[Makeup] Critical Play: Puzzle Design

Background and First Impressions

For my puzzle design critical play, I chose to play Undertale, a 2015 2D role-playing game created by indie developer Toby Fox. I found the narrative of the game quite refreshing and human which I was not expecting. The game had a semi-long onboarding that didn’t necessarily feel like an onboarding since it stepped through a rather unpredictable storyline that kept me guessing as a player.

Central Argument

Undertale leverages a mix of internal and designer logic to create its puzzles, but the designer logic puzzles pull the weight in terms of conveying the narrative that violence is not the only way to overcome obstacles.

Analysis

Undertale puts the innocent child protagonist in countless situations in which the player must reflect on their outside ideas morality, power, and good and bad behavior. For example, the protagonist will enter a “fight” but then soon realize that their opponent is sensitive and too scared to fight, suggesting that they empathize with the play. Then without doing anything, the player is notified that they defeated the sensitive opponent without doing anything which is so sad! By enabling the player to choose between pacifist (not killing any monsters and instead finding different ways to grant them “mercy”), neutral (killing a few monsters), and genocide (intentionally killing all of the monsters), the player is asked to engage with moral decision making and deep thinking where there isn’t necessarily a right answer.

Additionally, the designer logic puzzles sort of assemble into one big iterative puzzle that is far from a binary answer. Based on the player’s actions, they can arrive at a variety of different game endings each with a different flavor of lessons learned. This network of puzzles is highly reminiscent of the human life experience itself though which plays into the fact that Unertale is trying to deliver a narrative that conjures a critical, emotional response from its player. As I was playing, it was sort of unclear what the greater goal of the game was. I sort of didn’t know how to ask but as I observed how the different masters and Toriel reacted and talking to me, I wanted to behave well and do good instead of destroy my environment and win as fast as possible. It sort of made me feel like a little kid again! Moreover, the internal logic puzzles, like pushing a rock over to a specific spot to unlock a door or walking over a spiky bridge in a specific pattern are sprinkled in at the same density that those sorts of things are present in life.

Conclusion

As a kid especially, life can be looked at as one big mixture of internal and designer logic-based puzzles where the greater long-term goal is sort of ambiguous. However, as you tinker around and learn from your interactions, you shape your character. Undertale takes this approach to building its narrative, underlining the point that, at the end of the day, your character is determined by the sum of your decisions.