RECAPTURE IN CONTEMPORARY GAMES:

UNDERTALE, ONESHOT, PONY ISLAND

Michelle Raudsepp

University of Florida

Honors Thesis

August 2017

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ABSTRACT

This paper aims to take Terry Harpold’s concept of recapture – a storytelling technique that embodies a phenomenon exhibited in gaming wherein narrative and game mechanics come together to maintain player immersion – and use it as a lens to analyze contemporary game titles such as Toby Fox’s Undertale, Mathew Velasquez and NightMargin (Casey Gu)’s OneShot, and

Daniel Mullins’ Pony Island. In order to explore this concept’s validity and value, examples of recapture within these games are recorded and analyzed. The idea is to explore how these games take mundane mechanics, such as saving and loading a game, character movement, and menu screen navigation, and, using the concept of recapture, maintain player immersion despite having typical gameplay interruptions.

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INTRODUCTION

Video games offer an interesting form of storytelling in that they not only tell a story through the progression of the narrative and the characters they follow, but oftentimes through the use of game mechanics as well. This is backed by Kamal Sinclair of “The Art of

Storytelling” who said that “this particular medium makes way for original voice and has potential for unique ways to present... creation.” Specifically, with this medium, it can be hard to remain consistently immersed within a fictitious world. An audience’s suspension of disbelief – that is to say, their ability to relinquish all sense of “realism” and simply accept a story’s world and its rules – is lost primarily with the use of a controller or keyboard to control the player character. As well, more times than not, narratives are played through with many interruptions, whether they be tutorial scenes, pauses, game overs, or the like. Seemingly, it is hard to play through video games with complete immersion. However, few game titles exist that take advantage of the mechanics they implement and create new forms of unique storytelling, immersing the player further into the narrative.

With this in mind, we ask: How do contemporary games bridge the gap between narrative and game mechanics to create this unusual form of storytelling? There is a common trope found in most forms of media that creates a separation between audience and narrative. This imaginary

“wall” keeps the world’s rules in place, ensuring that the audience is completely immersed and no hints of fiction seep through. Often for comedic relief, this wall is sometimes broken – a character might hint at knowing they are fictional beings, for example, or the game itself might address the player directly – and the illusion is lost. In some rare cases, this wall is broken to the point where this self-awareness becomes integral to the world’s rules and the player is pulled within the confines of the narrative.

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Flint Dille and John Zurr Platten of The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and

Design wrote, “Video game storytelling primarily exists to give meaning to gameplay.” In other words, it would be obvious to think that one cannot exist without the other, especially when attempting to create complete immersion. To answer the aforementioned question, this paper examines games that exhibit this phenomenon – games that, to quote Terry Harpold of “Screw the Grue: Mediality, Metalepsis, Recapture,” introduce game mechanics as game world rules or realities to “[mask] their potential disruption of the world” and maintain player immersion. For the purpose of this paper, this concept will be referred to as recapture, a term that Harpold considers a “fundamental operation of videogame expression [as] it is hard to see how lines of code and a box of hardware could seem to constitute a world without it.” This brings to light that narrative and game mechanics can come hand in hand to promote a more sophisticated and enticing storytelling technique, exemplified by Toby Fox’s Undertale (2015), Mathew Velasquez and NightMargin (Casey Gu)’s OneShot (2014), and Daniel Mullins’ Pony Island (2016). These three games are pivotal in exploring the concept of recapture as Harpold’s mention of the term is the only one found in the current literature.

The purpose of this study is to explore this uncommon phenomenon in gaming beyond

Harpold’s own analysis. While he used the term regarding late 20th century games including

Infocom’s Zork 1: The Great Underground Empire (1980), Reactor, Inc.’s Virtual Valerie

(1990), and Pulse Entertainment’s Bad Mojo (1996), this paper aims to use the concept of recapture as a lens for more contemporary games. The idea is to bring about more advanced examples of this phenomenon with games that take full advantage of and push their game mechanics capabilities to the most unique extremes – games that take mundane gaming tasks,

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such as saving and loading a file, movement, and menu screen navigation, and heighten them through the use of recapture in order to create seamless immersion.

