not to be a cranky old woman at the age of 31 but i just saw some people who weren't alive when cave story came out trying to argue that it wasn't actually all that influential and i'm taking psychic damage
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this was part of a debate i saw in the notes of a tumblr post calling undertale "the most influential indie game of all time," where people were mostly just conflating "influence" with popularity/cultural relevance and bringing up matpat giving it to the pope. i only saw one person mention spelunky
like as much as i love undertale (it's tied with mother 3 for my favorite game ever made) i'm not sure it's actually all that influential on other games. there's certainly a niche of games influenced by undertale, some more obvious than others, but it's not like you see pacifist routes everywhere
anyway this makes me feel like a lot of the history of the indie game scene is kind of being lost, and a lot of young enthusiasts just know about the stuff that's big in their fandom bubbles (undertale/minecraft/fnaf/fnf/etc.) and not much about what came before, or the scene as a whole
somewhat relatedly, the braid anniversary edition came out and apparently is not selling as well as blow hoped. theres multiple reasons for this but it was interesting to think abt. braid was inescapable for a while as The indie game About Things
i think off is more influential than undertale-even in games clearly inspired in some amount by undertale, i can hear more of coldwood than i hear toby
there are games that weren't even all that popular but you can feel their fingers moving across games decades later. people might not even realize the fixation on flowers from in stars in time might not exist if they weren't there in the king fight from cs
video game history as a whole is horribly maintained and very western-biased right now. insert image of scott the woz not understanding snk's importance here.
Undertale's influence more comes from exposing its own influences to a wider audience, i think. Stuff like Cave Story, OFF and Yume Nikki gaining a boost in modern relevance purely by being things Toby Fox talked about. Not that it doesn't have influence by it's own merits, of course, its just less.
I think you're right. If we're going to see games heavily influenced by Undertale, they'll pop up starting this year, with only one game being the early exception and it's Everhood. Cave Story definitely has had more time for the kids who played it to grow up and make games inspired by it.
honestly it's way easier to find games that weren't inspired by undertale but have a similar vibe than undertale-style games just cuz the stuff that influenced undertale influenced so many others
Tbh even if it is that influential it feels like we won’t actually see it for a while. Gotta give the generation who grew up with Undertale more time in order to properly view that kinda thing
Yeah, Undertale felt into that ground of "Having lots of Fangames inspired by it" and less fully original indie games. Probably because a lot of the elements that people love about it are already ones that come from/inspired by other existing games and not Undertale in specific.
I find this incredibly funny because when I was hyperfixating on cave story as a broke teen with a shitty laptop I distinctly remember having heated arguments about this with my little brother and he's born exactly one year after cave story.
Bro, I caught the ripple effects of Cave Story and even if I wasn't there to see it sooner than later, I'd have to willingly ignore how much it meant to people.
there needs to be a term for this phenomenon of people overstating the influence of the thing they like while downplaying things they don't care about even if they legitimately are more influential.
I think this comes from seeing "influence" in 2 ways tho
1. is influence on the developers
2. is influence on the consumers
Cave story influenced many developers to make their game in ways few indies match, but undertale influence to make the consumers pay more attention to indies
TBF, I’m older than you and never got the love for it. Not trashing it, simple didn’t click with me, and I don’t see how it was influential. As a what, Metroidvania? I’d argue Axiom Verge was far more influential.
tons and tons and tons of indie devs of my generation and a bit older have the same origin story of "i didn't realize you could make games that good on your own until i played cave story." the indie scene as we know it would be completely unrecognizable without cave story
also i know there are lots of other indie metroidvanias these days, but that scene straight up did not exist before cave story. that was the game that proved indies could make good metroidvanias. it's the reason the scene exists at all
If it weren't for Undertale, I wouldn't have learned about such masterpieces as cave story, off, pony island and slarpg. Before that, I only played games from big developers. Thanks to Undertale, I was able to discover a whole world of independent games :3
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[1] closest spelunky analogue i could think of on short notice to matpat
i nominate "arlo brained"
1. is influence on the developers
2. is influence on the consumers
Cave story influenced many developers to make their game in ways few indies match, but undertale influence to make the consumers pay more attention to indies
Ugh, am I getting old?