I am pretty much the exact opposite of a hardcore videogamer, but every so often I hear about a game that sounds so intriguing I have to give it a shot, and the indie game Undertale was definitely one of those. (The fact that it only cost ten bucks on Steam, and that it's got 8-bit graphics and was thus guaranteed to run even on my not exactly top-of-the-line computer helped a lot, too.) So I downloaded the game a few months ago, played it, fell utterly in love with it, and haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Seriously, it's amazing. Great characters, great story, lots of humor, lots of emotion, some really clever meta stuff, gameplay choices that challenge you to stop and think about the assumptions behind games like this and how we usually play them... I could go on. I could go on about this game for so long, you have no idea.

So, when I saw that this book existed -- although, as far as I'm aware, it only seems to be available through Fangamer, who published it -- it was very much a case of "Shut up and take my money!"

And what did I get for my money? Well, it's an art book. There's lots of concept sketches from game developer Toby Fox (some of which are hilariously, adorably bad), as well as designs from various artists who worked on the game. Some of them feature early designs of characters, locations, etc. Other are stuff that never appeared in the finished game. There's also so,e very nice bits of art that were used for things like "trading cards" on Steam. There are a few cases where you get interesting glimpses at Toby's early ideas for things that got changed later. (E.g., everybody's favorite puzzle- and spaghetti-loving skeleton, Papyrus, was originally going to be a very different, and much less lovable character.)

Mostly, it's a lot of random stuff. Stuff that's probably only going to be interesting if you're a reeeeeeaaallly serious fan of the game, and capable of getting excited about any odd little snippets of material related to it. Fortunately, I am, so I enjoyed it. I mean, I was basically flipping through the pages going, "Awww, Undertale!" a lot. But it's certainly not a must-have for a full experience of the game or anything. ( )