Volume 9: Answers from the Readers #3. From Weekly Famitsu Magazine issue #1817

It's UNDERTALE's 8th Anniversary! To commemorate this occasion I will be... Huh? Reading reader responses?! Even though it's supposed to be my game's party?! Well in the last column I asked you all about what non-horror games traumatized you. And we got many responses about UNDERTALE...?! Well in that case... This month I'll only comment on responses about UNDERTALE! I'll leave the other responses for next month! A double feature of stupid comments from the creator of UNDERTALE! If you read both of them you'll be sure to be traumatized!

When crossing the bridge early in the game with Papyrus you can see a small dog hanging from above. He looks like he's going to fall any minute but remains calm. That's my trauma. (lol)

If you think it's scary just consider the dog's perspective. He's having a great time! He's happy to help raise the tension of The Gauntlet of Deadly Terror! (Although he probably ended up there on his own without being asked to help...) If you look really close at his face you'll see it's trying hard to put on a fierce face. It might look like its normal face but deep down it's meant to be a very scary face so it's only natural you'd get a fright out of it.

When I was younger the bird that carries you over a disproportionately small gap in Waterfall freaked me out. I have no idea but when I saw the bird and heard that music it scared me lol.

Ah that of course that part... I did think that part was too scary. I even thought about cutting it. But that's the only real scary part so It's probably okay. ...Wait a minute! That's what scared you?!?! I'm just imagining a child playing the game fighting Flowey, getting to the true lab and fighting Sans. They watch the worst ending as if it were a joke, but after finishing the pacifist route they see this small bird and instantly start crying. They don't cry much so maybe instead the main character starts crying? Maybe the bird starts crying? Oh man...

After playing UNDERTALE I just can't delete data like I could before. I play a lot of games but I can't help but feel like I'm destroying their happy ending... The main reason for this feeling is what Sans and Flowey say... But I still love UNDERTALE!

Deleting data is a tough thing isn't it... Just imagine if to make room for your company's presentation materials you had to delete all the images of gravure idols off your flash drive, what would you do? In the world of the flash drive a moving piano song like Komm Susser Tod from the Evangelion movie begins to play as clipart people that look like Irasutoya appear and chase after the sexy idols. Each scream vanishes one by one when touched by their smooth cartoon hands. At the end only cheerful cartoon animals and depictions of office workers remain. A large number of bras lay at their feet. Is this what you imagine because of my game? If you were to think about something like this because of my work I would be very glad.

The cruel messages you get after killing monsters in UNDERTALE has become traumatic for me. Now when I play games like Dragon Quest or Chrono Trigger I think about, what if these guys have families, what if they have something special in their lives... I didn't play games for almost a month. (But I'm also a little bit glad to not rely on them as much.)

Thanks to my game you've been able to live the healthiest month of your life!! However as the creator of UNDERTALE I don't really have any strong feelings about killing monsters in video games... It's just that when I see monsters wearing clothes and having weapons I can't help but be curious about where exactly they got that stuff from. Is there someone making all of it?

For example in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there's a centaur-like enemy called a Lynel. They look like they come from a long family of warriors devoted to fighting so I think they probably make their own weapons and armor. Perhaps on a large pointy anvil, they make the weapons with a smile and say "With this I'll crush all of my prey!" However, don't you think their gaiters are too low for them to reach? Who's wrapping them? Nobody really thinks about this stuff but let's really just talk about it for a moment. Maybe there's like exactly 1 Bokoblin whose sole purpose in life is to wrap gaiters for Lynels. The Bokoblins get all the bad jobs but I wonder if that Bokoblin thinks that he has a particularly bad job? Are there times where he's really proud of his work, thinking to himself about how the Lynels looks especially threatening today because of his work. If the gaiter Bokoblin is killed do all the Lynels go barefoot for a while and everyone starts reporting it as a bug. But if we knew the real reason that they were all barefoot would we feel sort of sorry about it?

UNDERTALE as a game is the result of the imagination that answers these sorts of questions. It's a world where you can overcome incredibly stubborn monsters by empathizing with them and treating them kindly. If the monsters were to listen to your voice... Such fantasies are allowed, so to speak, it's an ideal game. ...But it's a weird game in its own way. After all, making a game where you attack or defeat something is easier, provides a sense of accomplishment, and is enjoyable in its own way for the player. The reason why no one has made a game that directly copies UNDERTALE in these past 8 years is probably because of these reasons. And the fact that you ended up enthusiastically playing various games again is probably for that reason!

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