Despite Everything, It’s Still Toby

He’s in the house-like carpet.

You do not need me to explain to you what Undertale is. Over the past 10 years the modern classic by the enigmatic Toby Fox has gone from surprise indie success to foundational pillar of interactive media. And Undertale really is rightly revered as one of the all-time greats, and I’m certain it will be a cultural touchstone for generations to come. A full decade on, we still live in the world that Fox created, and it leaves a fascinating cultural legacy: both for what it was able to achieve as a work and for its impact on the ever-evolving beast that is modern fandom. So what is it about Toby Fox, and his art, and his collaborators, and the way he approaches making a video game that struck such a chord with people? Why is this small indie game by a dedicated team in the cultural conversation with billion-dollar juggernauts like Fortnite and Elden Ring? Why do we still live in the shadow of Toby Fox?

The first and most obvious thing about the enduring popularity of both Undertale and Deltarune is that purely as video games, they are immensely rewarding and deeply satisfying to play. They are so, so much more than the sum of their parts: as a player, you’re constantly pressing at the edges of the experience and looking for feedback, something to further immerse you in the game. When people talk about a video game being “very video game-y,” it’s normally because it’s a hodgepodge of systems and ideas laid over each other that don’t harmonize into a greater whole. Loot systems, multiple in-game currencies, crafting, leveling up, different types of monetization, all with a UI designed in the ninth circle of hell. But when I say that about Undertale and Deltarune, I mean that in the best possible way, because it rewards interaction and exploration like few others. 

Undertale and Deltarune are full to bursting with little interactions, whether that’s nibbling on a plot thread that unravels later, a different dialogue choice for completing a task a different way, or just a fun little joke. I know Undertale was a lot of people’s first big, important video game, and I bet for very few of them it was their last. You can easily see what sucked people in and compelled them to go through every little part of the game for scraps of dialogue, unique interactions and hints at the games’ more hidden narratives. The central gameplay mechanic that combines twitchy, shmup projectile avoidance with classic RPG turn-based combat is inspired. What’s more is that both games are constantly coming up with new riffs on it to keep you engaged, managing to easily find the flow state between reaching mastery of the mechanics and having to overcome a challenge. And every area, every segment lasts just precisely long enough so you don’t get bored or sick of it, with every item, every attack fine-tuned to add a little to the experience. 

A large part of Undertale and Deltarune’s ability to be such exemplars of the form with such a small team is the iconic lo-fi pixel aesthetic and tightly honed mechanics. To contextualize Undertale, by 2015 disarmingly earnest pixel art RPGs had become something of a cliche as the default indie game style. This is both because that was (and remains) a big inspiration on game developers, but also because it was (and remains) easy to work with on an indie developer’s scale and budget. Which is to say, by 2015 people were already pretty tired of it being the default indie game style and aesthetic, even and especially people who grew up loving Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy and of course, Earthbound.

This fatigue had set in even for an audience who also loved indie games. Undertale can only be understood as a part of that era of indie games, even as its style, humor and the execution of its themes managed to drastically set it apart from its contemporaries. It isn’t a long RPG or the most mechanically diverse, but it is very highly refined because its scale allowed Fox and his collaborators to do so. Jesse Faden’s hair alone in Control is likely more graphically intensive than every asset in Undertale and Deltarune combined (which isn’t a criticism of Remedy, I think Control is a fantastic game). Any indie developer will tell you that they did not make their game in a vacuum, that everyone who contributed was an invaluable part of finishing the game. Game devs, artists of any medium really, often take time to point out that everyone involved in the creation process was important, from primary care givers up to the barista who let you sit there for four hours on one cup of coffee every day. On that note, Temmie Chang’s character animations really stand out, in how she finds the precise angle to give Ralsei’s eyes a look of worry, or Toriel’s perfect, gentle, motherly movement, or giving Sans an air of menace.

I probably should talk about the music which is cited as a highlight of the series, but honestly is probably the thing about Toby Fox’s work that I’m the least fond of. I do think he can be great at writing catchy melodies, but often his work doesn’t resolve in a way I find satisfactory. Fox also has a tendency to kitchen sink seven or eight musical ideas into a single piece of music, which can work well but tends not to to be to my taste. For example I’m a huge, huge fan of Maribako, but that particular track also has the vtuber Houshou Marine’s personality and singing to tie it together. It’s less to my taste in Megalovania, which has all of Fox’s biggest and best ideas from when he wrote in high school, but which I wish was structured and constructed to be more interesting, and I really do not find any of the melodies memorable (I think there’s a reason the famous part of Megalovania is the arpeggiated scale at the beginning and none of the actual melodies of the song). Fox is also famous for his love of the leitmotif, a beloved video game staple as old as the medium itself. Even with all the negative things I’ve said about his music, I do enjoy his implementation of the leitmotif. In Fox’s work it doesn’t simply announce a character’s arrival but moves and changes with story beats, reflecting the journey of the characters in a way that’s genuinely engaging. But I still think Fox working under constraints such as a 90-second battle theme loop brings out the best in him, and my favorite track of his ever is probably still Spider Dance, as basic of a pick as that is.

