Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Post Morton
By nanolotl
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 380 | 3.62 | 22 | |
| Fun | 540 | 3.35 | 22 | |
| Innovation | 103 | 3.87 | 22 | |
| Theme | 987 | 2.80 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 85 | 4.42 | 22 | |
| Audio | 567 | 2.87 | 22 | |
| Humor | 766 | 2.52 | 21 | |
| Mood | 819 | 2.95 | 22 |
This game drew me in right away . . . but I crumbled into an ocd mushpile because I wanted to do too many things. The upgrade tree is nice, the graphics are perfect for this game, sound effects are cute and fitting. I love the idea, and it suits the theme well, but I wish the gameplay was more approachable. I found it too punishing early on, like having to go back to the post office to find out which letter I was holding when I could swap them out in my bag.
I found it a little bit too challenging and confusing at the start. Could use some background music or ambient sound fx I think, though given the time frame it's understandable to omit that. Gameplay was great and I enjoyed it very much! Well done!
Nice game! just played it for 30 minutes and I also kinda feel that it's too punishing since all the houses are not in order. It makes the gameplay kinda confusing. I really enjoyed playing this! Good entry!
So shiny pixel! You got a pretty hard challenge to make a game from so boring profession, and you have made it well!
Really polished game! I really like the gameplay and upgrades system! Lovely
hehe, a very nice idea... I'd love to steal this. Some things I would change though, I would give the player immediate access to the delivery truck, it's just not as fun to walk around as it would be to drive. I think you should make the game a little easier as well, give the address along with the name for the piece of mail instead of making the player search for it in the directory.
The graphics are quite lovely, by the way. I always like your games.
Liked the gameplay. After getting the sorting machine it became interesting to pick letters from one or two specific neighborhoods. Then with the Van it became even more interesting to go between houses and return to the Van. Unfortunately it became wa-a-ay too easy with Post Canon: all I had to do was just to take letters from one neighborhood and drive around it. Also after Delivery Fees it became too easy to get the Sorting Machine and Canon, I bought both of them after delivering one full Van. Unfortunately the game crashed before I could deliver all the mail to one neighborhood. The graphics look cute, something like Retro City Rampage.
The lack of any ambiance was disappointing. Also didn't quite catch the theme of "The more you have, the worse it is". With all the upgrades it just became easier to deliver all this mail.
Really liked the game. And deciding where and how to deliver the mail really added the Problem Solving element. I hope you'll continue with this idea and give us full game with multiple towns or maybe whole Tycoon system.
Cute little game! The art was on point and the sounds were good. I wish there was some music. Also some people walking around/cars driving around would add a lot I think. Overall really cool though!
Looks good! I love the pixel graphics you went with!
Os graficos são simples, mas bem agradáveis, no entanto o que mais me impressionou foi como esse jogo é viciante
No inicio eu fiquei meio perdido do que fazer, talvez fosse bom deixar as mecanicas mais claras no inicio, apesar disso, depois de apanhar um pouco para aprender eu comecei a entregar as cartas e sinceramente achei meio trabalhos demais, dai fui comprando os upgrades e quando vi já estava jogando a mais de uma hora e terminando o jogo
A unica coisa que eu posso falar de negativa é que depois de ter todos os upgrades o desafio do jogo fica nulo por um tempo até terminar as cartas, talvez alguns inimigos ou obstaculos deixariam o jogo mais empolgante
Mas enfim, não sei como nem por que, mas é um jogo muito bom. Parabéns!
Charming graphics, the engine sound for the postmans van too made a great fit for the overall theme of the game!
I also appreciated that you didn't block the van from driving onto peoples lawns, to allow me live my fantasy of the postman gone postal, crossing through peoples hedges and across their frontporches to deliver their mail :D
I will however agree with the others who said that the early gameplay is quite punishing, while you later on start having more fun with it, the first steps can be quite frustrating.
A thing which would have been great would have been the ability to use the map at the post-office to also show the numbers of each individual house (because now it was more of a guessing game).
Great work nonetheless :D
Very cute game :) once I got the canon, the delivery speed really ramped up. Well, that was the point, where it started to become real work, to deliver all remaining letters. Maybe you could add some upgrades for the late game. The car controls were a bit tedious, since you cant drive diagonally and need to stop, to turn a corner.
