Massive spoilers for a game that's a decade old (!) at this point in time, but Undertale takes the idea of a video game RPG and throws it around its head. We start off with a rather simple concept, with a rather simple system meant to mimic a lot of the oldest Dragon Age and Final Fantasy style games, allowing your protagonist to fight the random encounter monsters. And you are meant to be lulled into a sense of thinking that it's just a mechanic of the game. But as you progress through the game, you realize that everything you took for granted in a video game... experience points, leveling, killing 'random encounters', and most crucially even the act of reloading saves and resetting the game... are all not as it seems. It might seem a bit more quaint now that there's been a fair amount of games that tries to copycat it, but Undertale is one of the first games to effectively make multiple branching routes and endings... where the act of you, the person playing the game, reloading a brand-new playthrough of the game actually affects how the game plays out because the in-universe characters treat it as a time-loop... and some characters will remember that you've been through this before.
But most of all, what intrigued me the most was the monsters. Because the monsters are actually a huge part of the game. The idea of a 'random encounter', of you walking around a map and fighting an infinite number of monsters that the game generates out of nowhere for the sake of 'grinding' experience points and leveling up, is very heavily deconstructed by this game.
Again, massive spoilers for a ten-year-old game, but Undertale plays on the concept that each area has a finite amount of monsters. And while you might not realize it early on, the game actually has a mechanic that allows you to play through it without having to kill a single monster. It needs you to pay attention to the world around you, and to spend turns to check and talk to the monsters, but 'battles' in this game also have a way for you to look for alternate actions... to interact with these monsters as you would other people. You can talk to them, intimidate them, flirt with them, try and figure out why they're fighting you... it's like a mini-puzzle in figuring out how to 'Spare' the monster before they kill you.
I've watched people play through Undertale back when it was super popular in 2015, and it impressed me how funny the game was, but also how well thought-out the game was in terms of making its encounters both tongue-in-cheek but also surprisingly full of heart.
And while I'm not going to spoil the entirety of Undertale, and I don't think I care to review the 'bosses' (who tend to be humanoid characters) I'm going to try my level best to talk about every single monster in the base Undertale game as I experience playing through it for the first time now that enough time's passed for me to purge a lot of the story spoilers from watching people play through the game from my head.
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The Dummy
I would note that a significant portion of the game does revolve around the named characters and bosses, and... and for the most part, I don't think I can review them properly per se. The characters are well-written and the dialogues are witty, and while you do fight a majority of the main characters throughout your playthroughs, I don't think I have much substantial input to say about the visual design or boss fight mechanics of characters like Sans, Papyrus or Undyne. Perhaps in a different, separate post? These couple of pages are just going to mainly deal with the "lesser" enemies.
Anyway, just like the game's tutoriel tutorial does, we are first introduced to the combat with a Dummy, which... sure is a training dummy, all right! The way that the game's combat functions is that you are presented with a simple 'Fight' attack, and 'Act', which gives you options like checking the enemy, talking to them, flirting with them... and whatever you do, you go through a little 'bullet hell' minigame that Undertale actually does a relatively good job at making it snappy. The game also does a surprisingly good job at introducing variations to this minigame to make the boss fights not monotonous.
Anyway, here's the Dummy, which for all intents and purposes is just meant to be there for you to test out the mechanics. When 'spared', it actually just disappears and flies off.
Froggit
"Life is difficult for this enemy."
Our first enemy in the 'Ruins' area is the Froggit, a cute portmanteau of 'frog' and 'ribbit'. He's a simple guy, just a cute little frog... but there's also appears to be something like a second face nestled between his forelegs? I'm never sure what that is. Froggits don't really have much personality, mostly going 'ribbit ribbit'. I do like that in the combat minigame, sometimes instead of little particles flying around, you've got a straight-up pixelated frog jumping around trying to get you.
