Undertale Yellow: Difference between revisions

Undertale Yellow is a 2023 2D role-playing video game released on Game Jolt for Microsoft Windows on December 9, 2023. Developed by Team Undertale Yellow as a fan-made prequel to Undertale, the game follows Clover, who possesses the yellow soul from Undertale, as they journey on an unfamiliar path to return to the surface.^[1]

Undertale Yellow is a role-playing game that employs similar gameplay mechanics to Undertale. The player explores the Underground, a vast subterranean landscape where they fight monsters, solve puzzles, and meet new characters. Alongside familiar locations and characters from its predecessor, the game introduces many original areas and monsters.^[2] Additionally, its story, dialogue, and difficulty are affected by the player's decisions to kill or spare the monsters they encounter.

Throughout their journey, the player engages in turn-based battles with monsters. During the opponent's turn, they control a small heart representing their soul to evade bullet hell attacks. Some boss battles alter the battle mechanics, such as soul's movement and abilities, in different ways from Undertale.^[1] If a player loses to a boss they can choose to retry immediately from the game over screen. On their turn, the player can choose from the options FIGHT, ACT, ITEM, and MERCY, each functioning similarly to Undertale. However, when FIGHT is selected a shooting target appears, and the player must time button presses to control damage output.^[3]

Aside from retrying in battles, the additional quality of life improvements over Undertale that the game provides are sprinting, which makes the player character move faster;^[4] easy mode, which increases the character's defense stat; as well as accessibility options which make some battles easier for people with disabilities.^[5]

Undertale Yellow takes place in the world of Undertale, where monsters were sealed beneath Mount Ebott after losing a war against humans. Asgore, the king of the monsters, has gathered five out of the seven human souls required to break the barrier to the surface. The story follows Clover, a human child who embodies the trait of "justice". Clover jumps into the Underground, the realm of the monsters, to locate the five missing humans. They meet a compassionate monster named Toriel, but before the two can proceed together, a puzzle switch malfunctions and sends Clover into the Dark Ruins. They encounter Flowey, a sentient flower, who provides a tutorial on the game's mechanics and instructs them to embark on a journey to Asgore's castle.

While traversing the Underground, Clover visits various locations not explored in Undertale, and encounters numerous new monsters: Dalv, a vampire-like recluse from the Dark Ruins; Martlet, a bird-like member of the Royal Guard; Starlo, a sheriff of a desert town; Ceroba, a kitsune-like monster and Starlo's childhood friend; and Axis, a hostile robot residing in the abandoned Steamworks facility, built by Ceroba's late husband, Chujin. Along with many others that appear throughout their travels, each monster engages Clover in battle, giving them the choice to either kill or spare them.

The game's story diverges based on how players handle encounters with monsters. Choosing to kill some but not all of the monsters leads to the "Neutral" ending, where, after traversing most of the Underground, Clover meets Martlet and almost agrees to live with her in the Underground. Flowey then kills her, enraged that his plan to reach the king has failed. His true nature revealed, he admits to having witnessed Clover remain or die in the Underground in every previous timeline. To alter their story's course, he tampered with the switch in the Ruins before their arrival. A nightmarish boss sequence unfolds in his mind as he attempts to absorb their soul. However, Flowey eventually grows bored of the fight, citing Clover's refusal to surrender; he resets the timeline to the very beginning, hoping that Clover achieves a better ending in the next run, as the game abruptly ends.

Alternatively, opting not to kill any of the monsters leads to the "Pacifist" ending, in which Ceroba discloses that her daughter Kanako has "fallen down" (a fatal condition rendering her comatose), and accompanies Clover through the Steamworks to reach Alphys's lab where Kanako currently resides. During their journey they are interrupted by Starlo, who questions Ceroba's motives for bringing Clover with her, then chases after her. Clover and Martlet investigate Ceroba's home, uncovering that Chujin attempted to create a soul-strengthening serum using the souls of a human and a "boss monster", which Ceroba intended to perfect using Kanako's and Clover's souls. The final battle of this route is with Ceroba, with flashbacks revealing that Kanako fell down after Ceroba tested the serum on her.

If players kill Ceroba, Martlet escorts Clover to the castle's throne room; the game ends with Asgore claiming their soul in battle. On the other hand, sparing Ceroba leads to Clover choosing to sacrifice their soul to aid in the freedom of monsters. In the credits of the latter ending, Dalv, Martlet, Starlo, and Ceroba float Clover's hat and gun down a raft leading to the garbage dump, and Clover's soul answers a call for help from "someone"; both scenes tying into the events of Undertale.

Finally, killing every monster that can be fought, often through grinding, leads to the "Genocide" or "No Mercy" ending. With Clover growing increasingly cruel, the game's story takes a dark turn, as the soundtrack becomes more ominous and most characters evacuate having heard the news of an aggressive human. Martlet serves as this route's final boss, transforming into a powerful being with a serum from Alphys's lab in a failed attempt to stop Clover. After the final battle, Flowey accidentally reveals his desire to steal the human souls from the castle, and gets killed as well. Asgore is instantly defeated with a massive beam fired from Clover's soul, and the game ends with Clover crossing the barrier with the five human souls in tow. Given the severity of this ending's events, it is the only one that is wholly incompatible with the Undertale canon.

Undertale Yellow was developed over seven years, beginning after Toby Fox, the developer of Undertale, approved it upon contact from Team Undertale Yellow.^[6] Created with the GameMaker Studio engine, it was initially conceived by writer and composer MasterSwordRemix. The game's official announcement came in April 2016, accompanied by a trailer created by Figburn, with a planned release date of "soonish."^[7] Since then, the game's development team quickly expanded, with more animators, artists, composers, and writers joining over the course of development, ultimately forming a team of over twenty people.^[2] Although a winter 2022 release was originally planned, the game was eventually released for free on December 9, 2023.^[8][9]

The Undertale Yellow Soundtrack contains 135 original tracks, some of which were based on those from Undertale. This has caused a debate over the game's usage of copyrighted material, when the CEO of Materia Collective, the company that manages the music rights of Undertale, Sebastian Wolff, requested to see the "defined permission that Toby granted 7 years ago" allowing the developers to use Undertale's music. In response, Toby Fox, while agreeing with Wolff about not having given permission, albeit only recently, lambasted Wolff's handling of the situation as "extremely unprofessional in a way" and, as an apology, offered to donate $20,000 to Undertale Yellow Team's charity of choice, AbleGamers.^[10]

The game was highly anticipated by YouTubers and received positive reviews upon its release.^[4] Will Nelson of PCGamesN recommended it to Undertale fans, noting how Toby Fox started out with a fan game of EarthBound and expressing that "seeing another group of developers bring it full circle [...] is nothing short of astounding."^[11]

• Undertale Yellow at Game Jolt