Game Making: Start By Healing the Player

A few days later, Jiang Ping had yet to recover from his Genocide run. The events in the game lingered in his mind, and he found himself losing focus whenever he was handling mundane tasks. 

He still has only a partial understanding of the game’s plot.

But that is not important. What is important is that he is now somewhat depressed and listless. That ending made him really uncomfortable, he had never experienced anything like this before. And for a video game no less. 

Yes, he regretted it.

Just reminded him of his experience with ‘Mirror’. In the beginning, he was very into it, but after a deep dive he got bored and began to regret how much time he spent on it. 

But for ‘Undertale’, the nature of this regret was different. 

He missed the happy moments he spent with those wonderful characters. Watching Undyne burn her house down, watching Papyrus telling bad jokes, eating butterscotch pie…

“Let’s make a new save and get that perfect ending again.”

With all the memories swirling in his head, Jiang Ping took a deep breath and reopened the game.

With his previous experience, Jiang Ping was very skilled this time.

He still remembers the details of many monsters, so he can just choose the right options to deal with them peacefully. 

When he finally defeated Asriel and watched the sunset with the cast, Jiang Ping had a faint smile on his face.

With this, everything’s over. I can move on now. 

The next moment, however, the image in the game left him stunned.

In the dark night, the protagonist is sleeping in the bedroom.

At that moment, the door was slowly pushed open, and Toriel came in with a plate of pie. With a motherly smile, she placed it gently on the floor and quietly got out. 

It was a heartwarming scene. But soon after the door closed, the protagonist, who was supposed to be asleep, suddenly sat up on the bed. 

It was Chara’s face replacing the protagonist’s own. Sporting a strange and ominous smile.

A distorted, malicious laugh echoed in the game, and the screen transitioned to a black and white photograph. It was a photo of the protagonist and his friends in the Underground. 

But in the photo, everyone except the protagonist had their faces crossed out with bloody marks. 

[ The End ] was written in blood too. 

Then the screen turned dark. 

Sitting in front of the computer, Jiang Ping’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. 

He was an active forum user, and got into many discussions with guide writers on how the endings were unlocked.

But now he finally understood what the authors of those posts meant when they told him it was better not to unlock the Genocide ending, or else he would regret it. 

He now fully understood why everyone was so moody when discussing this part of the game. 

[ Since when were you the one in control? ]

Chara’s previous words were coming back to haunt him, he stared blankly at the main menu of the game. 

He felt that he had just gained a deeper understanding of this game, would it be appropriate to call it malicious?

In most games, when you make a mistake, you load your save file or start a new playthrough, pretending nothing just happened and moving on. But here…

Haha, are you joking? Stop dreaming!

Just like a piece of glass, once you break it, no matter how well you glue the pieces back together, you will still notice the cracks. 

Since you decided to harm those monsters, how can you fall in love with them again?

In the dead of night, that last bad save you deleted comes back to haunt you, tearing to pieces the peace and beauty you thought you had achieved. 

That weird laugh at the end, that black and white photo.

Although he didn’t say a word, Jiang Ping felt the great irony. Complex emotions brewed inside him, he felt like he was having some kind of mental stomachache. 

It was as if some force behind the game was pointing at him, mocking him, telling him he was a greedy hypocrite. 

Is there nothing he could do to change things?

Jiang Ping looked at the closed game and pursed his lips.

He logged into the ‘Undertale’ community forums. 

As he expected, in addition to some posts discussing the gameplay, there are also posts about the characters and plot.

And a lot of people were asking about the same problem he was currently facing. 

• [ Guys please, does anyone know how to get back to the True ending? ]

• [ SAME DUDE!!! I’ll pay a thousand shmeckles! I regret the Genocide run! I wanna go baaaaaaaack! Take me baaaaaaaaack!! ]

• [ Feels like my just lying to myself, but I want to go back too ] 

• [ I’ve tried deleting the save, reinstalling the game, making a new account to buy the game again, nothing works!!! ]

Looking at the many, many posts complaining about this issue, Jiang Ping felt some measure of peace. After all, misery loves company. 

So it wasn’t just him feeling this pain. 

Finally, after a few more days, a solution was found and posted. It was pinned to the top of the forum by grateful moderators and showered in accolades by the wretched souls seeking salvation in the forums. 

Post title : True reset, have some mental stability

[ The game will overwrite cloud saves and system files, you need a two-pronged approach. Uninstall the game, reinstall your computer systems, use another account to purchase ‘Undertale’ again. This will be a brand new game, use this to hit the True ending. 

Warning: do not log into your old account before reaching the True ending, if you do, it will be detected and the save file will be changed to Genocide. ] 

So that’s how it was!

For Jiang Ping, who was still tormented by the game, this was a no brainer. 

He couldn’t reinstall the computer system, he was still a student, and there were too many learning and assignment related materials stored inside. 

So he decided to just buy the game again, on another computer with another account. 

  ……………

Meanwhile, at Nebula Games, Yang Xin had dark circles under her eyes. She had been too excited and kept scouring the internet for reactions and statistics regarding the game, even forgoing her sleep schedule.

“We’ve broken 500,000 copies sold, and it hasn’t even been half a month!”

In front of her were three monitors, each displaying statistics and dashboards from different gaming platforms. 

After exploding in popularity, ‘Undertale’ was now appearing on the homepage recommendation lists in all major third-party gaming platforms. 

As for the official, national platforms, it would take a while longer due to its use of big data being relatively inefficient. 

Over 70% of the 500,000 sales originate from the third-party platforms.

“But look at this, a huge amount of accounts are buying this as their very first game, and their playtime is rather short despite reaching the end.” Yang Xin narrowed in on this data and enlarged it. 

“Ah, yes. I see what’s happening.” Chen Xu’s smile was somewhere between wry and a smirk. 

Yang Xin matched his smile, “I guess a lot of players tried the Genocide route out of curiousity, then went to purchase a second copy to make themselves feel better.”

“I-Is this legal? Are we technically scamming people?” Ruan Ningxue asked timidly.

“Nonsense, how can we call this a scam? This is simply an expression of love, our players love the game so much that they are willing to buy a second copy!” Chen Xu answered with conviction. 

“Now, Ningxue, let’s make another announcement of our sales volume, make some new graphics for the official post, you have free reign, send it to me when you’re done, I’ll start writing up what to say.”

Doing so would stir up the fanbase even more, give media outlets something to report, and give the game another boost in popularity. 

Chen Xu logged into his official blog. 

He has over 300,000 followers now, thanks to the hype and subsequent popularity of ‘Undertale’.

It was far beneath those multimillion-dollar game publishers, but it was still enough to make him a minor celebrity. 

More importantly, he could now add a little introductory segment to the blog. 

[ Game producer, representative works: ‘Undertale’ ]

He decided to skip putting ‘Mirror’ in there, for reasons…