Dille and Platten wrote, “These are the media elements you have with which to tell the story. Think of them as story elements. Don’t forget – story in video game terms is anything that helps you immerse yourself into the game-playing experience.” With this paper, the goal is to gain a better understanding of the concept of recapture and promote its use in gaming. At the very least, it can be used as an analysis of three games that exhibit very unique storytelling methods. While using just three games in addition to Harpold’s original three is not enough to validate the concept, the idea is also to encourage other gaming analysts and researchers to explore recapture through their own means. Katarina Ferk of “Storytelling in Literature versus

Video Games” said, “In literature, the protagonist is presented to the reader (its audience), while in gaming, the protagonist is experienced by the audience.” Considering these as more than just the protagonist, an entire world could be experienced through the unique storytelling techniques used in gaming. The concept of recapture is an interesting one and promoting its use for future purposes is useful to not only the gaming world in general, but research and analysis, as well.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

“Screw the Grue: Mediality, Metalepsis, Recapture”

Terry Harpold

Terry Harpold’s “Screw the Grue: Mediality, Metalepsis, Recapture” covers the concept of recapture, a term that encapsulates that moment in video games when game mechanics are turned into integral narrative tools, ensuring that player immersion is never broken, at least through gameplay. Harpold analyzes three games – Infocom’s Zork 1: The Great Underground

Empire, Reactor, Inc.’s Virtual Valerie, and Pulse Entertainment’s Bad Mojo – with recapture as a lens. His formal analysis provides examples that support his introduction of this new concept.

Harpold argues that game mechanics and narrative cannot act without the other and expertly weaving them together makes for a more immersive gaming experience.

This source is the foundation of this study. The concept of recapture is one proposed by

Harpold himself and, because of this, there was no other existing research on the topic. The aim here is to take his analysis and emulate it through more contemporary games – games that were released in the last five years.

Undertale

Toby Fox

Toby Fox’s Undertale is a game that expertly uses the concept of recapture. It follows the story of a young child lost in the Underground, a world that is inhabited by monsters of all types. Long before the narrative begins, humans and monsters were at war. When the humans won, they sealed away all monsters into the Underground. Every so often, a human child falls in.

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The player must take this particular child through the Underground, surviving the monsters they encounter, and eventually making it back to the surface.

Undertale exhibits an intriguing use of game mechanics. It takes advantage of what would typically be player-only actions (saving and loading the game) and turns them into powers that certain characters can manipulate. Some of the characters even directly address the players themselves. It is a game that presents characters that are very self-aware and provides ample support to this story.

OneShot

Mathew Velasquez, Night Margin (Casey Gu)

Mathew Velasquez and NightMargin (Casey Gu)’s OneShot is a game that follows the story of a young, cat-like creature named Niko. Niko is a young, gender-ambiguous character

(who, as such, will be referred to in a neutral third person - “they,” “them,” etc.) who, at the start of the narrative, wakes up to find themselves in a dark world inhabited by robots. This world is not theirs but after speaking to a robot they encounter, they realize that they are the messiah of the world meant to bring back the light. It is their mission to take the world’s Sun (a light bulb they find) to a tower in the world and it is the player’s mission to help and guide them.

OneShot holds a lot of interesting game mechanics that keep the player intrigued. It is a game where Niko, the player character, explicitly knows who the player is, as they share a caring relationship. The game and its characters address the player by name. It removes the idea that the player controls or role-plays as Niko and instead suggests that they guide them, almost like some sort of deity. The player is just as much a part of the story as Niko is and one cannot see it through without the other.

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Pony Island

Daniel Mullins

Daniel Mullins’ Pony Island turns the player into a victimized soul trapped within the confines of an arcade game created by Satan. The player, with the help of the soul of the game’s previous victim, must hack the game’s internal programming in order to bypass all of Satan’s evil obstacles and obtain power-ups and turnarounds to progress through the game.

Pony Island takes the concept of playing a game for playing’s sake and shatters it. The player is not playing for fun, but rather for their life. The player must go through typical game mechanics that have been turned into fascinating story elements. For example, the player must traverse through the many menu items in order to progress through the narrative as well as get past certain obstacles. These elements are integral in supporting evidence of the concept of recapture.

Game Research Methods, “Formal Analysis of Gameplay”

Petri Lankoski, Staffan Bjork

“Formal Analysis of Gameplay,” chapter three of Game Research Methods by Petri

Lankoski and Staffan Bjork, gives an extensive look into how to formally analyze gameplay.

They provide excellent examples and offer step-by-step guidelines to writing a clear and proper formal analysis. This source is vital to this study as it provides the framework for this paper as a whole.

