In the name of Hades!

Creating a story-based game around roguelike gameplay is certainly a challenging task, but Supergiant did a fantastic job with the ludonarrative consistency throughout the game. The insane amount of (voiced!) dialogue really make you connect with Zagreus' journey through his eyes and all the various highs and lows he's going through. Also the gameplay is great, no wonder Zagreus is always going through those same chambers again and again!

Now about the cast, they're all great and unique and the artstyle paired with the designs really brings them to life. The friendship system and occasional encounters really help them flesh out their personalities. In my opinion the developers really did a great job on depicting Greek mythology in the way they did.

I should've mentioned this earlier, but the game is very casual-friendly for a roguelike and definitely worth looking into, even if you're not into these kind of games normally. Because of the sheer amount of dialogue and permanent upgrades the games presents you between your runs, you always have something new and fun to look forward to. It also has an easy mode, which still lets you experience the same journey with less stress - don't feel ashamed to use it!

Give Hades a shot if you love mythology or roguelikes, or the artstyle or anything! This journey has been truly unique, and I've hardly ever seen a gameplay loop integrated so well into a story. Can't wait for the sequel!

I haven’t actually heard of Undertale Yellow until it released this week, but finding out something like this was made over 7 whole years made me really curious. And since it’s free figured why not

It’s honestly very impressive, to start it emulates the original game really closely but very much tries to stand on its own. Aside for Flowey and Toriel (she’s only in for like 5 minutes), Yellow has entirely different characters and you explore both existing areas of the Underground like Snowdin and new places like a desert or western town. The music has a mix of remixes from Undertale and new songs, and the quality is really good too especially for the boss tracks. The art/sprite animations are actually nice too. Despite being a fan project, you can tell a lot of effort was poured into it as not much even gives an impression that it’s unofficial

The only gripe really is this uses the same combat system as Undertale but the addition of new mechanics to it sometimes felt janky. It’s also more difficult, so if you weren’t good at dodging before then oof. But honestly this is just coming from Deltarune which made more welcome changes on it as is (somehow Chapter 2 is already over 2 years old… 😭)

This was... surprisingly refreshing!

It has been a while since I last interacted with anything related to Undertale, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out about the recent release of Undertale Yellow. I have seen the demo some years back and never expected it to be finished - but here we are, and the wait paid off!

The developers did a really good job at imitating the charm and characters of Toby Fox - of course it doesn't feel the exact same, but I've still grown to like the characters here in their own ways. The fights and music of Yellow are also pretty unique; a highlight were the respective final bosses of each route, which all surpass their Undertale counterparts (in terms of their fights) for me. However, I'd like to add that as of the time of writing (I played Version 1.1), the final boss of the Genocide Route still feels too difficult with the optimal equipment, to the point where it can get really frustrating. Skill issue? Maybe, whatever. I just think it's really demoralizing for the average player.

A thing I really like about Yellow is that it serves as a prequel to Undertale and is not set in an alternate universe like many other fan projects. It doesn't conflict with the original lore and adds more depth to it instead - very nice! Can't say much more about this aspect since it's a spoiler-free review, but let's just say the writing of Yellow definitely made me enjoy the universe of Undertale a lot more.

Overall, I consider Undertale Yellow to be a must-play for every fan of the original game out there. Just don't play it before Undertale (if you somehow intended to do that). That's all for today. See you.