#then dalv got into it. used the ruins as a base now and then

[mjhartwork]

Castle Zilchester

[dentwy]

number 5: undertale yellow

god i fucking love this game. i love undertale, it's one of my favorite games if not my favorite game of all time. this comes as no surprise to anyone that knows me already, but it had to be said. so, while i haven't been actively waiting for undertale yellow, it absolutely was one of those things i remembered to check every couple of years.

to this day i still remember all the undertale alternate universe comics i read and all the comic dubs i watched (which may or may not have had an impact in my entire career choice). the idea of a full on game based on an au has always been an ideal scenario, a dream even; so to see this finally come to fruition is akin to seeing a dream come true. to see these people, some of which have been working on this project since they were 14 years old, is highly inspiring, and the sheer passion and dedication put behind it is nothing short of incredible.

undertale yellow isn't as much of a "what if?" scenario, as it is the undertale prequel we never got, except it’s made by fans. it feels canon, yet it’s not. throughout its entirety you need to remind yourself, "wait, right, this is a fan game" and it's not something many pieces of fan media can accomplish. we know undertale already, know its canon, characters, world, systems. how do we improve this? well, we can expand the world, add new characters, give a spin on the things we know, improve the systems, create more battle scenarios, etc. and etc. that or, you know, play deltarune i suppose.

i adore deltarune, do not misunderstand anything i'm about to say, but in its current state it's completely unclear on what it even is. it's made by toby fox, it shares characters and a lot of similar aspects, but it's not quite a sequel, is it? as of now deltarune feels like a fan au made game. i love this aspect of the game too, not everything needs a sequel to continue, specially when you've already made such an interesting world you can use. which is where tracking steps back and going into a prequel makes the most sense.

in all the years me thinking about undertale and reading up on theories i never actually thought about the timeline of events. 6 humans fell down, now they need a 7th soul. how long ago have these monsters even been trapped in the underground? what are the humans even doing right now? how big is the underground even? it's not that undertale yellow answers these questions, and frankly it doesn’t need to, but it stirs them up in a really interesting way i haven’t thought of before.

you play as clover, the 6th human soul. yellow. already giving a name and motive to the human may seem weird for undertale standards, but i believe it's one of the game's strongest points. you can distance yourself from clover. he's not you. sure, you control the guy, though not all the time. he has his things to say, he moves around on his own and has his own thoughts. he's way less of a vessel than frisk is. while distancing yourself may sound like a negative, the issue at hand is that we know for a fact clover died in some way or another. you can't exactly change the canon, what you can choose is the path you will take for this to happen.

for most undertale fans, going pacifist is the way, as i did for my first run. i certainly remember watching the demo for yellow back in the day, however it's been so long it might as well be a dream i had once. what did forever stick with me was dalv's battle theme, forlorn. at the time, probably my favorite fan song. ironically, dalv ends up being arguably the most irrelevant character in the game, and his song, probably not the best, although still good. i like dalv though. the new ruins definitely have an older feeling to them, they are the one part of the game that's been around the longest and still works well enough as undertale's ruins did. compared to toriel, a nice and warm character that wants you to avoid battle, dalv is the cold and antisocial guy that wants you gone. he's been wronged, he has his hopes but it's hard to stay positive when your worries are always crawling on your back. i kind of wish he had a more active role in the story, but i digress.

snowdin is where things take a turn. we already know snowdin, but we're in new grounds. it's good to know that there's more to the underground than just the 5 places we see in undertale. each area has so much more to explore, of which we (supposedly) don't really get to see in undertale. there's no sans and papyrus here (they probably wouldn't have been around by that time anyway i assume), no grillby's, no librarby. instead, we get martlet, a new royal guard recruit. martlet works well as both the papyrus and sans of this game (more on that later). she's lovable, she's clumsy, but she's determined. i would say she's something of a coward, but she knows she needs to stand up for others when it's necessary. her naiveté works against her in this regard, though, putting her entire trust in anyone and everything, going as far as to help you get back home. still, snowdin is a wonderful place to walk around. the music is beautiful, the slight hue change is a really nice tone and getting to see a different side of the place we already know is generally great to do.

