Digital Games Archives

Undertale Video Game (Toby Fox, 2015)

November 10, 2021 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

The 2015 video game Undertale, created by developer Toby Fox, features implicit references/similarities to Dante’s Inferno. These citings are frequently discussed and debated in online forums by the game’s fanbase.

“In Undertale, your character falls down a hole in a mountain that takes him to a bizarre world full of many unique characters. The characters you encounter are each plagued by their own different vices and you as the player get to choose how to deal with them. If you treat the characters with respect and befriend them peacefully, you lead them all out to the surface at the end, but if you choose violence, you remain in the underworld forever. The character’s similarities with the souls that Dante encounters and the concept of contrapasso are just some examples of how Undertale relates to the Comedy.” –Contributor Tucker Onishi

To see some fan conversations about the link between Undertale and the Inferno, click here.

Contributed by Tucker Onishi (University of Arkansas, ’22)

Katherine Powlesland, Narrative Strategies for Participation in Dante’s Divine Comedy (2021)

October 27, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“Katherine Powlesland’s new book Narrative Strategies for Participation in Dante’s Divine Comedy, which will be Italian Perspectives 53, brings an entirely new angle to Dante studies. This is a bold claim, given that Dante studies is enjoying its 700th anniversary this year, but Katherine is bringing to bear theories from cognitive neuroscience and from the critical study of videogames, so I think we can be fairly sure that the medieval scholiasts did not get there before her. But there is a certain affinity between the desire of modern game writers, and the desire of 13th-century epic poets, to enmesh their readers in a participatory experience.

“An immersive game today, or a text like the Divine Comedy or the Roman de la Rose, very much want the reader to experience for herself: to be in that wood, to find her way around that wall, to look into that mirror-like pool with her own eyes. Katherine sees both media as governed by mechanics of narrative participation.” [. . .] –“Bringing Video Game Theory to Dante,” Modern Humanities Research Association, June 27, 2021

The book will be released in 2022. See more information about it, in particular a discussion of its cover art, here.

Inferno Puzzle Game (Blue Vertex, 2021)

October 17, 2021 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

Photo Contributed by Blue Vertex

“In this atmospheric puzzle game you follow the journey of Dante Alighieri through the Nine Circles of Hell. The game is an adaptation of his epic poem Inferno written over 700 years ago, and between levels it includes many memorable quotes from the poem together with colorized artwork.” [. . .] –Blue Vertex, Steam

Learn more about the game here.

Watch gameplay footage here.

Contributed by Blue Vertex

Limbo (Playdead, 2010)

May 26, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Limbo is a 2010 puzzle-platform video game developed by independent game developer Playdead.

In a presentation at the 2021 Middle Ages in Modern Games Twitter conference scholar Claudia Rossignoli presented a thread on the relationship between Limbo and the “intense emotional landscape” of Dante’s Inferno. Rossignoli commented, “The boy’s journey originally revisits classical katabatic narratives (also inspiring Dante), including in its final unsettling encounter (his sister?), which brings no closure and instead intensifies the initial loss, eliminating any remaining hope of finding a way out.”

Read the full thread here.

Learn more about the game here.

Watch the trailer for the game here.

See more from #MAMG21 here.

How to Cite