Again, massive spoilers for a game that's a decade old now, but while you encounter these monsters in 'random encounters' a la Final Fantasy or Pokemon or Dragon Quest, something sinister happens if you kill too much of them to 'level grind'. Killing a couple might be excusable as you're unfamiliar to the world, but someone who takes the time to level-grind will receive ominous messages like "20 left" and you can literally kill everyone in the area, ultimately leading to "nobody came" and causing the location to feel empty and desolate.
While there are definitely multiples of each monster, particularly in later areas, the loss of these monsters will be felt down the line, with important characters noting if you've killed certain monsters, and NPCs disappearing as they escape from you when you go down this 'genocide' route. On the other hand, trying to act and talk and just avoid the damage lets you 'Spare' these enemies, still counting as victories and awarding you gold. For Froggit, he's so simple and confused that whether you pick 'complement' or 'threaten', the Froggit will be either flattered or scared enough for you to spare him.
Whimsun
"This monster is too sensitive to fight..."
Likely to be one of your first non-scripted encounter, Whimsuns are adorable little bug-people. They kind of look like bedsheet ghosts (not to be confused with the actual bedsheet ghost character) with stick-figure arms and legs, and the antennae and wings of a bug. Its expression is very scared. I like his huge eyebrows, his little dot eyes, and what I thought was an upturned mouth is actually a 'snout' with little fangs. Kind of like the Pokemon Venonat. Every line of dialogue he says are something along the lines of "I can't handle this" and "forgive me". Its attacks are programmed to always miss unless you run into them, and this poor little cowardly baby just seems to just kind of... Whimsun really does need help, doesn't he? I
Whimsuns are programmed to die in a single hit in combat, and whether you 'console' or 'terrorize' him, he's so freaked out that he's going to run away as long as you engage with the non-hostile mechanic. Again, from a game-designer perspective it's important that the early game monsters are able to be spared quite easily, and tying this to the poor Whimsun's neurotic and panicky personalities works quite well.
Moldsmal
"Stereotypical: Curvaceously attractive, but no brains..."
Playing a bit on typical JRPG tropes, one of the earliest enemies is some kind of slime. Moldsmal is shaped like an actual jelly dish, and he blobs in place, making 'burble burble' noises that might lull you into thinking that he is non-sentient. But Moldsmal is still a monster, and all monsters in Undertale are part of a whole race of sentient beings.
I do like that the options to deal with Moldsmal are quite ridiculous. 'Imitate' causes you to 'lie immobile with Moldsmal', which causes you to understand the world a bit better. You can, however, 'flirt' with Moldsmal, where you both bond and have a 'meaningful conversation' by wiggling.
Loox
"Don't pick on him. Family name: Eyewalker."
Loox is probably the first monster that looks a bit more threatening than everything else that came before, with a fanged mouth and a body shaped like a spherical cyclops. The general look seems to be meant to evoke a more monstrous version of Monster Inc's Mike Wazowski. Pretty simple but neat design -- giant eye, horns, and limbs.
Again, we are still in the tutorial zone, but Loox is the first monster where your choice of what to do will actually change how the fight goes. With the description and his dialogue rather pointedly showing that Loox doesn't like being stared at, you have the option to 'pick on him' or 'don't pick on him'. The latter lets you spare Loox, but the former would cause his attacks to go a bit more intense.
Migosp
"It seems evil, but it's just with the wrong crowd..."
A bit of a weirdo, Migosp is a weird little bug-guy with a nervous face and pose. Migosp can only be encountered with other monsters, usually the more aggressive Loox or Moldsmal, and he will join them in attacking you while screaming bug monster lines like "heed the Swarm!" and "Legion! We are Legion!" Again, it's a pretty 'obvious' theme to give a bug monster a hivemind theme, but as the check flavour text notes, Migosp is just in the wrong crowd. A less-literal version of a hivemind, if you will.
Kill or spare the monster that Migosp shows up in, and he drops all of the creepy hivemind screaming, and actually stops attacking. Instead, during the 'bullet hell' minigame portion of combat, we instead get a little animated sprite of Migosp's little cockroach self just doing a little jig. "La la, just be yourself!" Again, it's a cute little gimmick, and one that helps to give a lot of these monsters a fair bit more personality.