I really liked the sorting animation in the post office. Thats a nice detail :)
All in all great work!
wow, its a really fun game for a "mailman" concept ! how did you come up with this XD ?!
Really nice polished game ! It could use a small background music, but for the rest it is really good :)
What a lovely game. Took me about 40 minutes to beat (pretty sure 5 of those were trying to locate a single house). One of the most well-polished experiences I've had so far.
**What I liked:** * Upgrade system * Graphics * Sounds * Driving * Controller support * Thank you card :heart:
**What I didn't like:** * House numbers * Progression stopping about halfway through the game
I was initially somewhat confused about what to do. I got into the office, grabbed a letter and tried delivering it. After a bunch of trial and error I found the house I was supposed to deliver it to. Later on I figured out you could look up the addresses. Neat, but would have preferred to know that earlier. *Then* I found out you could stamp the letters. I feel like this wasn't communicated properly in the game, which caused me some early frustration. Once I did find out I found stamping the letters quite relaxing and going to each house and putting the letters in the mailbox felt quite satisfying, except for one detail, which brings us to our next point:
(sorry for harsh language)
Maybe I'm just ignorant as to how house numbers work, or maybe you live in a country with a weird numbering system, or maybe applying consistent house numbering is just really hard work - no matter the reason I can't put *into words* the amount of frustration I felt trying to navigate that labyrinthian set of houses all laid out just to taunt my brain and maximise my perplexion. I've never felt so absolutely deceived, fooled and positively enraged as I did during those long lost hours trekking through the vast expanse of the coloured neighbourhoods trying to find a house that *just matches the darn hecking numbers*. So yeah, I feel like that could have been improved.
Alright. That's off my chest now. Next point:
There's something magical about grinding for hours upon hours, repetitively labouring through the night, and losing all sense of priority as your mind narrows in one thing and one thing only: *I need a flipping post cannon*.
Having a goal to strive for, one that's concrete, visible, and achievable is something you should always strive to have at every moment in your game. Whether it's beating your high score, slaying the dragon, or unlocking the post cannon, goals are what always motivate us to keep playing. Upgrades are especially interesting because they're such an elegant way of transitioning the player into the next part of the game. Not only are the post cannon, sorting machine, and driver's license worthy goals to strive for, they also change the way the player experiences the game; with the driver's license you're no longer crossing the streets on foot, inching by like a snail on a treadmill - you're roaring through the streets, drifting through corners, and jumping out the door full-speed as you slam that letter right where it belongs. It also helps that the driving feels absolutely amazing: the acceleration, the drifting, the engine sound, the way the car keeps going as you exit; everything just feels *right*. Good job on that.
As for the other upgrades, they're good as well. The sorting machine - love it, the bag - gotta have that. The automatic stamping - stamping is fun at first, but it soon starts getting tedious and I feel like you get the automatic stamping just as it starts getting old, not too soon and not too late. The post cannon - The build-up from a manually labouring post-man to a fully weaponised mailbox killing machine is what really makes this game great. Driving around doing circles in the green neighborhood, flailing your arms as you throw letters left and rigth, laughing like a maniac, thinking back to the times when you were but a mere child, fumbling around as you gingerly inserted sheets of paper into glorified tin cans, always unsure of where to go next: that's a pretty great feeling.
Speaking of great feelings, there's a 4096 character limit on these comments, so I'm going to have to splice this up. Oh well, more karma I guess?
Unfortunately, I feel like the upgrades are timed just a tad bit off. You get all the upgrades and - great, I still got like 200 (idk if that's accurate but you get my point) letters to deliver. All you've got left to do is to literally go to the post office, spam A, exit the post office, enter the car, drive in a circle (or a square, triangle, whatever; you can be creative with it) ad infinitum. Fortunately, driving around is still gosh diddly fun, and launching the mail as you drive around the nieghbourhood is still incredibly satisfying - it just gets a tiny bit old over time.
Speaking of time, I think it's high *time* I talk about the user interface (no? ok).