the dunes are a nice change of pace. not sure how going from the snow to a desert works in the underground, but it fits the cowboy hat, so it was a must. the dunes is where the game starts to show its strength. for starters, i absolutely adore the battle theme shifts for every zone, the dunes being my favorite one. it adds so much character to the encounters, along all the creative bullet patterns, character designs and animations. which is perfectly exemplified with the feisty four (the j is silent). they are as pure of a version of toby fox's comedy as you can get. the entire "training" process is the goofiest thing imaginable, they're really likeable (my favorite was moray if you care to know) and go to show that monsters don't want anything more than to be happy. starlo, or north star, is a great character. here we have a clumsy, delusional farmer wanting to play cowboy for everyone to enjoy. he shows off as upbeat and confident, although clouded through his way of treating life as a game. he eventually learns people care about him for who he is, and that he doesn't need to do everything for the rest, showing off another, kinder, side of him. by the way, his fight with the soul being tied by the lasso is genius work.

here is also where ceroba gets introduced, the kitsune that has more to show than it would initially seem. his husband is apparently dead and his daughter in serious condition. you travel with her through steamworks learn about her, her husband and a bit of the conditions of the underground. while i'm gonna be avoiding questioning the idea of corporations in the underground, other robots besides mettaton being designed for different tasks and, specifically, dealing with humans, is great. i don't have a lot to say about steamworks besides the fact the really aggressive vending machine is extremely funny to me.

now ceroba’s backstory is really cool and it brings up something i wanna talk about in detail about the game. ceroba, and chujin (her husband) for that matter, are the monsters in this game that are the most judgemental about humans. while she still comes around and understands that not all humans may be inherently bad, such is your case in the pacifist, it still is her duty to get your soul. monsters aren't that different from humans, that's what undertale has already established. yet, the question we're not asking is: how different are humans from monsters? she's not wrong. clover may be the best human you'll ever meet, but you can't know for sure what will happen in the surface. undertale's pacifist ending seems to imply everyone is happy in the surface, as it is what everyone has been wanting for years. but what if it's not the case? monsters need to find ways to survive. they need to do whatever they can for those they care about. boss monsters do not age, unless they have offspring. how can they make sure their children are safe once they're gone? she comes from a place of desperation. she's done something terrible that can't be fixed, getting your soul is the only way. while it's nice to be positive and hope for the best, you can never be sure. kind of makes me wonder why the monsters even want to leave the underground considering they have everything they need there, but still.

this can be solved in one of two ways, killing ceroba or sparing her. sparing her gives you one of the craziest most satisfying endings i've seen all year. you know, humans can be nice. not everyone lives just to spite monsters, a lot of them may not have even been around back when monsters got sealed. we know for a fact clover will die, there is no way to go back home. instead, he decides to do the ultimate sacrifice, and offers his soul for the monsters to keep until the next and final human falls down. otherwise, the other option is to stop her suffering once for all. hope can't fix your mistakes, right? which gives us a piece of dialogue i really liked:

once that is done, you go up to asgore and get killed by him. at least you go out with respect i suppose.

bringing us back to the start, time to kill everyone. i will always find the no mercy runs really interesting. undertale brought a sense of morbid curiosity that made you reflect on your actions. at the end of it all, it is just a game, but it's a game that means something to you. why are you killing the characters you love? can you really go back to normal after what you've done? deltarune is on completely different levels of fucked, going as far as to gaslight someone else to do the dirty work for you. yellow definitely pulls back on the "shame on you" part of undertale, as we're still talking about clover being the one doing this, not necessarily you. it even goes as far as to have clover be the one that decides on his own a lot of the times. can't argue it doesn't feel bad though, the monsters in yellow are all really nice and friendly. in the eyes of a human, why would one care about the monsters that killed all those poor children? it does definitely turn into something much more sinister however. going around in circles killing as many monsters as you can will always be messed up in undertale, unlike most other rpgs. the music shifting down as you go is always cool, alike the original game. the x showing up on new encounters when there's no one else is a nice extra detail.

martlet shows that she still has hope for even those who seem dangerous. others never stop to consider they "why" after all, right? her escaping away may seem cowardish, but i feel it can be more than that. she does genuinely have hope for you, but she still has a backup plan. she knows she's not strong enough to defeat you, she's a bit of a failure of a royal guard, even self-described as not being good at fighting. although maybe too late, she will make sure her actions are just.