Vegetoid
"Serving Size: 1 Monster. Not monitored by the USDA."
An interesting monster, you first meet the Vegetoids as overworld items you can interact with as you pull them out of the ground like carrots. And the Vegetoid is basically a monstrous vegetable, in the vein of something like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Vegetoid's fight helps to illustrate what Undertale is all about, where all the monsters can only be properly spared if you try to understand what or who their personalities are. Just picking the nice 'talk' options doesn't always work.
Vegetoid, for his part, responds very negatively to you trying to talk or charm him. "Plants can't talk, dummy." is Vegetoid's answer, and you really need to play by his wacky logic. Instead, Vegetoid wants you to select 'dinner', at which point Vegetoid gets excited and you then need to run into some glowing-green projectiles during the bullet-hell minigame. After having some of its vegetables (or part of itself?) eaten, the Vegetoid can be spared. It's bizarre, but, again, it's what makes this game charming.
Also, at this point you would fight a couple of plot-relevant characters, but as mentioned above trying to talk about even Toriel or Napstablook would either be a short description, or a super-long analysis on their role in the story and other people have done a much better job of that than I have.
Ice Cap
"This teen wonders why it isn't named 'Ice Hat."
The second area of the game is Snowdin, a snow-themed mountain. And with a snow-themed mountain, you also get snow-themed monsters... mostly. Ice Cap is a weird little guy with a giant ehad and a tiny body, a carrot nose and a giant fancy hat made up of spikes. Every single line of dialogue he says involves him talking about his hat, boasting about it or mocking that you don't have one, or complaining that you're not looking at his hat.
The attacks in Snowdin has gone a bit more fancy as well instead of just generic projectiles, with Ice Cap summoning pixelated ice stalagmites that launch upwards from cannons that appear from the bottom of the screen. Complimenting Ice Cap just makes his ego bigger and bigger, and the way to spare Ice Cap is to actually ignore him, at which point he gets a bit desperate for your attention, because how dare you ignore his hat and oh god is something wrong with his hat?
As a bit of a cute easter egg, you can try to steal his hat, which fails most of the time... until you've met his sparing conditions. When you do so, Ice Cap... devolves into just an ice cube. Because without the cap, he's just ice. One unique thing is that once you reach a certain part of the story, the Snowdin monsters actually stop appearing as random encounters and show up in the Snowdin monster town as NPCs.
Snowdrake
"This teen comedian fights to keep a captive audience."
An interesting design. The Snowdrake has a head shaped like a snowflake, while what appears to be the main body of some kind of bird. Kind of an ugly bird, but I think it's just the unnaturalness of seeing those mismatched teeth in the Snowdrake's beak. Snowdrake's whole deal is that he's an aspiring comedian, but he doesn't quite have the confidence to tell his jokes. If he appears with other monsters he gets very self-conscious if you start telling jokes. The way to spare him, obviously, is to laugh at his jokes... but the game wants you to pay attention to what he's saying, and if you laugh when he's not joking, he actually gets mad.
Snowdrake's jokes, of coures, are very lame Mr. Freeze tier ice puns. Do unrelated actions to his jokes, and Snowdrake will start going "ice puns are snow problem" and the like.
Again, it's dorky as heck, but all Snowdrake wants to do is to tell jokes. It is quite telling that you encounter Snowdrake just as a random encounter, with no real indication that he's a significant character (and in fact, he really doesn't show up in the game like the other important NPCs) but if you actually kill Snowdrake, other characters in town will have their dialogues change. It's at this point when you realize that even the encounters not highlighted by the game as interacting with you in the overworld with copious amounts of dialogue are still living monsters in-game, and they have friends and family.
Chilldrake
"Rebels against everything!! Looking for its friend Snowy."
