Reap What’s Been Sown
A Grim Mystery
In the not-so-distant future of Neo Tokyo, a man has recently passed away in his apartment with the cause of death being unknown. Was it an accident, or perhaps someone was pulling the strings? Play as Grim, the reaper, and solve the mystery of his death to harvest his soul successfully in this sidescroller puzzle game! This game was created as part of the Ludum Dare 52 Game Jam, a 72-hour challenge to make a game from start to finish.
A Breakdown
The First Hours
Due to the limited amount of time and the core theme having to revolve around the word “Harvest”, our team took the first couple hours focusing on planning and scoping the whole game. This was to ensure we had a finished project by the end that was enjoyable and complete, as the biggest problem can be not finishing in time. Since we figured most other teams would go for a farming route, we thought the idea of “harvesting souls” was unique and twisted it to work in mystery format.
GETTING THINGS DONE
As one of the designers and the core team artist, my work focused on setting the scene, polishing, and making all the UI that players interact with. Using Asesprite, I made almost if not all the art of the city, puzzles, and animations on the first two days of the Game Jam. It was then that I used my time making the cutscenes and flashback art in Clip Studio Paint.
PUZZLE MYSTERY
We wanted to choose mechanics and gameplay that fit our murder mystery theme that didn’t require a lot of teaching. Because of this, we chose to have puzzles that players could trial and error themselves, ones that didn’t need any tutorial, and helped with immersion!
Play it for yourself!
Reap What’s Been Sown can be found and downloaded on itch.io, either through the Ludum Dare 52 tag or by looking it up!