It's in the bottom left corner. It's right there. Also, your mail is right there. And when you stamp the papers, the name is right there and the button you have to press is right there and - you just get all the information you need. All the information you want is clearly accessible, readable and in the right place. I'd like to make just one complaint though: In the bottom right corner, where you've got your mail, there's a very visible, clear, dark spot, clearly contrasting against the other UI elements, and every time I look at it I think it shows the currently selected mail. *Every. Time.* I know there's a big, obvious *"THIS IS YOUR CURRENTLY SELECTED MAIL, YOU KNOW THE ONE YOU ARE CURRENTLY HOLDING IN YOUR HAND"*, and I *know* that's what shows my currently selected mail, you know, the one I'm holding in my hand, but when I'm focusing on my character, and on driving around in my little blue car with my stacks of paper trying to find the right house to deliver to, my peripheral vision has clearly singled out that dark indicator, telling me that "hey here's your mail dude", because it *obviously* shows the currently selected mail, it *has* to! And every time, I have to consciously remind myself that it's not, so maybe change that, idk just a suggestion.
So that's really cool but what happens when you win the game?
Well, you've done it kid. You've lapped the city about a bajillion times, you've delivered more mail than FedEx does in a year, *and* you barely scraped the car. What's your reward? What's the big reveal, the final paycheck, the cake in the basement?
Why, it's no less than the most *adorable handwritten thank you letter in the whole flippin world*. I honestly didn't expect much when I delivered that final piece of paper. At worst, I'd get nothing; at best, I'd get a screen saying "hey guys thanks for playing my ld40 game pls rate it so i can get 20 ratings and be top 34 in the fun category thanks :))". So I thought. I was dead wrong.
Oh, and the graphics are nice.
It's good, progression is nice but a bit too quick, graphics are great, controller support is appreciated, the driving is just fabulous and the game is just *fun*. The game felt like an actual game, with goals, progression and rewards and the UI is good. Sure, it didn't really hit the nail on the head with the theme, but most games that follow the theme are crap so :shrug:.
Overall I would rate this :ok_hand::ok_hand::ok_hand::ok_hand::ok_hand: and I do not give out ok hands lightly.
Somehow I got hooked into this game, mainly because the end goal was so easily perceivable at the beginning of the game. There is a lot of fine polish in this game, from the van skidding and not being able to turn a 180 instantly, to sorting animations and nice graphics. I think the ability to stamp the letters could have been communicated a lot better, as I ended up wasting a lot of time trial and erroring at the beginning. Furthermore, the game didn't really fit well with the "the more you have the worse it is" theme, as the you never get more letters throughout the game. Still a fun game though, and definitely enjoyed it.
It is a simple simulation alright. I especially like how each neighbourhood seemingly has its own logic for laying down address numbers, uncanny! The map is well realized in other aspects too. Redding 17, that's where I'd live.
The graphics are neat-o, audio rudimentary yet in the same style.
The main issue here is the lack of a draw, at least for me. I don't exactly wish to roleplay as a virtual postman. The task is huge and going through the pile really does not get any more interesting even with the upgrades.
I expected the mail cannon to be more *spectacular*. It should have shot postage off screen directly from the van inventory, but alas it only uses those in your bag and requires near vicinity. I got down to 200 letters and gave up due to boredom.
The theme doesn't fit, it gets easier with more upgrades! If only there was any kind of challenge here...
Some ideas: - Time limits (deliver these before sunrise, etc.) - Pedestrians and their dogs *to avoid!* - Running over pedestrians and their dogs should result in a hefty fine - Hitting trees should damage the van, takes money to fix - Police officers! Speeding while one is about results in more fines, except if you can out run them! - Traffic! Take too long and the morning commuters rise to spoil your day. - Competitors! Light rivalry with your peers or a blood-thirsty struggle against another postal service. *Time to go postal!*
Stuff like that, not that you had the time in the jam to do anything like it, but how about now!
In conclusion: well made, but drab.
Overall: *Above average (3.5)* Fun: *Trivial (1.5)* Innovation: *Great (4.0)* Theme: *Bad (2.0)* Graphics: *Great (4.5)* Audio: *Above average (3.5)* Humor: *Good (4.0)* Mood: *Above average (3.5)*