Determination – Toby Fox

Determination+-+Toby+Fox

Duncan Evans, Coffeehouse Promoter

The sight of this profile fills you with Determination.

For those who do not instantly recognize the name Toby Fox, another name might be more obvious: Undertale, an independently developed game by the aforementioned Toby Fox, which plays around with the traditional RPG format (murder, death, kill, murder, death, kill, and so on) to create a game in which “no one has to get hurt.”

Undertale is kind of like Alice in Wonderland with fewer hallucinogenic shenanigans and more skeleton puns. This little game with a shoestring budget made gargantuan waves in the gaming scene and, after only a few months, managed to receive GameFAQ’s “Best Game Ever” award.

When asked if there is anything he wished he knew ahead of time, he replied (in true Toby fashion) “Not really. I mean, there are things that would have made my life easier, but nothing I’d waste a wish on. Those are valuable you know.”

Toby Fox, 26, has been making games (in his words, “garbage nonsense”) since the 2nd grade, when he used RPG Maker 2000 (a relatively easy to use game development program) to have fun, and now he makes (in his words) “garbage nonsense with other things.”

The final product did not end up being one of Fox’s favorite works.  He dubs it “a bad ROM hack with swears.” Despite Toby Fox not loving his earlier work, it is still obvious that it is made by the same person who made Undertale, with the same strange, outlandish, fourth-wall-demolishing humor that fans have come to love.

Before Undertale, there was the Earthbound: Halloween Hack, one of Fox’s earlier projects that he has since dubbed “a bad rom hack with swears,” based off of one of his favorite games: Shigesato Itoi’s Earthbound. Despite his current feelings about his old work, it gave the world a glimpse of the outlandish, fourth-wall-demolishing humor that fans have come to love.

Undertale was the product of a very successful Kickstarter campaign wherein Fox initially asked for a whopping $5,000 to develop the game, instead receiving $51,124. That sounds like quite the windfall–until you learn that most Triple-A games have budgets that extend from a meagre $500,000, to games like Destiny with a budget of $500,000,000.

This kickstarter-king’s ransom (small king, small ransom) allowed Fox to develop his brainchild: a game that slowly breaks down all the tropes of traditional RPGs. Sword and armor? Nope, you get a burnt pan and a tutu. Are you the hero of prophecy? Nope, you just fell down a hole.

As the sole developer of Undertale (minus some character ideas from friends), it seemed probable that Fox would have difficulty with the creative process, but the main difficulty was time. The game was set to release in mid-2014 and instead released in late 2015– but to be fair the game’s length went from a planned 2 hours to a whopping 10. Fox said, “working continuously on it for years,” made him feel like he might “let down the Kickstarter backers,” because he didn’t finish it on time.

Finishing things seems to be a theme of Fox’s work ethic. “The thing I’m most proud of is being able to finish something. Finishing things is more important than being good at them.”

Indeed, when asked if there was any project he regretted not finishing, he simply said “No, otherwise I would go back to it.”

This concept of “finishing what you started,” even works its way into the game as well– when you “finish” it, the game, to the sounds of shrieks and howls from the traditional gaming masses, asks you kindly to “leave it finished,” and be happy that you’ve done everything right.

However, the characters and humor are a huge part of the game’s appeal. Fox said “If you like the characters and the humor, you’ll probably like it, and forgive it for its flaws. If you don’t, you’ll probably hate it.”

There are hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of dialogue that can come from the most inane interactions with seemingly pointless objects, each one filled to the brim with Fox’s sense of humor. Some of them crush the fourth wall into a fine powder, others poke fun at the tropes of games (and gamers for that matter), and still others have humor so far out of left field that it leaves one with a feeling of “Wait… did I just read that?”

A phrase such as “dog marriage” posted on a sign will tell the player “Yep. You read that right,” if looked at a second time. A person who can’t afford a fancy restaraunt is seen in the corner, consuming dew off of a ficus plant. You can even date a skeleton named after the Papyrus font.

But all of these situations make sense in context, as bewildering as that seems. The game’s glue is its unique characters and entertaining humor. From Sans, the comic (Yes, he is literally Comic Sans), to Undyne, the Fish-Warrior, the characters seem to fill out every archetype while still finding a way to be unique. Anthony Hakim (‘16) said that “Undertale did a good job of making its cast feel real. It’s a game that treats its NPC’s (non-player characters) as more than NPC’s.”

One thing remains constant with most people: the love of the soundtrack. Though Fox’s musical experience comes down to playing trumpet in high school, and teaching himself to play piano, the soundtrack is downright one of the best ones to be released in years, emphasizing both the comedic highs and the serious lows of the game. Fox literally changed one of the character themes because it didn’t sound “like being heroically punched in the face.”

The most appealing thing to me is just the sheer absurdity of the game’s existence: “peaceful” games have been tried before, but they came across as horribly forced, yet Undertale has the same concept, but doesn’t jam it down your throat. You don’t get rewarded for huggin’ it out, you get kicked in the face. But the kick somehow encourages you to try harder and harder to hug it out, and eventually you can, and you will do everything possible to do so.

Or you can murder-hug it out– and the game will just stand by and let it happen. And in the end, the game really gives you a sense of accomplishment, and encouragement to carry the lessons on peace to real life– according to Anthony Hakim, “I stopped killing bugs after I played it.”

A game that has closed in screens and turn-based fighting manages to give you more freedom than any big Triple-A sandbox can, just by shrugging its shoulders and looking the other way. It’s incomparable, like… nevermind. Just know that if you want an experience that will send you on an emotional rollercoaster, you should check out Undertale… or if you can’t be bothered, just listen to the soundtrack. You’ll have fun either way.