Free game with small team of developers proves impressive, enjoyable

“Rogue Reaper” is a neat wall-running action platformer that puts you in the small skeletal frame of Lilly, the daughter of Death. And the best part? It’s free-to-play.

Free-to-play games are a great way for a developer or studio to show off their skill as coders and artists.

Plot

“Rogue Reaper” is set in the foggy streets of a disease-ridden town in the aftermath of the Bubonic Plague. Lilly, seeing that the plague is overwhelming her father with souls to ferry to the afterlife, goes down to the ground to try and defeat the plague at its core. This is where the gameplay starts.

Playthrough

Upon entering the game world, I was greeted with a dismal lamp lit alley, where I jumped around a bit and discovered that I could run on the wall by running toward them and jumping. I quickly moved out of the alley to see a huge black rat in my way. The creature needed to be dealt with.

Lilly needs to defend herself. Her basic attack causes her to swing her scythe in a wide arc that sends a wave out that hits enemies. This deals a small amount of damage, but she can attack very quickly. I used this to get rid of the rat, which ran at me after the first blow was dealt. I was able to fend it off with more swings of my scythe.

Going up some stairs, I discovered an ability that proves extremely important and effective in the ongoing adventure — telekinesis. With this new ability in my arsenal, I was able to pick up nearby objects like barrels and apples, which I could launch with a surprising amount of force at enemies.

Speaking of which, in addition to giant rats, there are infected wolves that are much harder to kill. Once I figured out how to aim objects at these puppies, I was able to kill them with two shots using any loose item nearby. Although, if there were no objects in the immediate area, I was forced to use my basic attack, which took around five hits to kill an infected wolf.

Upon killing the first wolf, I faced my first real obstacle, which was figuring out how to jump from the roofs of stalls and houses onto broken streets. I tried for an embarrassing amount of time until I realized that the second useful ability of the daughter of Death is a dash move.

After going past a few more areas, I eventually met an enemy that seemed to dwell in this area alone.

Up high on some scaffolding on a couple of the dreary buildings in “Rogue Reaper” were two very creepy creatures that launched balls of green energy at me. They could teleport wherever they wanted, but after getting out of that scary courtyard, they did not follow. I was not able to get a good look at them, but they seemed to have the appearance of lanky gargoyles without wings.

Running across the rooftops, I jumped and landed in an eerie harbor-like area with a lovely little noose hanging from a crane. Going up some stairs and through a gateway, I suddenly dropped into the lair of the plague itself.

Taking on the form of a demonic, pestilence-ridden unicorn (yes, a unicorn), the plague started attacking me. It spawned pools of disease that dealt a lot of damage just by touching them. Surrounding the plague were platforms containing wooden boxes. I used my telekinesis to pick the boxes up and threw them at the plague. While the plague taunted me and sent more disease my way, I threw every box I could get Lilly’s telekinetic fingers on.

After eventually hitting the plague, it amped up the difficulty. Rearing up on its hind legs and then stomping down, the plague destroyed parts of the platform we were both standing on, forcing me to use dashes and jumps to continue my assault. After three more successful hits on the black unicorn of disease, I threw my boxes, lined up my attack and swung my scythe.

With this final blow, the plague let out a rumble and destroyed the entire platform. This is where the game ends, but not before a sad cinematic shows the streets of the town appearing to defog and then zooms in on a spot on the ground, where Lilly’s mask lies broken in two.

I was confused by this because I thought I had won. I still don’t understand what happened, but I do get that it was a sad moment of symbolism.

“Rogue Reaper” was an amazing, short adventure game that had very little in the way of variety, but executed what it did have well. Attacks were smooth, and the few abilities available worked well within the scope of the game.

The enemies were basic and on the weaker side. However, they reacted to Lilly’s movements appropriately and on occasion posed some difficulty. The final boss (the plague unicorn) was interesting, although I would have appreciated more varied attacks on its behalf.

Considering a small, 15-person developer team was able to get this game done in only 11 weeks, the level of gameplay and mechanics is rather impressive.

The description of the game on the Steam store reads, “’Rogue Reaper’ is the first part of the vision for an action-adventure game.” This is good news for me because I enjoyed what the free-to-play experience offered a taste of.

I hope the developers continue working on the second part of this experience and make it a full game with much more to offer.