All of the above is pretty obvious and well-remarked upon about the games, and if that was all there was it would probably still be a beloved modern classic. A large part of being able to execute those more material aspects of the game like systems and animation is that Fox is a true video game scholar, a lover of the medium and believer in its potential who is excited to share that love and pass it on in his own work. And it’s not surprising that a person who loves video games, who is highly literate in video games, would then make a career making video games about the voluminous, overflowing potential of video games. But of course the special spice that continues to set both Undertale and Deltarune apart is narrative, a narrative that impressively weaves every system in the games into it. Undertale’s famous multiple endings play out according to how you resolve combat, its most difficult and most famous one reserved for killing every single creature in the game. It is also a twist that did not work on me, largely because by the time I got around to playing Undertale it was perhaps the most spoiled video game in history. That might have lessened the impact of figuring it out for myself but did not really dull any of the good things about it. And also both games are filled to bursting with heavy foreshadowing, with dire warnings about the consequences of your actions and hints for those who are paying attention.

So the big question you see asked is this: Has Undertale’s seemingly relentless pacifism aged poorly? When it was released in 2015, the world was increasingly simmering under political tension but had yet to boil over into the horrible nonstop hell reality we live in currently. But Undertale perfectly met that moment and the ones to come after it because Fox set out to and succeeded (with the help of everyone on the team!) to make a work that was of and about our world, that centered conflict both as an abstract concept and as a consequential reality. Every part of Undertale serves this singular purpose, demonstrating a unified whole that belies the many unique interactions and different things it is possible to do mechanically and in the narrative of the game. And, I think it’s a mistake to say that Undertale is about relentless pacifism at all costs. Its central theme is not that the answer to conflict is to simply accept ill treatment until your tormentor finally sees you as a fully realized consciousness, just as they see themselves. Instead it’s about cycles of conflict, where the player is thrown into a situation not of your own creation, and then needs to carve out an existence for yourself. You are presented with several different ideologies on the nature of the world and then have to find a way to break the cycles of conflict, find answers to problems, listen to people and be better than the circumstances you find yourself in. 

In the true ending, you are forced to fight and defeat the game’s ultimate antagonist Flowey, in a sequence break aesthetically and mechanically from the rest of the game. You do not not love Flowey into submission as he realizes of his own accord that conflict is wrong. In that context it would be really silly for Deltarune to reverse course on this, to say that suddenly violence is good if it’s for a righteous cause, and indeed the game does not double back on anything in Undertale. If you’re looking for a reason as to Undertale’s enduring popularity, it’s not just pure game design or the equally ambitious narrative design, or even the art style. It’s all of these things in a fully realized whole. And the fact that there’s nothing like it, there’s only one and only ever will be one Undertale. You could go boot up Dragon Quest right now and grind slimes ‘til your heart’s content, and Fox would undoubtedly sit on the sofa next to you and talk about how much he loves it and the impact it had on him. But despite its popularity there wasn’t a wave of painfully earnest dad-joke infused games about conflicts, there’s just the one.

I don’t think absolute refusal to discuss your work is a virtue necessarily. I get a little tired of people lionizing David Lynch for it, to pick just one example. Artists talking about their work often provides valuable insight or context, and I think it’s especially important in the present where every single day feels like a media cycle of both endless promotion and endless damage control. But I do actually find Fox’s refusal to answer questions about the themes and ideas of his games very compelling. Because what is he going to say to decode them further? He’s right, all of their themes and ideas are easily within reach, unhidden and unambiguous when you play both Undertale and Deltarune. His work speaks for itself.

When I say we live in the world Undertale created, it’s because it stands alone. Part of the reason for its enduring popularity is its anti-conflict message which was timely and prescient in 2015 has only gotten more needful in the intervening years. It’s easy to get tired of a fandom, and even Fox has talked about Undertale’s inevitable oversaturation. However an annoying fandom is temporary but a classic work is forever. Undertale is deservedly popular 10 years later for how it inspired people, to take up game development or music or something other art, to look at their favorite works more critically, to make porn (and yes that is an important legacy in 2025 and go fuck yourself if you believe otherwise), the fact that I am going to see Sans graffiti-ed on bare walls and Photoshopped as a character into whatever game is currently popular until I’m dead. It is an immensely complete work that matches and continues to meet the times that we live in. Although I still don’t understand why Alphys’ role in horrible crimes goes unaddressed in the game.

