Game Development: Starting by Healing the Players
Chapter 24: It Was Clearly the Player's Love
Even after a long while, Jiang Ping still hadn't recovered from the ending of the Genocide Route.
He still only had a vague understanding of the game's story.
But that wasn't important.
What mattered was that he felt genuinely depressed.
The Genocide Ending had made him feel absolutely miserable.
Yes, he regretted it.
It was just like when he played Mirror. At first, he had been full of enthusiasm. Then, after losing interest, he had started wondering why he had opened the game in the first place.
Now, after completing Undertale's Genocide Route, he felt exactly the same way.
Regardless of anything else, now that he had played through the Genocide Route, he truly regretted it.
He missed the scenes from the Pacifist Route, laughing together with his friends, watching Undyne burn down her kitchen, listening to Papyrus tell his terrible jokes, and eating Toriel's pie.
"Let's make a perfect save file and give this game a proper ending."
As memories of everything that had happened came flooding back, Jiang Ping took a deep breath and reopened the game.
He wanted to play through the perfect Pacifist Ending one more time.
Having already played through the game once, Jiang Ping was extremely familiar with it this time.
He remembered many of the monsters, so all he had to do was choose the correct dialogue options.
Finally, after defeating Asriel and watching the sunset, a faint smile appeared on Jiang Ping's face.
Whatever had happened, it was all in the past now.
However, in the next moment, the scene on the screen left him completely stunned.
It was a dark night.
The protagonist was sleeping in their room.
The door was gently pushed open.
Toriel entered carrying a cream cinnamon pie, quietly placed it on the floor, and then closed the door.
It was an incredibly warm and peaceful scene.
But in the next second, the protagonist, who had appeared to be asleep, suddenly sat upright in bed.
It was Chara's face.
A strange and sinister expression appeared on it.
Then a hideous, evil laugh came through his headphones.
The protagonist left the room.
A black-and-white photograph appeared.
It was a picture of the protagonist together with all their friends from the Underground.
But now, everyone except the protagonist had a blood-red X marked over their heads.
Then the game screen disappeared.
Sitting in front of the computer, Jiang Ping's eyes widened.
Earlier, he had only looked at a few guides explaining how to unlock the Genocide Route.
Now he finally understood why the author of one of those posts had advised players not to play the Genocide Route, warning them that they would regret it.
He also finally understood what some of the cryptic comments he had seen among the game's positive reviews actually meant.
"When did you get to decide what happens to this world?"
Chara's earlier words seemed to echo in his ears once again.
Jiang Ping stared blankly at the Undertale screen.
He had finally grasped the deeper meaning of the game.
No.
Calling it "malice" might actually be more appropriate.
Like most games, you could hurt the monsters in the game, delete your save file, start a brand-new game, and continue treating those monsters like beloved friends—as though none of what happened before had ever occurred.
"Haha. What kind of joke is that?"
"Dream on!"
It was like a mirror.
Once it had been shattered, no matter how perfectly you pieced it back together, the cracks would still remain.
Once you had chosen to slaughter those monsters, how could the game possibly allow you to go back and become friends with them again?
In the dead of night, the evil save file you had deleted earlier came back like a vengeful ghost, tearing apart the peaceful and beautiful world you had so confidently believed you could restore.
That eerie laughter.
That black-and-white photograph.
Although not a single word was spoken, Jiang Ping could feel an overwhelming sense of mockery.
It was mocking him—the person sitting in front of the computer.
It was as if someone had taken a megaphone and shouted directly into his ear:
"Stop pretending, you hypocrite!"
"Can't any of this be changed?"
Jiang Ping looked at the game, which had already closed, and pursed his lips.
He logged into an online community dedicated to Undertale.
Just as he had expected, besides posts discussing the game's content, characters, and story, there were also countless people asking about exactly the same problem he had encountered.
"Guys, does anyone know how to get back to the good ending?"
"Same here! I stupidly played the Genocide Route and now I regret it. I want to go back!"
"I know it feels like I'm just fooling myself, but I want to go back too!"
"I deleted the game and even created a new account to buy it again on an alternate account, but none of it worked!"
Looking through the endless stream of posts, Jiang Ping felt slightly better.
At least he wasn't the only one.
He searched through post after post.
Finally, Jiang Ping found a definitive answer.
"Apparently, the game's corrupted save directly overwrites both the cloud save and the system files. So you need to take two steps: completely reinstall the operating system, then create a new alternate account and purchase Undertale again. That way, you'll have a completely fresh game. Of course, don't log into the old account on that computer, or the game will detect it and turn the save into a corrupted one again!"
So that's how it worked!
Jiang Ping suddenly understood.
He quickly made a decision.
Of course, he had no intention of reinstalling his operating system. He had a ton of study materials from his teachers stored on his computer, and some of them had become extremely difficult to download again, with practically no resources or download speed available online.
Besides, he had always used a single C drive for everything and never bothered partitioning his hard drive.
So reinstalling the system was out of the question.
Now that he knew how it worked, he could simply use another computer to purchase the game again.
......
At the Nebula Games office, Yang Xin was visibly excited.
"We've passed 500,000 copies! And it's been less than half a month!"
The computer in front of Yang Xin displayed Undertale's cumulative sales across various game stores.
After the game's word of mouth exploded, almost every major platform had placed Undertale on its homepage recommendation lists.
As for the official platform, its recommendation system relied on big-data algorithms and operated relatively slowly, so even if the game received a recommendation there, it would probably have to wait until the following week.
Of the current 500,000 sales, around 70 percent had come from third-party platforms.
"Although it seems quite a few players have actually contributed to a second sale," Chen Xu said, looking at the backend data with some surprise.
He had noticed that quite a few of the purchasing accounts showed Undertale as the first game they had ever bought.
"Exactly. A lot of players got curious and played the Genocide Route. Then, just to make themselves feel better, they bought a second copy," Yang Xin said.
It was obvious that she was even more invested in the game than Chen Xu.
"Isn't that just burying their heads in the sand?" Ruan Ningxue said from the side.
"How is that burying their heads in the sand?" Chen Xu replied after thinking for a moment. "Clearly, it's because the players love our game so much."
"Let's publish the sales figures first and give the game's popularity another boost."
As he spoke, Chen Xu logged into his official Weibo account.
Thanks to the earlier publicity, combined with the overwhelmingly positive reception for Undertale, his official account had finally surpassed 300,000 followers.
That was nothing compared with the millions of followers held by famous game developers, but at least he had gained some recognition.
More importantly, the little lightning-bolt icon next to his name finally had a more detailed introduction underneath it:
"Game Developer. Creator of Undertale."
Previously, there had only been the little lightning-bolt icon, followed by two characters: "Game Developer."
After all, although Mirror had achieved explosive sales, its genre was rather special!