Undertale

Undertale starts out as an unassuming retro RPG about a child who falls into an underground realm full of monsters, and it very quickly turns out to be playing with genre conventions on purpose, and cleverly. The core idea is simple: you don't have to kill anyone. Every fight can also be resolved peacefully if you figure out what the monster in question needs, whether that's a compliment, a dance, or simply being left alone. The choice between fighting and mercy affects not only the ending but also the tone of the whole journey and the behavior of characters, who remember your decisions more than you'd expect.

Battles combine a classic turn-based menu with short sequences in which you control a heart and dodge enemy attacks like in a bullet-hell shooter. Every opponent has their own pattern and their own sense of humor, so even repeated encounters never turn into routine. Outside of combat, the game interweaves puzzles, absurd dialogue, and phone calls that make up a large part of its charm. A basic playthrough runs around six to seven hours, but the game expects you to go through it multiple times and in different ways, and it's precisely the repeat playthroughs that reveal its most interesting layers.

The graphics are deliberately modest, pixelated, and at times almost clumsily plain, which sharply contrasts with the confidence of the storytelling. On PC the game runs on anything and has practically no requirements. Music plays a crucial role; its motifs return, transform, and carry most of the emotion at key moments, and quite a few tracks became hugely popular even outside the game itself. Undertale came about after a successful Kickstarter campaign, and after release it became a phenomenon with a huge community of creators and fans. Today it's clear that its influence on independent RPGs and on storytelling that plays with player expectations was enormous. The game also copes very well with players who decide to work around its rules, and it's precisely this readiness for unexpected behavior that makes it a title people still talk about a great deal today.