I’ll admit I came to Toby Fox late; I first played Undertale and Deltarune in 2024, long after the concrete had set and enshrined these games as cultural touchstones. I have no excuse for buying in at the time other than my less-than-admirable character flaw that I tend to avoid anything going through a zeitgeist. As much as it’s a shame that I missed out on that specific cultural moment (as much as anyone who was online in 2015 could have missed out on Undertale mania) it’s allowed me to approach Fox’s work more on its own terms. Which is why it was so frustrating when I played through both of them and thought they were good. I was nowhere near as down on them as its most vicious critics, but I also didn’t fall head over heels for them the way a lot of people had. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that it was a slow burn. The games really stuck with me, and I found myself thinking about them for months afterwards. I mean here I am: would I be writing a 3,000 word retrospective on the games if my whole take was simply “it’s fine”? 

From Undertale to Deltarune

It’s harder to talk about Deltarune because it is, as of writing, unfinished. However, I do love its narrative and systems conceit of disconnecting the actions of the player from the player character, Kris. It ties together the game’s mechanics and its story in the way Fox loves, and is also just plain intriguing. It’s the inverse of how most video games’ deal with the player being an active participant in the story, where the player is either forced into making a bad choice or presented with two or more options, of which one is the bad choice. This has become such a video game cliché over the years where increased fidelity has allowed to games trend towards the language and stylism of cinema, but the “throw the orphans into the furnace/save the orphanage” dichotomy hasn’t gone anywhere. Deltarune, meanwhile, often takes player’s control away when Kris is doing something evil, leaving you to watch helplessly. Many of your choices, such as defeating enemies rather than Pokémon-ing them, end up not mattering. Some things are about the journey, not the destination: you shouldn’t be doing good just for a reward. And the many non-righteous ways to play the game are noticeably less fun and shorter. There’s a particular moment in Deltarune Chapter 4’s Sword Route where the player character Kris plays a video game within a video game, only for their video game counterpart who has been slaying Ralsei-like beings in an attempt to get stronger like a video game character comes out of the TV that I found genuinely unnerving. 

In many ways Deltarune is the perfect inverse of Undertale’s main theme. Where Undertale was concerned with your actions as a player, Deltarune decouples the action of the player from that of the player character. This is common enough accidentally to be a bit of a video game cliché, where a video game will stop to show you a cut-scene of something you the player would not or cannot do. Deltarune leans hard into this, and while it’s hard to say anything definitive about it before the game is complete it is fascinating in comparison to Undertale. Every horrible thing in Undertale was a choice you made through the player character Frisk, but Kris in Deltarune often uncomfortably does things you would not and cannot do. Conflict in Undertale was writ large, a world of monsters and a world of humans at war and you caught in the consequences of that. This conflict rests at the edges of Deltarune, and while you fight playing cards brought to life and relics of ’90s economic prosperity in a bizarre alternate dimension questions of conflict in the “real” world of Deltarune remain unresolved. The difficulty of Kris’ adoption into the Dreemurr household, Kris’ difference from the many creatures that inhabit Hometown and sense of alienation (and how meaningful that difference is when almost every person in town is a different shaped being), the unresolved family matter that drove a wedge between Toriel and Asgore and possibly their biological and adopted child, Susie’s implied background as a have-not in what is seemingly a pretty prosperous town, all of this is (as far as chapter 1-4 are concerned) background information that’s easily missed. So where is the conflict that was so central to Undertale?

And also I find it fascinating that Toby Fox’s work is so indelibly tied to the aesthetics and sensibilities of retro games, and his games became an object of nostalgia for people as one of their first important pieces of media, but one of the big emergent themes of Deltarune is that nostalgia is poison. The Dark World is a poor reflection of the Light World because it and its inhabitants are stuck in the past and unable to move on. Ralsei is an analogue for Asriel, the absent big brother to protagonist Kris; fan favorite characters like Spamton and Queen and Tenna all inhabit a decades-ago world gone by; Susie emerges as a character by refusing to be defined by her past and embracing growth and change. The many teenaged characters experienced teenaged problems, but most (not all!) feel like something they’ll just grow out of. Berdly will eventually have some sense knocked into him, Noelle will look back on her teenage years and go “why didn’t I just tell her how I feel,” Jockington will realize that the scraggly pube beard looks terrible and spend the rest of his life clean shaven. And in this context Kris’ role both as player character and as demiurge bringing the Dark World into being is still being written (like a lot of story beats in Toby Fox works it was very heavily foreshadowed).

To speak of my personal experience again I’ve grown to love not only Toby Fox and his collaborators work but the larger-than-life ripples it has made, and it’s cool that Toby Fox specifically has used his success to do cool things like hang out with Zun and produce music for Holopro. This is the year I finally decided I needed to make my own creative endeavors happen because none of us are getting any younger and I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And 10 years of living in a world where a nifty indie game is as popular and influential as it is, with as bad as the world has gotten, is something we can hold onto. Happy 10th anniversary, Undertale.