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“The Art of Storytelling in Gaming”

Kamal Sinclair

Kamal Sinclair recounts the experiences several game designers had when they met with renowned TV and film storytellers, such as Sarah Treem of House of Cards and Mark Monroe of

The Cove, at Sundance Institute's New Frontier program the Story Lab. They compared storytelling in gaming to storytelling in other media and considered how advancements in gaming would eventually affect their storytelling capabilities. The main point they brought forth is that storytelling in gaming makes way for a more immersive experience as audiences are able to place themselves within the narrative and act as decision makers.

“Storytelling in Literature versus Video Games: Literary Narratives vs. Digital Narrative”

Katarina Ferk

Katarina Ferk offers her own insight into her change of heart when it came to video games. She was unenthusiastic about video games at first. However, when she realized the media’s capabilities of storytelling, her opinions changed as she grew more and more attached to the concept of interactive storytelling. She offers tips and steps to writing a story and explains them through games as examples. Additionally, she mentions different forms of storytelling and narratives and compares them to games that exhibit the techniques. Her conclusion was that interactive storytelling in video games would likely be the future of all storytelling, especially with technological advancements like virtual reality.

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“How Video Games Have Become the Perfect Storytelling Medium”

Robin Burks

Robin Burks shares her opinions of storytelling in games through the use of Until Dawn, a PlayStation 4 game that might be the epitome of contemporary interactive storytelling. While

Burks sides with gaming as a storytelling method, she also wonders if some games should be considered more as cinematic experiences rather than a typical game. The article also gathers the opinions of other big names in the gaming industry, each with their own opinions, but the conclusion amongst all of them is that games bring the player into the experience, creating more immersive environments and stories, and this is possible due to the ever-evolving technology of the platform.

The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design

Flint Dille, John Zuur Platten

Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten offer their combined thirty years of game design experience in one fourteen-chapter textbook. The text covers topics including story structure and approach, theory and dialogue, construction and strategies, concepts and scripts, game design documents, and the like, even brushing up on dealing with critique and publishing a game. The most important points I gathered from this text were those about how narrative affects the player and how any aspect in a videogame should be considered a storytelling tool.

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“OneShot is a Game Where the Main Character Knows Who You are”

Nathan Grayson

Nathan Grayson offers minimal insight into his first few hours within the game, OneShot.

He offers his own predictions and backs them up with current evidence. More importantly, he explores the idea that Niko, the main character of OneShot, knows who the player is and establishes that the player is seen as a sort of God to the characters of the game. This source is important to this study as it provides outside insight to the supportive evidence used to exemplify the concept of recapture.

“Pony Island is One Seriously Twisted Game”

Mike Fahey

Mike Fahey offers a first look at the game Pony Island without spoiling anything. He very simply explains the story and provides his own opinions of the game. As well, he includes a fifteen-minute video of his own gameplay that clearly demonstrates the use of recapture in this game. This is important to this study as it provides outside insight to the supportive evidence used to exemplify the concept of recapture.

“Players Still Haven’t Figured out All of Undertale’s Secrets”

Nathan Grayson

Nathan Grayson offers a lot of insight into the many secrets of Undertale. These secrets range from the timelines, how the game changes if a player is playing it a second time, how the game remembers everything the player does, and even the mystery of W.D. Gaster (a hidden character who has remained an enigma to even the most enthused players). More importantly, he

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touches up on the memory function, where certain characters are able to manipulate the save and load features of the game. This is integral to the study as it provides further support to the provided evidence on the concept of recapture.

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RESEARCH METHODS

This study will implement a formal analysis design to explore the three games - Toby

Fox’s Undertale, Mathew Velasquez and NightMargin (Casey Gu)’s OneShot, and Daniel

Mullins’ Pony Island. Petri Lankoskh and Staffan Bjork of Game Research Methods: An

Overview wrote: “Regardless of field, formal analysis focuses on the different elements of a work, that is, asking questions about the elements that constitute the parts of the world and the role of each element in the composition as a whole.” Specifically, this paper will take these three games and explore them through the concept of recapture as a lens by analyzing their unique game mechanics and critiquing their effectiveness to the narrative.

