn't get the Good Ending. At least the others were happy, and so were the players ... It was an ending number 2.

In the 3rd ending, no one was survived. Because the players killed everyone. Without exception. They killed a loving mother, and funny skeletons, and a determined fish, and a robot star, a king and even Flowey. After that, together with the first human, who was named at the beginning of the story by the players after them, they destroyed the whole world. And even the Happy Ending couldn't be truly happy, because the evil and deeds in the past still remained in the depths of their souls.

❤️ Year 2 – Snowdin. 2016-2017

Needless to say the success was overwhelming. The whole world was literally exploded. It got The Game of the Year, the Best Game of Decade, the Best PC Game, and circulation over a million and 10/10 stars – the bar that is still supported by the game. And if at first only US residents knew about the game, by September the game began to appear in the CIS and in other countries. A wave of universal love and creativity has begun. Hundreds of thousands of arts, the first covers, even began to write songs of characters, because the great soundtrack allowed you to do this. The first AUs began to emerge, which in the future became the hallmark of the fandom of this game. Now it is difficult to understand how it all started, but the fact remains that the Universes UnderSwap, UnderFell, OuterTale, AfterTale, InkTale, ErrorTale and the rest of the "original" universes for fandom appeared. Many of these universes were simple customizations of characters, changing only their clothes, roles, or very little their nature. The first fan games began to appear, representing either fighting games with different characters, or the usual redrawings of the original sprites from the Ruins chapter with a slight change in their colors, text and content – otherwise it was good old UnderTale. But along with such template projects, larger ones began to emerge, which have already become veterans of the fandom – Team Switched with their UnderSwap, for example, several times completely departing from the origins and becoming something more detached from the original Swap. Together with TS, UnderTale Yellow appeared with the game of the same name about the soul of Justice.

In February, the largest UnderTale animated series by Camila Cuevas was launched – GlitchTale, which is still running. And in May 2017, the first, and currently the only complete fan game, Overtime, was released. It was an UnderTale crossover with Valve's campaign games, mainly their Team Fortress 2 project, but there were other pop culture references in the game as well. This game captured the UnderTale style, utilizing similar visual and contextual humor, while retaining music and familiar sprites from the original brought a smile to the face. And all this happened only for one year and almost two years of the game.

❤️ Year 3 – Waterfall. 2017-2018

The fandom expanded both in breadth and in depth. Many characters and phrases like "[the subject] fills you with Determination", "You're an idiot!" or "Do you wanna have a bad time?" went to the people, and the figure of Sans became almost iconic, and, as John Lennon would say: "More popular than Jesus." Megalovania gradually became the main theme of the entire game and community, and then the genre, after they began to combine with it all kinds of songs of any character and genre. Games became more diverse, and a whole army of pixel art artists grew up on the redrawing of simple UnderTale sprites, forming their own currents in drawing, as P0ngy did.

In February, the second major series began, affecting this time not only the events of one specific alternative universe, but other universes too, thereby creating another AUs direction called MultiVerse. It was Jakei's UnderVerse, aka Jael Penalosa. This was the second period of UnderTale's prosperity.

❤️  Year 4 – Hotland. 2018-2019

After 3rd anniversary, at the end of October, something happened that no one expected. Without a loud announcement, but with only a few notes on Twitter, a new game from Toby Fox was released – Deltarune, telling a new story in a partially old setting. Everyone was shocked. And at that moment it became clear to everyone why Toby had been silent all these 3 years – he was making a game that he had been thinking about almost since the creation of UnderTale Demo. Everything was showing a new level of quality: a bunch of animations, new detailing of sprites, a more extensive soundtrack, new interesting characters and a plot with one ending (which was, however, strange, given the huge number of them in Toby's previous work). The game immediately became popular, and the fandom of the 15th year had a second wind, because many then began to say that the fandom was gradually dying, but now I understand that this wasn’t the end. In fact, it’s interesting now to look back at the day when DeltaRune was released – it seemed to everyone that a very long time had passed, although it was only some 3 years of development, well, maybe even 2. I remember how everyone began to panic then that there was no longer any point in making fan games and AU, because now there’s an official Alternative Universe, which overshadows all other universes. In fact, the release of this game only fueled interest in UnderTale even more, adding a new quality bar and new combat-type features to fan games. Of course, DeltaRune AUs haven’t become as popular as UnderTale’s ones, but with the release of the full game they’ll definitely acquire their significant status, given that the game will only have one ending. For the rest, the game makers continued to live and engage in the implementation of their AUs in the game shell, although not many could go beyond the threshold of Demo and Ruins. Art became even more widespread, challenges began, UnderTale ports to various devices, etc. All in all, it was another prolific year.

