Ludum Dare #52compo

Reaper of Souls

by agentparsec

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.68

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.50

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.79

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.03

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.42

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.66

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.95

Reaper of Souls

Game Info

You have been sent to claim the soul of a human that is fated to die. This must be done in order to maintain the Balance, which slowly degrades the longer you take to finish your task.
The Fated's soul is red, making them easy to spot. They can see your approach and will attempt to flee, so you may need to trap them somewhere they can't run. When collecting other souls, they will briefly indicate the direction of the Fated.

Regular humans' souls are blue, meaning they are not meant yet to die. You can claim their souls if you wish, but it will hurt the Balance greatly. As they are not near death, they cannot see you.
The fates of those who are injured are indeterminate, as shown by their yellow souls. Claim them as you wish; doing so will restore a small amount of the Balance. They will be able to see you nearby, but are injured and cannot flee very well.

If a human is dying, their soul is orange. Claim these to restore a good amount of the balance, as their death is expected. They are unconscious and will not flee from your approach, making this task easier.

Controls

- WASD: Move
- Hold Left Mouse Button: Collect Soul
- Escape: Go back to title/quit

Tools used

- Unity (game engine)
- Aesprite (graphics)
- Famitracker/GoldWave (sound effects)
- Reaper (music)

Notes

- I could not get the web version to work properly for some reason, so I had to skip it.
- I wanted the game to be more complex, with trickier chase sequences and a harder-to-find Fated, but had to settle for something simpler so that I would complete it in time for the Compo. As such, it's a very short experience, and not a very challenging one at that.
- There's a bug that makes humans walk backwards sometimes, or face the wrong way when fighting. (It doesn't affect gameplay.)
- Mac build may not work; I wasn't able to test it myself.
- Someone discovered a bug post-submission: The Fated soul is not supposed to be able to get into fights, but he does anyway, and if he loses a fight, his soul color changes to yellow, meaning you can no longer collect it to win the game. So if you can't find the Fated soul, that's why. Sorry about that...

Tools: Aseprite, FamiTracker, Reaper, Unity

Comments13

AngryRubberDucky9 Jan 2023, 01:36

Wow, this game has a lot of personality, the pixel art style really fits with the theme of the game. As of right now there's not much to explore, the game is not really that hard or urgent to try and do anything other than explore in search of injured or dead people. I did spot 2 NPCs fighting and was waiting patiently for one of them to fall injured but that took really long to happen. This game has a lot of potential, filling the map with random events that can cause death would be a very unique take on the harvesting theme. I will continue to play just in case I missed some more events.

LDJam user 2792339 Jan 2023, 01:42

I had fun playing your game. I saw a couple of people get into fights and one got injured which let me take them. that was a nice set-piece :)

LDJam user 125029 Jan 2023, 01:54

I really like the mechanic of the souls you capture being a sort of compass to find your main target. Good atmosphere too, I felt like a vulture watching the NPC's fight so I could refill my balance meter

Cloughd9 Jan 2023, 05:45

Who knew balancing life and death would be so relaxing? A great casual vibe that is surprisingly fitting for a game where you play as death itself. Interesting start to a sandbox!

PassbyKamenRider10 Jan 2023, 03:32

Love the art and the mechanic of souls directing you to the fated person. In my first play my target is beaten by 2 normal people lmao.

Sito10 Jan 2023, 20:26

Really great. The music and especially sound design really force you to think about the uncomfortable position of being the thing that brings death, and the theme and gameplay fit together well.

picross11 Jan 2023, 00:32

Cool game and interesting mechanics! I liked exploring. Nice music and SFX. Very nice work!

BTW, I couldn't get it to work on my mac, so I had to switch to my windows machine. Maybe it's because of the M1 chip. When I try to open it, it says it "cannot be opened". Windows build worked flawlessly :D

Krassenstein12 Jan 2023, 14:10

Dude this was so great, I don't care if the fated bugged out, I still totally won. :)

Thanks for letting me play this!

Here's the VOD, split into chapters so you should be able to find your section!

Hawkin12 Jan 2023, 22:43

The design of this game is deceptively strong, but that's just a good reminder that design has always outpaced graphics. Your strengths as a designer really show! Here's what I noticed that I thought was smart:
* The varying types of souls, one being the elusive target, but the others being tools or obstacles
* The use of souls to indicate where your target is (otherwise, aimlessly searching would feel frustrating)

All-in-all, it felt very balanced when played correctly. Your tutorial page included a lot of great hints!

Kevin Barrios13 Jan 2023, 03:11

This game was really charming! My first playthrough I found and trapped the red guy right away. But it looked more interesting than that so I tried again and went around harvesting more of the souls and watching the little ecosystem play out (did I imagine that the guys fighting ended up being the guys dying?). The music set the mood well too. Interesting game overall :)

zimny1117 Jan 2023, 16:01

Cool game! Really nice game mechanics. I love that people brawl to get injured and recover with time. It is a bit too slow, I think. Maybe making everyone move fast would feel a bit better. Anyway, good job with the game!

Lomby19 Jan 2023, 22:06

Played your game on stream if you wanted to watch initial thoughts and feedback, it starts here: youtu.be/i0gT8D-gcB4?t=1916

Really great idea, loved the option to trade information for balance. I felt harvesting a healthy soul to get the direction of the fated early was a fun tactic that added a bit of tension. Nice entry!

Kelvin Mulungu22 Jan 2023, 17:34

This was really good! The music and sounds were top notch, the harvest sound felt like a crescendo to the persons life, which I loved. Having the people who are about to die start crawling away from the person they were fighting because I was there was pretty cool. I like the pace as slow as it is, it's quite relaxing. If you were to expand on this I'd love to see more scenarios of people interacting that could lead to someone dying, like following people's little stories and then waiting for them to pass. Lovely game.

Other games by @agentparsec

★3.58

★3.52

★3.70