The Genocide Run is the path to one of the three main endings of the game Undertale. Undertale is an RPG developed by American indie developer and composer Toby Fox.
Toby Fox developed Undertale independently, only outsourcing some additional art to other artists. In the game, players control a human child who has fallen into the Underground, a large, isolated region beneath the earth’s surface separated by a magical barrier.
As a child, the Undertale player encounters various monsters during a quest to return to the surface. The game is played primarily through the combat system, in which the player must navigate through a hail of bullet attacks from opponents while attacking and killing monsters, which the player also has options to make live.
Each of these decisions, kill or release aMonster, affects the gameplay and causes dialogue, characters, and story to change based on the results. Undertale was released for Microsoft Windows and OS X in September 2015 and later for Linux in July 2016. Upon release, it was praised for its writing, thematic material, intuitive combat system, musical score, and originality.
Praise aimed at its story, dialogue, and character has led to multiple nominations and awards, including a Game of the Year nod from multiple gaming publications and conventions. It has sold over a million copies.
The Genocide Run
In the Undertale game there are three paths you can go through; Pacifist, Neutral and Genocide. The Genocide Run can be defined as a “No Mercy Route” where all encountered monsters are killed. The end of this route can occur without first completing the game. The Genocide Run requires the player to kill every possible underground monster.
To get to the Genocide route, the player would have to have killed every enemy in each region: the Ruins, Snowdin Forest, Waterfall, and Hotland. (The CORE is a sub-region of Hotland.) Once the protagonist completes a Genocide route, subsequent True Pacifist route endings are changed – even after a true reset.
It begins in the ruins, where the player will intentionally trigger encounters and kill monsters until there are no more monster encounters. After all monsters in an area are killed, encounters still occur but monsters do not spawn.
In a font size smaller than usual, the combat text reads “But nobody came.”, a clue that can also appear on a neutral route if you kill all the monsters in an area. After the message is displayed, the surrounding music changes to a distorted ambient track. Passing a few points in a run can invalidate a Genocide run.
Important information about the genocide run
- In the Genocide route, all of the overworld songs are lower pitched, slower versions of their counterparts on the neutral and true pacifist routes. If at any point the player no longer meets the requirements for a Genocide route, they will revert to a neutral route playing the unmodified soundtrack.
- Kill tokens for different areas have different trait requirements. If certain events are triggered before an area has been completely cleared of monsters, the protagonist will automatically be sent back to a neutral route.
- Once a Genocide route has been canceled it cannot be recovered without reloading it into SAVE before it was canceled or fully reset.
Kill the counter-requests for the different areas in Genocide Run
- In the ruins, you must destroy 20 enemies before you meet Toriel at home. The recommended area to grind is the first room with the leaves and a safe point.
- In Snowdin, before fighting Papyrus, you need to kill 16 enemies. Here the recommended area for grinding is the area just before Snowdin.
- In Waterfall you must eliminate 18 enemies before fighting Undyne. The recommended area for grinding is in the room with the waterfall and flowers.
- In Hotland/The Core, you must assassinate 40 enemies before the battle with Mettaton. The recommended area for grinding is to the left of the room with the door leading to Mettaton. This location is great for fast and safe grinding as there is a safe point in the room to the right.