Game Maker: Starting by Healing the Players Chapter 16: Picking a Fight on Purpose

In the eting room, Lucas was explaining Undertale to Anna and Rachel.

As for Mirror, there wasn't much to worry about — they just needed to follow the previous setup and add new character art and dialogue.

Most of their ti from now on would be focused on developing Undertale.

Undertale was originally made by a solo indie developer in Lucas's past life.

But it touched players all over the world and beca a classic ta ga.

Unlike other ta gas like Pony Island, ICEY, or The Stanley Parable, Undertale combined ta elents and RPG elents in a way that changed how players saw traditional RPGs.

Its core idea was pretty clear.

The heart of Undertale was the story and the way it played with ta elents — gaplay was more like a side dish.

Still, Lucas planned to improve a few things from the original version.

For example, the art style — compared to the original, the visuals definitely needed an upgrade.

The pixel graphics and hand-drawn lines in the original Undertale weren't a creative choice — it was just because the developer had no money.

After the ga blew up, critics and the dia started praising its "unique" art style, but that was just nonsense.

Pixel graphics aren't always low-budget — take Octopath Traveler, for example, which used pixel art to mix a modern and retro look. Other nostalgic gas use it on purpose too.

But for a story-focused ta ga like this, better visuals would only make the experience better.

Gas like Minecraft use pixel graphics because it fits the block-building gaplay.

But Undertale's look clearly wasn't about supporting the gaplay — it was just a compromise.

That said, Undertale's story and music were truly great.

The final battle the with Sans, galovania, and Undyne's Battle Against a True Hero were both unforgettable.

After explaining so of the key elents of Undertale to them, Lucas also showed Rachel the character design sketches.

There was the kind and gentle "goat mom," the king who looked friendly at first but turned into a trident-wielding war god in battle, two skeleton brothers — one tall, one short — and a smiling flower who looked cute but was totally twisted inside…

Lucas would personally take charge of the main character designs.

As for the regular monsters, those would be handled by outsourced artists. As long as they t the standard, he'd approve them.

Next was the story structure — there were several paths: normal route, pacifist route, genocide route, and hypocrite route.

Lucas used the mory capsules he drew from the system to rebuild the story for each path.

The rest of the job would be for Anna to fill in the details.

Once everyone knew their role, Lucas sat back down and started working in the official engine's backend, setting up the foundation for Undertale.

"Rachel, was this how you guys developed Mirror too?"

Anna was still a little shocked as she looked at the super detailed draft in front of her.

Rachel, who was already sketching based on the character reference sheet, looked confused. "Yeah. Why? What's the problem, Anna?"

"The problem is — this is way too smooth! The plan is so clear!" Anna's eyes widened, though she kept her voice low.

Even though Undertale felt like a small-scale ga…

It all felt so organized — almost like even a dog could help make it.

Thinking back to the chaos in her last company's projects, Anna suddenly wondered if all those people she hired were just pretending to work.

While letting that thought stew in the back of her mind, Anna quietly read through Undertale's story draft, thinking about how she should fill it in.

.........

anwhile, Lucas wasn't thinking about any of that.

He was busy testing things out in the official ga engine.

Compared to before, the amount of computing power available to him had increased by about twenty tis.

Right now, the system shows 0/1024MB of usable resources.

In the old world's terms, that's about 1GB. But Lucas had already gone through the tutorials and updates.

In this parallel world, that amount of resources was actually more than enough.

If you wanted more, though—

You'd either have to raise your designer rank, or spend money.

And how do you level up? Either you slowly grind it out—which basically ans gaining experience over ti—

Or you earn well-known awards, or do sothing that really moves the ga industry forward.

In a way, the release of Mirror did push the adult ga scene toward sothing new.

After getting a rough understanding of everything, Lucas shook his head and stopped thinking about it.

He turned his focus to developing Undertale.

As far as indie gas go, this one wasn't too hard for Lucas.

With the tech level of this parallel world, building a ga like that wouldn't take much ti or effort.

The real ti sinks would be the story text, character art, and music.

Because in Undertale, the music is genuinely great.

That's sothing you see a lot in other indie gas too.

Story, music, and creative gaplay—these are the three key weapons of indie gas.

"Anna, who is this guy trash-talking us?"

"So troll looking for attention. He's probably jealous of Mirror's sales, and now that his own ga is about to release, he's using this to stir up drama. He's done this kind of thing before."

Lucas noticed the noise coming from Anna and Rachel's side and got curious: "What's going on?"

When he walked over, Anna picked up Rachel's phone and handed it to him: "Here, this guy's just trying to start trouble."

Lucas took the phone. It was showing a reposted video by a dia outlet called Ga Tis.

He clicked play. On screen, a middle-aged man was reviewing a ga—with the character art from Mirror, though fully clothed.

"To grab players' attention, so ga designers these days will stoop to anything."

"This is vulgar. Incredibly vulgar."

"Ga developnt is an art. Calling sothing like this a ga is an insult to the industry."

"Do designers like this actually push the industry forward?"

"No, they don't."

"If sothing like this appeared in my upcoming ga Blossom, I'd be too ashad to show my face."

"That's why I hope more ga designers stop chasing cheap tricks, and instead focus on how to make real quality gas, not this kind of garbage just to boost sales."

The whole clip was about two minutes long, filled with his self-righteous rants.

But when Lucas scrolled through the comnts, he found the interesting part.

Aside from a few fans cheering the guy on, a lot of people were roasting him.

"Bell The Blabbermouth, at it again?"

"Vulgar? Guess I'll have to check it out myself!"

"When others make a ga—it's trash. When I make a ga—it's art!"

"Co on, just say it—when's your new ga dropping?"

"Dude upstairs, clearly you weren't paying attention. He already slipped it in—Blossom is the na."

After watching the video, reading the comnts, and listening to Anna's breakdown,

Lucas pretty much figured it out.

The guy's na was Buzz Bell, a designer under the FlowArts Studio brand. Though actually, he was the studio's owner.

His reputation in the gaming world was very mixed.

To be fair, he had made so decent gas in the past.

In recent years, while his gas haven't exactly blown up, the quality has never been bad either.

What really ruins things is how Bell acts as a person.

He often goes out of his way to pick popular and controversial gas just to talk trash about them—using that attention to promote his own work.

And it's not just Lucas—plenty of other ga developers have been targeted by him too.

(end of chapter)