While I believe myself to be impartial, this section informs on a potential, yet very minor, bias needing to be addressed: of the three games, Undertale specifically is one I am more attached to and this could cause a greater focus on this particular game in terms of analysis. While this bias is not a huge problem, it could cause partiality within the study as well as skewed results in favor of proving the hypothesis. This personal bias could shape the interpretation of the analysis as well as overshadow the overall experience of all three games. However, to ensure the credibility of this study, there will be an objective, external auditor to check up on any biases as well as review the paper as a whole.

To collect this data, first off, the researcher will be situated in a comfortable location where they will experience no disruptions. The researcher will be the only participant and will collect data through a

Let’s Play! style of gaming where their whole gaming experience is recorded. The idea is to have recording of both the gameplay (with in-game audio) and a voiceover (notes taken to recall on replay) of their full experience. This way, the researcher has documentation to explore upon analysis and there is explicit evidence to be shown alongside the study.

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RESULTS

Toby Fox’s Undertale is an RPG-styled game that follows three different timelines. All of them start off the same: a young child falls into the Underground, a world of monsters, and must find their way back to the surface. Depending on the choices the player makes, choices made through the use of DETERMINATION (a concept often mentioned throughout the game and the basis for most of the characters’ powers) the timeline can either turn into a Neutral run, a

True Pacifist run (where the player kills no one), or a No Mercy run (where the player kills everyone). Each run has a sort of sentience to it - they each interact differently with the player.

Because of this, the choices the player makes - do they kill this monster or do they provide mercy? - lead to vastly different endings.

The game mechanics in Undertale are simple. The player is able to navigate the player character through the world of the Underground, interact with the monsters that inhabit it, save and load their game when needed, and fight. These mechanics are typical of most, if not all, video games. However, when paired with the fascinating story that is Undertale, these mechanics become much more. There are three specific instances that expertly portray the concept of recapture: the character Sans, the fight with King Asgore, and the fight with Photoshop Flowey.

These three instances are a fraction of what makes Undertale such an intriguing game, not only in storytelling, but in game mechanics, as well.

To start off, Sans is a character who the player meets early on. He is a tortured soul with a comedic facade. On the surface, Sans seems to be a laidback individual without a care in the world - however, as the story progresses, and depending on the run the player is on, his character becomes more serious and the realization hits that he is very much aware of who is controlling the player character. Sans has knowledge of the different timelines (runs) within Undertale and

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directly comments on them, wondering which one is the best for him and his friends of the

Underground. He is aware that someone is manipulating this lost child and directly threatens not the child, but the player themselves. Sans is the only character that faces the player directly in- game. When compared to the other characters in the game who are turned toward the player character, Sans is the only one who, on his own, looks directly through the screen at the player.

During the fight against Sans in the No Mercy run, he speaks directly to the player. He makes clear comments that allude to this awareness of the character of the player, especially if they had made it that far killing everyone. In this fight, Sans gets the first turn. Unlike the other fights against other monsters, Sans uses his best attack first and, if the player is not ready, kills them in an instant. Sans’ awareness first becomes clear when the player fights him again - after two attempts he comments, “Hmm. That expression… That’s the expression of someone who’s died twice in a row…” and his comments adjust accordingly after every attempt. Of this, Nathan

Grayson of “Players Still Haven’t Figured out All of Undertale’s Secrets” said, “Eventually, it becomes part of the game’s plot. You aren’t just some random human. You travel through time and transcend death. Nothing can stop you, all because you have the fabled godlike powers of

‘save’ and ‘load.’” This memory mechanic shows up often throughout the game, supporting the awareness of some of these characters. On top of this, Sans also attacks the player directly in the menu screen. He takes advantage of the cursor acting as the character’s soul and inflicts damage through obstacles in the menu. This mechanic does not allow the player a chance to breathe and keeps them on their toes, almost like a real fight.

Another interesting character in Undertale is King Asgore, a generally peaceful character who cares for all the monsters under his rule and would stop at nothing to protect them. He is wary of the humans who trapped him and his kind beneath the surface and looks to capture the

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souls of fallen humans in order to escape. During the fight with King Asgore, much like Sans,

Asgore manipulates the action box, but a little differently - rather than attack the player while they choose what to do next, his first attack is to get rid of the MERCY button altogether (a mechanic that, throughout the game, allowed the player to befriend characters rather than fight them). This means the player is forced to fight him no matter what timeline they are in. Dille and

Platten wrote, “Story isn’t just characters and dialogue. An interface element can be a storytelling device. For example, the moment in which your ammo counter tells you that you only have two shots left would appear in a novel as: ‘He only had two bullets left… two bullets.