In fact, this guy only shows up if you kill Snowdrake. Chilldrake is Snowdrake with the eyes replaced by sunglasses. Despite otherwise looking like a simple palette swap -- something common in video games -- Chilldrake is fully different. For the most part he is a simple one-gimmick joke, yelling about simple 'anarchist' stuff, rebelling against doing homework and brushing teeth. He's a cool rebel, y'all, and he'll try to disagree with anything in front of him. His sparing conditions is to actually agree with what he's saying, which makes him uncomfortable because he's suddenly not a rebel anymore.
But very quickly, you realize that half of Chilldrake's dialogues is him actually looking for his friend Snowy, who has gone missing. He keeps muttering -- particularly if you try joking with him -- that only his friend Snowy gets to do that, and while he's not frantic about it, he's still wondering where his buddy Snowy went. Well, you, dear player, killed Snowy.
Gyftrot
"Some teens "decorated" it as a prank."
Gyftrot would be a pretty simple reindeer monster, and the joke is that Gyftrot has little Christmas trees sprouting out of his horns. When you encounter Gyftrot he'll have randomly-generated tacky Christmas decorations (and even a dog, sometimes) stuck in his antlers and he's very peeved about it. That alone is a pretty simple monster concept, but I find Gyftrot extra unsettling in all the best ways becuase of its vertically-slitted mouth. Amazing how just a simple change in detail can make a cute reindeer look so unsettling, huh?
I do really like that the designers thought of extra stuff to do with these monsters. In Gyftrot's case, you need three whole turns to undecorate him... and you can even gift him stuff afterwards to make him feel better. But if you're feeling particularly dickish, you could re-decorate Gyftrot! The reindeer takes this as the utmost level of betrayal, and can no longer be spared in that battle.
We learn some lore about Gyftrot when we reach Snowdin City, where the monsters' equivalent of Christmas is borne out of a festival made to make Gyftrot feel less bad. Again, like Ice Cap and Snowdrake, at some point after sparing him, Gyftrot will actually show up in town.
Jerry
"Everyone knows Jerry. Makes attacks 2 seconds longer."
Oh, it's Jerry. Looking like a weird, ugly jellyfish or perhaps the classic stereotypical Japanese maritan, Jerry has a rather wacky expression and doesn't really attack you, he just helps to buff the other monsters that appear with him. Like Migosp, Jerry can only appear alongside other enemies. The little joke, however, is that Jerry is a gigantic dick. A Jerry. Every other possible encounter you could meet in Snowdin will sigh in exasperation if they spawn with Jerry, and every line of description describes him doing something nasty, and when he speaks, he constantly complains or even insults the other monsters.
In fact, the way to get rid of Jerry is to just pick the 'ditch' option, where you and the other monster that Jerry spawns with just kind of wordlessly agree to ditch Jerry when he looks away, before resuming combat. I thought that was funny. Again, his design is simple but wacky, and his short but memorable role has made Jerry into one of the deserved memes from Undertale.
Lesser Dog
"Wields a stone dogger made of pomer-granite."
The last four enemies in Snowdin, not counting the spotlight character Papyrus, are all dogs. Cute dogs! They're all technically monsters that you encounter once, but again, I'll be talking about all the 'lesser' enemies. And Lesser Dog is an adorable pomeranian knight in a suit of armour, with a sword and a massive shield.
And Lesser Dog behaves exactly like a dog, going just (pant pant) and (wag wag) and its attacks involve a simulacrum of a dog bouncing around trying to grab you. The Lesser Dog, like all dogs, is a good dog, and the game gives him like six different options other than the common ones, all of them being 'Pet'. You can technically spare Lesser Dog after petting it just once, at which point it stops pretending to be a knight and just becomes a good doggy, who's a good doggy, yes you, yes youuuu
But keep petting Lesser Dog (because why wouldn't you?) and his neck keeps extending. It has to be seen to be believed, but he just keeps getting more and more and more and more excited. Adorable! Lesser Dog, and indeed the rest of the dog Elite Guards, don't really matter in the rest of your journey, but you'll be able to see him lurking around building his snow-dogs, and hanging out in a bar if you spare him. And if he or any of the other dogs are killed, that will change aspects of a future character's opinion of you. Actually giving us a very very nice and adorable character that just screams 'don't kill the cute puppy', again, is one of the interesting ways that the game tries to make us see these random encounters as people.
