SweetieGames

In 2016, I was hanging out with my friend when she told me about a game that was skyrocketing in popularity. As a nerdy alternative girl from the UK, at this point in time I was into watching Dan and Phil and they had recently uploaded a couple of episodes of them playing this game to their gaming channel, and my friend begged me to at least watch them play it. This game was UnderTale, and 9 years later it still remains as one of my top special interests.

I’ve written about UnderTale plenty of times on this blog, so you can tell how much it means to me. I’ve put over one hundred hours into the game, despite it only taking a few hours to complete, and I’ve spent countless hours talking about it with others either in real life or online. I adore the amount of layers the game has; things that are untold, secrets left unrevealed and the very different tone the game can take depending on your actions as the player.

I got into UnderTale when it was a little under a year old, in late spring of 2016. So of course, when the game turned 10 years old, I had to tune in for the Fangamer UnderTale charity stream. What I was expecting was a regular playthrough of UnderTale with the added hilarity of donations being able to change the human’s name, which of course led to thousands of people wanting to name the character “Togore” after the infamous meme character, but I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

This stream added in tonnes of exclusive dialogue, NPCs and even areas that are not going to be released into the UnderTale game. From anime schoolgirl Mettaton to a whole town in the Ruins, there was an expansion to the UnderTale universe that I never expected.

Something that really struck me though, was towards the end of the stream where creator Toby Fox discussed the added content and how it won’t be “released” into the game. In his eyes, the added content does not need to be physically in the game for it to exist; these aspects are up to fan interpretation, and the interpretations of the player can be important too. Everyone interprets media differently depending on their past experiences and opinions, and the joy of a game like UnderTale is that you can come up with your own theories and imagine what is beyond the boundaries of the game. Just like in real life, you can’t go to every single place and interact with every single person; the areas and interactions in the stream are just one interpretation of what these places and characters in UnderTale could look like.

In a previous article, I discussed fan theories in UnderTale’s parallel game Deltarune in the run-up to Chapter 3 and 4’s release. I’m glad that Toby brought up the power of fan interpretations; there is so much more to any media than just what is explained in canon. Things left untold allow us to interact with one another, to come together and discuss what we think is beyond the game itself.

Not only did the fans come together to raise money for a great cause, but we came together to share our memories of UnderTale, why it’s important to us and how we interpreted different moments, places and characters. Canon moments are of course important, but fan interpretation can be just as important to maintain a healthy fandom ecosystem.

Happy 10th birthday, UnderTale!