He had to use them well or die…’” Considering this, this manipulation of the action box’s mechanics helps to create greater immersion for the player as it becomes obvious that their choices are important as well and sometimes, even in games, things are unavoidable.

The fight with Photoshop Flowey is one of the most exciting fights in the game. This comes from not only Flowey’s shift into a monstrous form, but also from his ability to manipulate the save and load features in the game. Throughout the battle, Flowey takes the player’s save file and erases it, forcing them to stay within the battle, and manipulates it to his advantage. He saves the fight at whatever point he wants and continuously attacks the character in this one save file, beating the character and reloading to seconds before he beats them to relive that win over and over. This is typically a player-only mechanic that has been manipulated into a character power. The idea that the player and a character in the game have the same abilities brings together both the player and character worlds. As well, if one considers this to be a power, the ability to reload a game to a point before a loss aligns well with the narrative’s theme of

DETERMINATION.

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Mathew Velasquez and NightMargin (Casey Gu)’s OneShot is a 2D Top Down game that follows the story of a cat-like creature named Niko. Niko is a young, gender-ambiguous character who, at the start of the narrative, wakes up to find themselves in a dark world inhabited by robots. This world is not theirs but after speaking to a robot they encounter, they realize that they are the Messiah of the world meant to bring back the light. It is their mission to take the world’s Sun (a light bulb they find) to a tower in the world and it is the player’s mission to help and guide them. Dille and Platten said, “Any time you have a decision to make, it is a character opportunity. How your character deals with it depends on the relationship between the main character and the player.” As it is the player’s mission to guide Niko, where they lead them and what they choose to tell them becomes important, thus, throughout the game, Niko and the player establish a fascinating relationship - the player becomes a godlike figure to Niko and Niko becomes their follower. Oftentimes, Niko will look to the player for advice, speaking directly to them, addressing them by name, and asking them questions about their world or even praying to them as their god.

Much like Undertale, OneShot experiences instances of recapture. Two specific examples are the being known as the Entity and that all the characters know that the player is there, making the navigation mechanic a part of the storyline. When the game first starts, Niko wakes up in a dark room. As the player leads them to explore the world, they come across a computer that directly addresses the player and tells them it is their mission to bring back the light to the world. This is the being known as the Entity. It says, “You only have one shot,

Administrator.” The Administrator can be replaced by the name of the user currently logged on the computer. The Entity is an interesting being in that it often breaks the fourth wall doing things like addressing the player directly, opening error messages, and even changing the

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desktop background. One of the most interesting things that it does, a mechanic that is integral to the story and brings light to the game’s title OneShot, is that should the player close the game’s window or quit the game the Entity kills Niko. This is a mechanic that the player is aware of but

Niko isn’t and so it puts a sort of tension on their relationship, despite Niko’s obliviousness.

Other characters throughout the game are also aware of the player’s presence. Early on in the game Niko and the player meet a robot called Prophetbot - this is the character that introduces Niko to the player. It speaks of the player by name, calling them “our God” and, with this in mind, Niko asks if the player is there. If the player says yes, Niko replies, “N-Nice to meet you, [Name]!” The robot tells Niko to not be afraid to ask [Name] for assistance as they (Niko) are the Messiah of the world, the one who would restore their Sun. The player’s manipulation of

Niko through navigation mechanics now shift from a simple game function to guiding them through their journey. From this grows a connection between Niko and the player - it is up to the player to keep them safe. Nathan Grayson of “OneShot is a Game Where the Main Character

Knows Who You Are” said, “Sometimes, Niko will turn and talk to you. This isn’t his world either, and he’s just a kid. He needs your guidance. He can’t do this without you.” And they really can’t. If the player doesn’t control Niko, neither one of them would get anywhere.

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Daniel Mullins’ Pony Island is a fascinating game that, somewhat like OneShot, brings the player directly into the storyline. The game follows the story of an unknown individual as they interact with an old arcade game called “Pony Island.” The game starts off simply enough - this individual is playing a cute side-scroller game about a pony that has to jump over obstacles.

Once this person gets to a certain level, things start to change. Text from an angered someone appear, filled with insults. This person makes the game harder and much more demonic. The player soon discovers that the game is corrupted - it was created by Satan who is now trying to claim this person’s soul for himself. Soon, it becomes clear that this individual playing the game is the player themselves. This idea on its own makes way for Harpold’s concept of recapture.