Doggo
"Easily excited by movement. Hobbies include: squirrels."
You encounter the other members of the dog Royal Guard in various checkpoints in Snowdin, the first one being Doggo. Context clues around his site note that Doggo is super bad at detecting a lack of movement, and you can utterly bamboozle his attacks by standing perfectly still and not moving your heart-cursor. It's a tutorial for the 'blue attack' mechanic that bosses will use, but I love that it's delivered in such a in-your-face way, that it's the whole point of this character.
Doggo can only be spared if you not move, by the way, because once you move, he gets alert and is hyperfocused on taking you down. But if you not move, he thinks there's no one there... and then you can pet Doggo. PET? PAT? POT?
Doggo himself is perhaps my least favourite of the Royal Guard, being a squinty dog-man with two swords and... a rather unprofessional wifebeater shirt. You're a Royal Guardsman, Doggo! Act like it!
Dogamy & Dogaressa
"This puppy finds her hubby lovely. SMELLS ONLY?" "Husband of Dogaressa. Knows only what he smells."
Next up, we have this pair of dog-people, Dogamy and Dogaressa. They are initially encountered fully hooded, and having the general vibe of executioners. Until battle starts, and it's revealed that they are one of those sickly lovey-dovey couples. Their attacks are all shaped like hearts. Just like Doggo, they can't see movement very well. There's enough context clues in their dialogue to tell you that you need to roll around to smell like a dog, then pet them separately. This blows their mind as they realize that pups "can pet by another pup???"
If you actually take the brutal way and kill one of the two Dogi, each one has a slightly different reaction. Dogamy becomes utterly distraught and depressed, and his attacks become weak and slow. Dogaressa, meanwhile, gets enraged and her attacks actually become faster. Again, killing none, some or all of the dogs will elicit different dialogue from the survivors, who will all briefly appear in the Snowdin Village.
Greater Dog
"It's so excited that it thinks fighting is just play."
And our last member of the dog Royal Guard... this this absolute unit. Greater Dog first shows up in the overworld half-covered by snow, seemingly just being the size of a cute little dog. And then it stands up, and turns out he's a big, muscular dog-man with still the adorable head... but exaggeratedly large arms and torso. I love that his spear and bracers also have the cute little dog faces on it.
Again, the way to spare Greater Dog is a bit more convoluted (similar to the Dogi pair) but the in-game text does make it rather obvious to know whether to beckon him to come, to play, or to pet. Ultimately if you do it right, Greater Dog will actually spend most of his turns just being a cute little sprite-puppy that curls up and wants to play with you. Rather hilariously, after sparing the Greater Dog (of course you have to spare!!!) it turns out that it's actually just a regular sized dog after all, somehow piloting the oversized suit of armour.
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Anyway... this is probably a nice point to stop, since we're around the middle portion of the game. A lot of the monster design in this game does lean more on character gimmicks and absurd comedy, but it does so in such an earnest and charming way that you can't help but love at least some of them. And we're not even getting into the actual characters like Sans, Papyrus, Undyne and Toriel that take up entire the bulk of the game's dialogue! Which is what makes Undertale interesting, because as lovable as these monsters are to make you want to spare them... the 'Pacifist' route is just one of three, and there is always the option to see what's going to happen. The 'Genocide' route has you kill all the monsters, even the lovable dogs, and you start to see how the world around start to change. NPCs become colder and more curt, and do a complete genocide and the game world will actually permanently scarred even if you uninstall the game. Undertale's huge gimmick about monsters being people isn't new, with friendly orcs and slimes being around since forever... but it's also one that tries to deconstruct the idea of random encounters, and infinite supplies of faceless enemies that die needlessly. I don't think this is so much of me 'reviewing' these monster designs but more of an appreciation/reaction post.
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