Indie Developer Stunned as Players Use His Classic Game to Experience Undertale Online

You might have heard of a game called Crashphalt, but chances are you haven’t actually played it. That might sound a bit harsh, but the indie developer behind Crashphalt recently shared that while their free-to-play title “didn’t set the world on fire” upon its Steam release in 2018, it has experienced a surprising resurgence in 2023 thanks to the mod Undertale Together, which allows players to enjoy Toby Fox’s iconic RPG Undertale in local co-op mode.

According to a post by Cold Pressed Games on the r/IndieDev subreddit, they noticed something unusual when they checked the game’s Steam reviews a few months back. The “something unusual” was that Crashphalt had suddenly received an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating, with nearly every review since 2023 mentioning Undertale.

To give you some context, from Crashphalt’s launch in October 2018 until December 2022, the game accumulated just 20 reviews on Steam. However, from January 2023 to now, nearly eight years post-launch, it has racked up an additional 552 reviews, with most referencing Toby Fox’s 2015 indie classic.

Naturally, Cold Pressed Games was a bit puzzled, so they did some investigating. They discovered that a local multiplayer mod for Undertale, called Undertale Together, was the culprit. This mod allows players to experience Undertale together, but only in local co-op. On December 2, 2022, a YouTube user posted a video explaining how to use Crashphalt as a sort of proxy to enable online co-op in Undertale through the Undertale Together mod and Steam Remote Play.

With the mystery unraveled, how does Cold Pressed Games feel about this unexpected turn of events? In response to numerous Steam reviews questioning whether they were upset that “no one cares about their game and only uses it to mod other games,” they expressed their approval.

“I actually don’t mind what Crashphalt has become. I’ve long since moved on to other projects, so I think it’s really cool to see that the game has found a second life,” they shared on Reddit. “Undertale came out around the same time I was getting into game dev, and it was incredibly inspiring to me. So I think it’s really cool that it’s found a way to impact the community, even if in a small way, and act as a way for friends to play the game together.”

Here’s hoping this newfound attention leads to more players actually trying out Crashphalt, as it genuinely looks like a fun blend of TowerFall and Nidhogg. At the very least, it might help shine a spotlight on the “other projects” that Cold Pressed Games is currently developing.