Surprising attention to accessibility
Undertale caused major waves when it released back in September. The plucky little RPG quickly became one of the most highly-reviewed games of all time (Destructoid gave it a 10/10), and has already amassed a gigantic fanbase pumping out all sorts of art, fanfiction and remixes of the game’s music.
With such a universally positive reception, what does developer Toby Fox think he’d change if he had the chance to? It must be difficult to pinpoint potential room for improvement when the game you almost single-handedly worked on is one of the best-received games ever, right?
I had the chance to talk to him a few days ago about this, and what he wants to change was kind of surprising:
Generally I made UNDERTALE exactly as I wanted. It’s not very much, but this is actually the limit of my power, so I’ll accept it. Also, for everything people think is bad there’s someone else who likes it. So changing [most things] is unthinkable.
Best change would be to make the blue bullets more visible to colorblind people. Second best change would be to make the piano puzzle more accessible to people with low music/memorize skill (such as a visible solution available somewhere).
For those who haven’t played it yet I won’t go into specifics, but Undertale sometimes does things that might not be the most accessible thing to some players – screwing around with the game itself in fundamental ways that could be difficult to play. These moments are often so important to the story and the experience that was so widely praised, that trying to rectify them would be more difficult.
To see the only things Fox would change to be to make the game more accessible in the few ways he feasibly can is both really nice, and shows he’s got a solid grasp of the game he’s made, and can fine-tune it to be the best experience it can be for most people.
I also tried to worm out of him whether he prefers Papyrus or Sans, but there was no luck there. Probably because it’s so obvious that Sans is better. Well, Asgore is the best, but then it’s Sans. Obviously.
[Header image courtesy of FanGamer.com]
