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A jam submission

Don't Fear The ReaperView game page

Death is inevitable. Your mistakes aren’t.
Submitted by Thrihexa, darakyus, Aris-u, Tush-o — 20 minutes, 52 seconds before the deadline
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Don't Fear The Reaper's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Cleverness#84.0004.000
Theme Implementation#84.0004.000
Artistic Style#134.0004.000
Judges Choice#203.0003.000
Playability#892.0002.000

Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gCSS-vTuwrgEDeF4lNc62R2IDPs4gFpexWZcgQqupJc/edit?usp=sharing

Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes

Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes

Summarize your game!
The player assumes the role of an afterlife dispatcher, tasked with managing incoming reports of newly deceased souls. Their primary responsibility is to assign the appropriate reaper to each departure, ensuring that every soul is guided efficiently and correctly into the beyond.

Please explain how your game fits the theme.
The theme is approached through an esoteric lens: death is universal, inevitable, and impartial. You watch the world unfold as the intermediary between souls and reapers, tasked with dispatching the right reaper to guide each departing soul, all under the ever watchful gaze of the otherworldly.

Did you use Generative AI to make any assets in your game?
No

Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
The GDD, explains a lot of the design decisions and the different theme interpretations integrated in the game. We are very proud of this one, hope you have fun.

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Comments

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Playability:
Feels like a puzzle game in which you judge the dead. There doesn't seem to be any stakes or objective beyond matching reapers to souls. No visual benefit or loss based on outcome seems to occur. Would like to see more meaning to actions across the board.

Theme:
Fits the theme well in that you are watching everyone who dies in the world and judging them based on the feelings and interests of a given reaper. Interesting and unique take.

Cleverness: 
Great writing throughout with a lot of mini-stories available for each of the souls and reapers. Really well put together and compelling.

Artistic Style: 
Incredible pixel art and a great soundtrack to go with it. Fantastic work. 

(+1)

A very fun puzzle game with killer atmosphere and an interesting concept. I especially liked the characterization of the different reapers and how it reflected on their stats, and the little flavor text they sometimes say (in fact, I wish there was more of it)! There is not much of a tutorial at the start and the player kinda has to intuit what everything means by visual clues, like the scales tipping to the red side meaning failure, or how the music gets more slowed and the eyes in the background more apparent with each failure, but once you get the hang of it it's a pretty fun gameplay loop. On that note, the audiovisual aspects worked really well to enhance the experience. It was always nerve-wrecking to realize the music had slowed, or the sense of urgency whenever one of the crosses started flashing red and all of the reapers were still on cooldown. The eyes were starting to freak me out by the end of the first in-game day. The writing is beautiful and haunting as well. Some of the deaths were bizarre (I caught a few references to real and fictional incidents here and there), but most of them instilled me with a sense of fear of my own death. Not fear of the reapers though, no need to fear them, they just want to help ;) Again, really cool to see how diverse each of them were, in accordance with their own varied mythologies.  This game really got me thinking about how short life is, and how quickly it all ends. Needless to say, I enjoyed my experience!

Submitted(+1)

Very interesting game, does seem similar to what I've seen of Dispatch.  Not very familiar with that or its genre, though. Game played well, had appropriate graphics and music/sfx.  Cool idea!

Submitted(+1)

Definitely feels like a puzzle game. Is that what you were going for? From your GDD, you described how the minigame in Dispatch would make a great full game (I agree btw – awesome premise), but the game itself felt to me to have a much stronger puzzle-y feel than in the minigame from Dispatch. I guess the thing with Dispatch is that game actually teaches you how to play the minigame, you're not sitting there figuring out which characters to click, what clicking even does, etc. I found myself clicking every possible screen item for the first 5 minutes and reading everything, grinding forward at a pretty slow pace, until I pieced together what to do. It felt like a puzzle game. If that was your intent, great – it seems like some of your other players enjoyed figuring it out in the dark. For my tastes personally, I would have preferred being quickly shown what to do, even if it was outside the core gameplay experience, and then being thrust quickly into the game so I could practice what I just learned. Since it is a minigame in essence, I wonder if you could borrow from Mario Party's minigames to give the player a quick pre-game tutorial on what to expect and how to play? With the simulation and all that? Anyway, just an idea.

The game itself was of course really fun – but you already know that!

Submitted(+1)

This was a very cool game experience. I loved trying to figure out which reaper would  be good for each soul. The art was well done. I wasn't quite sure if the goal was for the scale to be on the yellow or red side or was it supposed to be even. I did get the reaper's dialogue on my third or fourth soul that let me know if I did okay but would love more visual/audio feedback so I know what  progress I'm making or how good or bad I'm doing with certainty. The mood in your game is palpable and well done. The animations well done. The upgrade system is pretty easy to comprehend. Overall, great job and keep up the great work!

Submitted(+1)

This is a really fun game. The artwork is beautifully done. It gives me nostalgic vibes of old school games like Act Raiser. I found it difficult to tell if I was doing things correctly or not. I believe, but am unsure, that when the scales fell to the golden side I had selected the correct reapers. I did not have time to play long enough to complete a day, unfortunately.

(+1)

I really enjoyed this game! I love the puzzle aspect of looking at the attributes of the reapers and the deceased. I lost on day one on the first playthrough but then beat it on the second!