❤️  Year 5 – New Home. 2019-2020

Little by little, the fandom began to subside. Although not much. Sans has officially become a meme and symbol since last year, and Megalovania has become a new genre of music. Content came and continues to come with an enviable regularity - every day, a new universe, or a game, or a cover, or art. Many, of course, still little by little started to become real game teams, however, until the completely original project made by UnderTale fans, it was not yet in my memory. What more can be said? People created and still do it. Many spriters have grown up and started doing pixel art on a professional level, and musicians write music for other projects. Music videos still come out and collect a lot of views, and in the comments they recall how they played this game 5 years ago. Music videos still come out and collect a lot of views, and in the comments they recall how they played this game 5 years ago. The community was still large and united, although some of the people dropped out, but the most creative and loyal to the original people remained. And now, September 15 has come, and the game has turned 5 full years.

❤️  Year ? – Surface. 2020-?

We can talk for a long time about the influence of UnderTale on the gaming industry and the world community as a whole. The leap of pacifism, the birth of real talent, a new word in the indie industry, in general - a boom. And it's unclear what would have happened now if UnderTale hadn't been born. Would there be musicians like NyxTheShield, Cloudjumper, Second Narrator, Sully Orchestration, Osirois Music, RetroSpecter, String Player Gamer, Nick Nitro, RadixMusic and many, many others who have emerged or gained popularity thanks to the game's rich soundtrack? Would all these endless artists have painted millions of pieces of art in different categories, content and styles? Would there be animators who created beautiful animations like Camila Cuevas, Jael Peñaloza, SuperYoumna, GaelRice, AbsoluteDream? Would all these writers be writing stories for fan games, comics and fanfiction? Would there have been all these programmers who have created thousands of fan games of different elaboration and passage? Would the phenomenon of Alternate Universes (AU) be so widespread and pixel art given a second wind after release of the game? Or would there be all these voice actors like UnderTale The Musical, Revtrosity and many more?  Would it be everything that we have today thanks to this game? I don’t know.  However, let's leave these reflections on alternative timelines (ba-dum-tss). We are lucky to live in the universe in which UnderTale was happened. Exactly it happened: not just another indie game came out, how many hundreds are released every year - a new phenomenon in pop culture has occurred, and this cannot be denied. And even if this game was not a breakthrough from a technical point of view, its spiritual, inner component was 10 times superior to all kinds of games before. Because of this breakthrough in history, characters, as well as the general simplicity and virtuosity of performance, UnderTale was remembered by many, because the game did not speak down to the players, but rather spoke the same language and level with them, which ensured a complete immersion in the story and commitment from the players.

❤️  5 years have passed and the game is still alive and will continue to live.

UnderTale is undoubtedly the classics of the indie gaming industry, and the classics are remembered even decades later. Everyone remembers Sonic, Mario, Final Fantasy, Mega Boy, OneShot, Off and other games - they will also remember this game. Of course, in another 5 years, her fame may subside, the fandom will diminish, but I'm sure that the game will still be remembered as something connected with a warm autumn, a bedtime story, old and new friends and something infinitely warm and filled decisiveness. I just hope that those who were 12-14 years old at the time of playing UnderTale, when they grow up and start a family, will give this game to their children and talk about how long ago, back in 2015/2016, they sat in front of their computer and played this 16-bit RPG with a great soundtrack and storyline. I hope that this game will be passed on from generation to generation, and the memory of it will live on. In the end, Toby's creation became a source of inspiration for many current developers, so the day isn't far off when a former UnderTale fan will make his game in many ways as interesting as Toby's work, on which he will, of course, make a lot of references. Thanks Toby for this game. Thanks to Toby Fox, the little white dog, Temmie Chang, other artists and programmers, editors and others for supporting the game at the very start in 2012 on Kickstarter, giving the little story $ 54,000 to implement. Thanks to all those who have supported and continue to support the life of this wonderful game until now. Words are not enough to describe all my gratitude and all my love for this work. I just hope that this little essay can recreate all my feelings and experiences. In any case, I hope that all of you'll have a good day, in the company of friends or loved ones, maybe even pamper yourself with something pleasant, but not too harmful. Luckily, I have a pretty free day today, so I'll watch the anniversary concert and continue to draw for the anniversary challenge because I'm a little behind schedule. Maybe even replay the game, who knows.

Hopefully one day, on UnderTale's 10th anniversary, a group of dedicated fans will go up a mountain like Ebott and plant golden flowers in a cave inside as a token of love and memory for Toby Fox's creation. It would be really wonderful idea.

* You got the Heart-shaped Locket.

* It says “Best Friends Forever”.

P.S. So far, there has been little progress on DT. All the time's spent on training and further plans, but I've already made myself an approximate schedule, so I'll resume work next week. Anyway, see you some days later! And Happy Birthday, UNDERTALE✨✨✨

Tim DN

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