Throughout the game, the player comes in contact with the soul of a previous player who attempts to help the current player escape. With their help, the current player is able to access

Pony Island’s programming and manipulate it in their favor. This is done through simple point- and-click puzzle solving that uses unique menu navigation to move ahead in the game. This instance of recapture makes the game that much more exciting as the player is forced to look through endless menu options for the right selection that will help them advance. At the beginning of the game, for example, when the player tries to hit the start game button, an error occurs. To fix this, the player must navigate through the menu until they find a button that says

“Fix Start Menu.” Once they click this, the game starts. Such a mundane task typical to all games is expertly turned into a gameworld necessity. On top of this, to fight off Satan himself, the player must also go through the various options within the menu to find certain power-ups and puzzles that will help them progress.

There are other examples of recapture within the game, as well. At one point, one of the demons the player encounters has the player write something nasty. If the player is playing Pony

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Island through the Steam platform, the demon sends this message to one of the player’s friends on their friend list and uses their messages as a distraction for the fight. Of this, Mikey Fahey of

“Pony Island is One Seriously Twisted Game” said, “At one point I was tricked into thinking I had accidentally sent a horrible message to someone outside the game. The tricks Pony Island played on me were so clever and effective that when I finally finished playing and closed the application, I wasn’t sure if I actually closed it. I’m still not 100 percent certain.” The idea that a player can be so mixed up because of something a game mechanic does is paramount to the idea that recapture can be used in any genre of game.

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CONCLUSION

Terry Harpold’s concept of recapture is one that is found in many video games, but more so in contemporary games of today, especially as experimentation with video game design has made way for newer, more unique methods of storytelling. The three games covered in this study

- Undertale, OneShot, and Pony Island - exhibit this phenomenon and masterfully manipulate it to not only further involve players within their story’s world, but also to manipulate game mechanics that are often underappreciated and overlooked. The save and load power of

Undertale, the player movement of OneShot, and the menu screen navigation of Pony Island are few examples of mundane tasks that can be heightened through the use of recapture. Sinclair said, “Narrative engages through the way in which the story is told. The viewer knows the outcome is predetermined but remains engaged because of the illusion of uncertainty and due to the way the story is told.” The use of unique methods of immersion in game design have been explored to further increase player interest in a gameworld - and with more advancements in design, the possibilities become endless. As Robin Burks of “How Video Games Have Become the Perfect Storytelling Medium” said, “...video games constantly offer new ways of offering that interactivity and emotional connection to players on different levels.”

The goal of this study was to not only explore this newfound concept, but also encourage game designers and analysts to utilize and further refine this storytelling technique within the games of tomorrow.

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REFERENCES

Harpold, Terry. “Screw the Grue: Mediality, Metalepsis, Recapture.” Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research 7.1 (2007): n. Pag. Game Studies. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

UNDERTALE. Toby Fox. 2015. Video game.

OneShot. Mathew Velasquez and Casey Gu. 2014. Video Game.

Pony Island. Daniel Mullins. 2016. Video Game.

Lankoski, Petri, and Bjork, Staffan. “Formal Analysis of Gameplay.” Game Research Methods: An Overview. Pittsburgh, PA: ETC Press, 2015. 23-73. Print.

Dille, Flint, and Platten, John Zurr. The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design. Ed. Skip Press. New York, NY: Lone Eagle Publishing company, 2007. Print.

Sinclair, Kamal. “The Art of Storytelling in Gaming.” Sundance Institute. Sundance Institute, 29 Dec. 2014. Web. 26 June 2017.

Ferk, Katarina. “Storytelling in Literature versus Video Games: Literary Narratives vs. Digital Narrative.” Versopolis. Versopolis, n.d. Web. 26 June 2017.

Burks, Robin. “How Video Games Have Become the Perfect Storytelling Medium.” Tech Times. Tech Times, 14 Sept. 2015. Web. 26 June 2017.

Grayson, Nathan. “OneShot is a Game Where the Main Character Knows Who You Are.” Steamed. Kotaku, 09 Dec. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Fahey, Mike. “Pony Island is One Seriously Twisted Game.” Kotaku. Kotaku, 05 Jan. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Grayson, Nathan. “Players Still Haven’t Figured out All of Undertale’s Secrets.” Steamed. Kotaku, 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.