[If you want to play a genocide—or no mercy—run without spoilers, it might be a good idea to click away from this article. You’ve been warned.]
After slogging through a genocide run, you may understandably want to wash your hands clean of what you did. After all, a genocide run is exactly what it sounds like, and it can be a little difficult to watch, let alone play.
Problem is, creator Toby Fox made it next to impossible to scrub the blood from your digital hands. Even if you manage to reset the game, your version of Undertale will be permanently marked, going so far as to change the True Pacifist Ending.
Soft Reset
When you get to the end of the game on a genocide run, the fallen child will appear and offer you a chance to reset the game at the cost of your soul. If you accept, the game will reset.
If you refuse, the fallen child will kill you and force quit the game. Restarting the game will result in a black screen with wind and wave sounds.
Since there’s no menu, it may seem impossible to reset the game at this point. However, if you wait for ten minutes, the fallen child will make the offer again. You must take this offer to do a soft reset of the game.
Nothing really changes about the game except for the True Pacifist Ending, which becomes what is known as the Soulless Ending.
But let’s say now you want to take the sins off your back? While you can never erase what you did, you can erase the mark placed on the game. This is great if you want to share Undertale with your loved ones without them knowing the skeletons hidden in your closet. Ha!
You can try a hard reset.
Hard Reset
A hard reset is a complete wipe of the game, deleting every trace of your existence.
If you’re playing a non-Steam version of the game, you can simply delete your local data:
- Go to C:UsersAppDataLocalUndertale
- Delete all of the contents of this folder.
If you can’t find the appdata folder, remember to go to the “view” tab and tick the appropriate box to view hidden folders/items. This step will vary slightly with your version of Windows.
If you’re playing a Steam version of the game, it can get a little trickier. You see, as soon as you stepped inside the throne room at the end of the game — even before you sold your soul for a chance to reset the game — you altered the Steam cloud data.
The folder should be located at C:Program FilesSteamUser Data391540. Keep in mind, however, that this folder will not exist until the game makes a steam cloud save (which, again, will only happen in the throne room of a genocide run). That last number is the ID for Undertale, which you can find in the Steam Store. You’re going to have to corrupt the data, which is a very belabored process outlined here in video and here in text.
If you want to try using third party apps instead, you can try Steam Cloud File Manager or the Undertale Genocide Remover, which is exactly what it sounds like.
If you get all of these last steps done, congratulations! You managed to hide your sins from the world! Pat yourself on the back and forget that any Faustian deals ever happened.
Image sources: Undertale
