One of the great misconceptions of our time is that size matters, that bigger must always be better. It’s a pesky bit of untruth that sticks around our media no matter how many times we have failed blockbuster movies and awful AAA games. Impact is far more important. The butterfly effect is more real than you think, and sometimes all it takes is something small to release a much bigger trend. That’s what happened ten years ago, when a lone developer launched a 6-hr RPG that changed gaming forever.
Toby Fox released Undertale on Sept. 15, 2015. A few years prior Lucas Pope wowed audiences with Papers, Please, a one-man opus on the perils of dystopian authoritarianism. He showed that one dev with a good idea could do something bigger than most AAA budgets. Fox went a step further by releasing a game that wasn’t just impressive because it was a one-man show, but because it turned an entire genre on its head. And, in the process, he helped define an era of indie gaming unlike anything else before.
