Reaper of Swords

Reaper of Swords is a very short game, a retro-style sidescrolling 2D platformer. Originally, I though this was a demo, but since it's marked as complete, I'll treat it as such and provide a star rating. The player controls a, at this point in time standard, protagonist with long white hair and a huge sword, the titular Reaper. The story in the game is decidedly minimal.

Reaper of Swords goes extremely retro with a lot of its gameplay mechanics and presentation. For one, there's no intro, no title screen, no real outro, nothing. Immediately upon starting the game, you are thrown at the start of the first level without any context. Unfortunately, not only do a lot of these features affect the experience in a negative way, a lot of it also doesn't feel deliberate and more like the result of a rushed game development. Like an entry to a game jam that had to be pushed out quickly in order to meet the deadline, though the game page doesn't say anything about that. The presentation is certainly the game's strongest point, atleast on the graphical side of things. Tilesets and backgrounds are splendid, as are the enemy graphics. The player character looks good too, save for two flaws. One, when attacking, the hilt of his sword seems to disappear, making it seem like the blade comes directly out of his arm. Two, the game requires you to crouch and walk to crawl under platforms and avoid certain enemies, but the Reaper's sprite has no crouch walking animation, making it seem like he's simply sliding along the ground. When it comes to sounds, it again feels a bit disappointing. While the music is pretty good and each level seems to have its own theme, the sound effects are decidedly lacking and attacking enemies doesn't seem to have much weight and feels much less satisfying than it should.

The game ostensibly has four levels, though only three really count. The second level is basically an interactive cutscene, where you simply walk from one end of the town to the next while people in the background talk. The second level also features two characters that stand out, in the sense that they don't seem to really fit in. The very first NPC you meet looks like some puritan pilgrim from the 17th century, while the one condemning the Reaper for his "sins" looks like a random buddhist monk performing some kung-fu or yoga pose. It's a fantasy game, but with the very limited story and dialogue and no real explanation, this feels a bit jarring. There's also one enemy type in the final level that feels like its graphic should have been used differently. A giant, flaming skull enemy type that takes up almost a third of the screen. The first time I encountered one, I assumed that it was a boss. Turns out, they are very easy enemies that die in 1 hit. Pretty disappointing given their epic appearance. There's also what seems to be a genie enemy type, in the swamps of all places, which doesn't really seem to fit, but that's probably a nitpick. It's fantasy, after all, so a kitchen sink approach is standard, though I don't feel like the game makes it mesh together that well.

Gameplay-wise, Reaper of Swords is pretty standard. You can jump, attack with your sword, crouch and walk. You can only attack in two directions, left or right, attacking enemies directly above or below you is not possible. The Reaper can survive 2 hits from the enemies, but the third one will result in him disappearing in flames. Certain obstacles, such as spikes or bottomless pits, mean instant death. After death, the current level immediately restarts. The game has no score or life system and no collectable items or powerups, making the game feel a bit basic. There's only you, the enemies and and hazzards. Most of the enemies die in one hit from the Reaper's sword, some require two hits to defeat.

Notably, there's no type of HUD or even just a life bar or any other visual representation of how many hit points you have left, which is unfortunate. Even having a slight sprite changes for the main character to convey HP damage would have given the game a great deal whilst preserving its minimalist feel. Then there's certain wonky mechanics. While the game is perfectly playable and the platforming is solid, there's plenty of signs that the game is unfinished.

By far the biggest sign of the unfinished state of the game are the ceiling spikes in the first level. You can jump right into them without care in the world, without any sign that they are dangerous. And while they look just like the instant death ground spikes, you might think of them as just background scenery. However, every so often, you hit the random, small part of them that triggers an instant death, for seemingly no reason. And given that they are often located in tight corridors or in places where you need to jump, this resulted in a few game overs that felt, frankly, cheap and for no reason.

Enemies have varied behaviors. Some walk back and forth on a set path, some others go straight for the player, some walk back and forth and charge at the player if he gets too close. Ghosts are stationary, until you attack them and then they go straight at you, the cultists are stationary and shoot fireballs at the player, the genies fly away after you attack, "skullcrabs" "jump" at the player etc. However, all of this feels a bit unpolished. Certain enemies seem too insignificant to even classify as a threat (the slime monsters in the swamps for one, they can't even drop down from a platform to attack you) while others feel a bit cheap and random (purple panthers in the cemetery, whose pattern I wasn't able to deduce). The ones that seem to be the "roughest" in terms of presentation and gameplay are probably the "skullcrabs" in the Swamp level. They are clearly visible inside murky water and spiked pits, their jumps are so slow and floaty that it feels like they are levitating and the Reaper mostly defeats them by stabbing the air few feet above them, which feels wrong. They were clearly a bit more advanced than the others to set up due to how they work and it feels like they needed more work put into them.

The keyboard controls are also a bit unfortunate and with no way to change them, you simply have to make do. Overall, this feels like a game you are meant to play on the gamepad.

And well, the story? Well, to reiterate, you are dropped right into the first level, the Cemetery, with no intro or context. After battling through hordes of monsters, you reach the second level, the town. In this level, you just walk to the right, while NPCs provide most of the story in this game. From several short conversations, you learn that the monsters only started appearing two days ago and that there's rumors that an angel is imprisoned in a nearby temple. Also, some random monk calls you character Reaper and tells him that he cannot atone for his sins. This one line is all that you learn about your character in this game. The next level is the Swamps, which features no story and and after that, you arrive at last level, the Temple. After fighting through the level, you find a white-haired knight at the end, who tells you that you need to defeat the fallen angel Hezura imprisoned inside the temple before she grows too powerful and ushers a new, dark age upon the world. So you go do that and after walking along a tunnel, you are suddenly teleported to the room with Hezura inside, the game's sole boss. There's no pre-battle dialogue or any epic introduction, where Hezura reveals herself to the player. You are thrown right into the boss battle.

Said boss battle is also pretty dull. Hezura mostly just flies along the edges of the room. At this point, you just have to jump and attack her with the sword. There's no real danger here, as you can easily avoid her and crouch-walking under the fallen angel avoids the one situation where you might feel like you are in danger. Every once in a while (about twice per the average boss fight in my experience), Hezura decides to shoot several fireballs at your character and this is the part that turns frustrating. There's about five large fireballs and one of them chases after your character (identical in appearance to all the others). It's very difficult to avoid this and with the other large fireballs and Hezura herself, it's very easy to die outright when this happens even if you are at full HP. This then makes you repeat the boring routine of stabbing Hezura in the air, hoping that this time, the random fireballs won't spell your instant doom. After depleting Hezura's invisible HP bar, you don't receive any special boss defeat animation, nothing. Instead, Hezura disappears nearly instantly with the same animation regular enemies do and then you are just shown a white screen with the word Congratulations on it. This is one retro tradition that I'd certainly do without. Then the game shuts itself down.

Overall, the game feels like an early tech demo for a much better game. Unfortunately, the tech demo is all there is. Originally, I wanted to give the game 3 stars, but after thinking it over, the numerous issues and overall lack of polish drag the game down too much. So, 2.5 stars, even though I feel a bit bad for rating it so low. I'd advise the developer to either continue working on this or make a sequel/remake that blows this version out of the water. Because the potential for a much better game is here. I'd certainly play that game.