as a side note, someone i haven't mentioned is mo, everyone’s favorite entrepreneur. he's funny, what can you say. there is a shift i found extremely interesting from seeing him in the pacifist route to the no mercy run. initially he seems as a clumsy yet passionate guy trying his damn hardest to get off the streets. it means a lot to him that you support his endeavors. when you're killing everyone though? his character doesn't really change, it's the perspective that does. now you get a guy pretty much willingly giving a serial killer what he needs to continue his rampage. now he's not a passionate rascal, but a scumbag narcissist. just something i found interesting.

in the dunes we also have el bailador which i liked as a character, i only hated how his theme restarts for every attack and it sounds pretty bad. this time, simply ignore his rhythm game! fuck you bitch! it fits works excellently for a no mercy route and i dig it. later, ceroba comes back as a boss, right after shooting down north star before you were even supposed to draw your gun (unless you do wait, which at least makes him die with a little bit more pride). her patterns end up being way more touhou-esque than before, really fun fight, even if tough. the yellow soul shooting as it did in undertale is cool and all, but the dash is a really great addition. even if she's supposed to be the undyne equivalent for this game's route, she ends up working as sans with the pattern order and health depletion similar to his karmic retribution. really nice stuff.

steamworks, again, not a lot to say. the roles reversing between axis and yourself throughout the entire section is sublime. you do the chase now, you are the one attacking while he defends, you are the killer robot. another standout moment was the gardener not leaving to fight. found that curious. i definitely drank the poison just to see what would happen (what did you think would happen?).

at this point in the run, i seemingly fucked up and didn't kill all the robots. whoops! you get a letter from martlet asking you to come talk to her, and there she tells you to come back with her and live peacefully. arguably weird in a genocide run. could clover suddenly be forgiven after all that? i guess martlet's just really nice. either way, this is the neutral ending. the craziest of them all.

right! flowey is here. my best friend. he's always had an undeniable presence in undertale, but having him actively help you out and follow you around (instead of stalking you like in ut) puts him in a different perspective. it's nice to see different sides of flowey, even though he may always be hiding his true intentions, and will probably betray you in the end. just like he's doing here, same as he did with asgore. he's a being of constant suffering, he lives for his own sake and uses others for his benefit, not for many reasons besides him having nothing better to do. in many ways, a reflection of the player.

the new omega flowey fight is indescribable. just go play that yourself, or watch it, i guess. an excellent rendition of your best friend / your worst nightmare that may be a bit corny when we're talking about "creepy undertale fan made songs" but works perfectly in the context of the fight. that motherfucker is just creepy. it gives off the exact same feeling the original omega flowey fight did, and i applaud them for that. the style shifts and back and forth between fight and escape. impeccable.

getting back on track and actually finishing the no mercy route. martlet appears, giving us the hardest fight in the game. by now, there's no going back. you've decided this is how you want things to go down, so she has no other option. she may be late, but she will do all she can. she will be the one doing the final judgement. she’s just fucked up. learning the dash is a must for this boss. the visuals are awesome the music is great and the bullets are really creative. i'm not sure if martlet being unpredictable with the order of her attacks is what makes her seem harder than sans, or the fact i've fought sans so many times its second nature by now makes her seem way harder. she's still up there in terms of difficulty though. being divided in two phases definitely made it more complicated though, as i’m running out of items by the end of the first one and end up with barely anything for the second one. the update adding a healing action helped a lot.

up to this point it could be argued the genocide path may be the most canon of them all. none of the monsters we meet are in undertale. all of these events are never mentioned. they're almost part of completely different worlds at times. yet, we go up against asgore and he gets completely wiped. clover gets the monster boss soul and leaves. maybe not the most impactful of the endings, but why would it be? if the goal was to kill and get out, that's what you got. pointless? not sure, that's what you decided to do.

seeing the last corridor again definitely sends shivers down my spine.

more or less, that's how i experienced undertale yellow. yellow is not the color of justice, it's the color of judgement. flowey mentioned that on his fight and i think it puts this game into words. "justice is determined by the winner" or so they say. it's not justice that ends up determining what you feel is right or wrong, but your own judgement. judgement on your actions and judgement over others.

i don't like saying "this is a love letter to x" but, yeah. undertale means a lot to me and it's no wonder yellow ended up being what it is. it knows what undertale is while following its principles and understanding it fully. i could only wish my projects are as resonant with people as undertale and, in turn, undertale yellow are. please, fans, show your passion for the things you love*. you may end up doing an undertale yellow.

*(just don't be a nintendo fan)