Graveyard Shift by Natiki
Play as a reaper and harvest souls from the graveyard before sunrise!
My first time participating in a game jam! It's a pretty simple game where you just need to harvest as many souls as you can before the time runs out. Next time I'm going to try and focus more on gameplay than making art cause it took too much of my time making the sprites and tile maps. I also need to work on making music that fits the atmosphere of the game... (There's always next time!)
| Link to Itch.io page | https://tikitiki.itch.io/graveyard-shift |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/graveyard-shift |
Ratings
| Overall | 519th | 3.325⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 516th | 3.175⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 636th | 2.875⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 446th | 3.65⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 311th | 3.825⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 289th | 3.395⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 516th | 2.611⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 392th | 3.475⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 11🗨️ |
One thing I think would have been cool as an added ability was if I was able to suck them inward, like a sort of reaper tractor beam! That might have been really fun.

I like how fast I can move. It would be nice if there was some more visual feedback when you hit an enemy, like a particle effect or them fading away.
@almost I was planning on having ghosts fade in and out when spawning and despawning but ran out of time! I agree that adding that small visual feedback would've really helped the game!
I might actually revisit the game later to add those suggestions so thank you all for the feedback!
One of my teammates brought up Luigi's Mansion haha. I still think it'd make for a fun game.
Movement also feels pretty slick and definitely ghost-like, it felt a little random when the spirits would get up and run away/scatter though? Was it just on a random timer or was it actually prompted by player action?
Either way it's a pretty cool game, and nice work for your first entry too :) Hope to see you again on LD!
@profan The ghosts have a detection range which would make the ghosts run away when the player enters it. It's a bit finnicky though as the ghosts sometimes stop even when the player is in their range/not move at all BUT I think the bug actually works in favour for the game because if the ghosts didn't stop it would be much harder to harvest them! (At least that's what I like to tell myself lol!) Thank you!!
@zimny11 I had drawn up different ghost concepts when planning the game such as:
A woman as the standard base ghost,
A 'jock' which would take multiple hits and was faster but worth more points,
And a granny which would be slower but worth less points.
Sadly, I ended up cutting them to save time (cause the art would've taken too long to make)! I'll be sure to add them back when I revisit the game though because I agree that there needs to be some more variety. Thank you for the advice!
Lastly, thank you everyone for all the advice and feedback!! I'm looking forward to the next Ludum Dare! :)