Reaper by ImmanentDeath

D E L E T E - A L L - C R E E P E R S
Reaper was made for Ludum Dare 52 and its theme, "Harvest." It's a brutal, fast-paced hack 'n' slash about the reaper eliminating creepers and claiming souls and power-ups from them.
Play on Itch.io | Play on Newgrounds | Broken 1.0
How to Play
- WASD/Arrow keys = Move/Select
- Space/Up/W = Jump
- Enter/K = Attack
- Esc/P = Pause
- Back = Unpause
Press "L" on the title screen to toggle scan lines.
Power-ups - Movement speed up - Attack speed up (hold to attack) - Damage up (kill every creeper in one hit) - Kill all creepers on-screen - Invincibility - Extra life
Known bugs
- Creepers still rarely get stuck in corners
- Creepers and power-ups can appear over the player health bar and score display
- The Y position of digits in scores and high scores is sometimes slightly off
Changelog
v1.1 - Added easy mode - The player’s attack speed is slightly reduced, and the amount of time their attack lasts slightly increased - Creepers spawn naturally (not by replication) every 1.5 seconds instead of every 1 second - Creepers have 50% less base speed and a 50% slower replication rate - The maximum number of creepers in the scene before they stop replicating is reduced from 20 to 15 - Replaced “Press any key to start” text on the title screen with difficulty selection - Scan lines are now toggled on the title screen by pressing “L” instead of “S” - Added high scores for each difficulty mode that are saved at the end of a game - The player’s score at the end of a game is now displayed under “Game Over” - The current difficulty mode’s high score is now displayed on the pause menu - Added icons for extra lives that appear under the health bar when the player obtains them and disappear when used - Fixed a bug where creepers would deal knockback to the player in the wrong direction - Fixed a bug where creepers would always jump if they approach a wall, so the player could stand next to one and avoid all damage; now creepers won’t jump if the player is close enough - Fixed a bug where creepers could still replicate themselves after they’re defeated but before they disappear, also making it possible for the replicated creeper to get stuck in tiles
I said before that high scores were secretly saved as of v1.0.2, but it turns out that was a lie because there was a logic error that prevented this. Whoops. Sorry about that.
v1.0.2 - Scan lines can now be toggled by pressing “S” on the title screen - Score digits now have scan lines if scan lines are on - Fixed a bug where creepers wouldn't replicate themselves - Reduced the total number of creepers there can be for another one to spawn naturally (not by replicating) from 20 to 10 - Creepers no longer have a random chance to decide to jump - Fixed a bug where creepers would struggle to jump over tiles if they hit the tile sideways first - Fixed a bug where creepers would sometimes get stuck in corners - Fixed a bug where creepers would sometimes face the wrong way - Fixed a bug where creepers wouldn’t be killed by the power-up that kills all creepers that are on-screen if they had already just been damaged by the player - Fixed a bug where getting a power-up while that same power-up is already active doesn’t reset the time before it runs out - Fixed a bug where score wouldn’t be given and no sound effect would play if the player got a soul while at full health
v1.0.1 - Fixed a bug where score wasn’t reset after a game over - Fixed a bug where the player could still take damage during their invincibility frames after taking damage, and while having the invincibility power-up - Creepers now also take knockback from the power-up that kills all creepers on-screen, so anything they drop is less likely to get stuck in the floor
Devlog
A job that is debatably well done - January 12, 2023
How did I do this - January 9, 2023
Screenshots

| Itch.io | https://immanentdeath.itch.io/reaper |
| Newgrounds | https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/870187 |
| Broken 1.0 | https://immanentdeath.itch.io/reaperjam |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/reaper-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 369th | 3.545⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 354th | 3.452⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 751th | 2.548⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 694th | 3.095⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 144th | 4.205⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 134th | 3.773⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 567th | 2.469⭐ | 18🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 251th | 3.69⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 6🗨️ |
With the games current state enemies just clump and walk towards you, eventually you don't have any platforms to jump to and you go back and forth to press attack. Not so fun to play.
Could be super fun if it was like fruit ninja, enemies jump at you from all directions and you dodge with dash, move around platforms, slash them like if they were fruits :)

Ps love the devlogs :)
All in all: A well polished game with pretty graphics and arcade gameplay. I like it! :D
Overall a great game! Well done!
For me, hard mode was much too hard, but at the same time very motivating to try again and again... easy mode on the other hand, was a bit too easy, and felt less fun in a way.
It's a pity that I could not distinguish the different powerups - now that I see them on the screenshots, I see that they look differently, but during all that high speed action they mostly looked the same, and only after something like 30 power ups I got one that looked so different that I noticed it.
This place for me:

It became a little more doable once you'd stayed in one place for a while and the powerups had dropped and you could recuperate a bit, but I didn't actually realise when I was playing that there were powerups that did anything except restore health, so having that be a little clearer as @lenaschimmel already mentioned :)
Nice work!