UNDERTALE

UNDERTALE is one of those games that just kinda sneaks up on you, y'know? On the surface, it looks like a silly little RPG with an absurd but hilarious sense of humor but before you realize it, you're completely hooked on its world and characters. You play as Frisk, a human child who falls into the Underground, a massive cavern where monsters live after being banished from the human world. The whole goal is to get back to the surface and the game gives you a genuine choice on how to do it: you can go the classic RPG route and fight everything in your path, gaining LV and EXP, but the game constantly nudges you to try something different. The combat system is a mix of turn based battles and bullet hell dodging, where your soul is a little red heart you have to maneuver around attacks. Instead of always hitting the FIGHT button, you can use ACT to check enemies, compliment them or do different things to calm them down. It sounds simple but the writing is so sharp and full of personality that every encounter feels meaningful. The music is an absolute banger too, tracks like Hopes and Dreams or Megalovania are iconic for a reason and they shift perfectly with the context of what's happening on screen.

Aside of Project Echo, there's also another project to port it to the 3DS. It's still in its early alpha stages and not much has been done, it has the Flowey encounter working complete with all his creepy animations during the dodge sequences and some maps of the Ruins, so it's far from finished, any other battles aren't in yet and borders are disabled, but it's built with such care for performance and faithfulness to the original that it'll probably the definitive way to play on the go once it's finished.

There's also an impressive Game Boy Color demake that's has the entire Ruins part. So you get the whole intro experience, from falling down to facing off against the Dummy, meeting Napstablook and going through all the puzzles up to the very end. The dev has managed to squeeze the turn based combat, exploration and even chiptune versions of the soundtrack into just 2 megabytes. However, it's clear the experience can be janky sometimes, there's a significant ammount of bugs, but the vibe is still overwhelmingly positive. It's not the full game as I said, but as a complete demo package it captures the spirit and charm of UNDERTALE.