Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → Parcel Problems.
By jacob-diaz
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 74 | 3.89 | 46 | |
| Fun | 72 | 3.81 | 46 | |
| Innovation | 47 | 3.95 | 46 | |
| Theme | 56 | 4.13 | 46 | |
| Graphics | 36 | 4.19 | 46 | |
| Audio | 73 | 3.73 | 45 | |
| Humor | 77 | 3.51 | 44 | |
| Mood | 45 | 3.87 | 46 |
Screenshot 2022-10-03 000004.png
Really well done, and one of the most polished games that I've played so far. The physics can be a little wonky at times but that is part of the fun of this experience. I wish that I could see how well I was doing in relation to the quota but I might've been missing something. Good job!
Nice work! Getting used the controls took a bit, and understanding how it all fit together took a bit of time, but once I got a flow going, it was good!
Thanks a ton for the comment @Trabasura! I appreciate the compliments!
The clocks on the left display the total time as well as the current package time, but *under the hood* the game is ensuring you keep an average packing time of less than 10 seconds! I tried to convey how the player is doing with effects but I can see how it could be a little confusing :)
Thanks for the feedback @davidbradbury :D I'm glad it wasn't too hard to piece things together!
Feels super frantic -- nice job!
Funny game! I am glad this isn't my real job. At one point I thought I was doing ok as my vision cleared, but then I still got fired moments later. I guess that's a mood too.
So good! ^^ the conveyor speeding up is what got me in the end, stuff was flying everywhere haha.
my score \o/
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really fun and smooth running game, great job! :)
Nice work! The gameplay felt super frantic / stressful, and it ran very smoothly - great idea to have the ending screen being a firing :)
Good work! The game is really smooth and fun. At one point the conveyor belt got clogged up by bread, which added some extra difficulty.
Thanks for sharing your score @rickylee! Not bad at all :)
If you can manage to deal with a fast conveyor belt full of items in the later stages it can actually help you, since it lets you hand in packages faster too!
Hope i never have to do This in real Life :) Altough i had fun during the game ( strange ). Nice job making This !
@m11 Thanks! I was really trying to get a frantic feeling while still having it be approachable.
@senso, @last-angle Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!
Like the idea. Rand smoothly. Took a min to figure out how to play otherwise was fun when I did. Nice Job!
I want to have a serious talk with the guy up the line sending all the random stuff I didn't need. Made my job very complicated!
No, I love the chaotic atmosphere. In such a messy environment, I love how you only need left and right mouse button to play. While moving items was a little awkward, that awkwardness didn't really feel out of place. It felt like fumbeling through all the mess in a stressful situation, and the heartbeat effect just added to all that.
I did have an issue with the visual effect. After a couple of restarts, it ended up blurring my screen to the point where I couldn't actually read the order I was supposed to package, and it was quite headache indusing to be honest. It did fade over time, sometimes I swear it faded back in... I believe I can understand why it's there, but I would have liked the game more if that effect just didn't exist, I think it was chaotic enough without it.
All in all it was pretty fun! I like the graphics, the picture of my family on the top shelf really kept my motivation up! I really like the simple controls and how everything is sort of tied together. (I had a fun "Ahhhhh!" moment when I realised the finished package had to be sent down the very same conveyor belt! Didn't know where to put it the first time I tried and got fired, but got it the second time! Sidenote; I never read instructions or tutorials, as of writing this I see you explained this in your description, that's on me...)
Now I'm rambling and I don't know how to wrap this up, so, in short, I ran into some issues with the blurry stuff and some items and boxes getting stuck, but I had fun!
@neollok I really appreciate the effort you put into giving feedback! It's very helpful.
I'm happy that the atmosphere felt right and that you felt the panic! And I'm also glad that my last minute additions (like the picture frame) get noticed. I believe you actually caught onto a bug that I found while testing that caused the display to massively over-blur when late in a playthrough. it was a small fix.
Really glad you liked it :D
Very cool concept! I ended up with so many loaves of bread just hanging out and about. A great sim considering the age in which we live in. Nicely done!
Good stuff! It took me a little while to get the hang of the controls but once I got into the flow I found it very satisfying. I really like the atmosphere created by the background noise as well. I've worked some pretty bleak jobs in my life but you made it fun!
What an amazing game! I'm so impressed you made this as a compo! There was so much attention to detail. "Rainforest" lmao, and the photo of his family. I really enjoyed playing this, thank you for making it!
@jag Thank you for all the love! I'm very happy that the little extras I was able to fit in seem to go a long way :D
This is the one I've spent the most time on so far. Lots of fun, and addictive!
It would make an awesome VR game!
Well done game, I liked the way that you leaned into the... consistency of the physics engine. I thought that the effect as the time was about to run out, especially as I knew that a package was on its way out, really sold the mood that I think you were going for. For a game that doesn't really introduce any of what it wants you to do I found it to be fairly intuitive to figure out the parts that I needed to make a good box, good job with that. Overall this was a lot of fun, well done!
@smilewood thanks for the in-depth feedback! I'm glad it was approachable and that the *atmosphere* of the game kidna came across well :)
I'd like to try to play it, but it doesn't seem to work in Wine on Linux. Since it's a Unity game, can you make a Linux or web version?
@coda-highland Thanks for speaking up!
The core reason I don't have a WebGL version is because WebGL doesn't support some of the important post-processing effects I use in some mechanics.
So I hopped into Unity, tried out a Linux build, and dusted off a Linux machine to test it. It seemed to work so I'd love to hear what you think. The Windows build is still the main build I've verified to work in all areas, but the experimental Linux build is now there next to it :)
Seems to work, but I can't pick up apples for some reason! Also there's no quit command anywhere so I had to use a window manager keyboard shortcut to kill it.
It's also nightmarishly difficult to control with a trackpad. XD
But overall, solid experience!
Really enjoy this and a great use of theme -- you never quite feel like you have enough time! The chaos starts pretty high and just gets higher as you play. Would be great in VR!
I wish I could here the grumbles and failures from what I assume are countless other workers near me doing the same ridiculous job. Darkly funny and topical, but still remains innocent and fun. I never got good enough to get very far, but maybe I'm just not cut out for this type of work ;)
Thematic, great presentation, maybe the best I've seen thus far. The heartbeat noises and the camera blur were nice touches.
My one gripe: I had a very hard time moving anything around without it getting stuck. Specifically getting the boxes onto the conveyor belt -- they'd snap up to the top shelf, or go flying off camera, or they'd get stuck on the wall. It felt very clumsy, and I assume this is by intention, but I found it more frustrating than fun. I couldn't get more than two boxes out :slight_frown:
EDIT: After reviewing the instructions again I realized I hadn't used the right click at all. Getting the items to move UP was really hard with just left click :sweat_smile:
Really fun game! At some point, the new package had the same contents as the one going out, so I sat and waited for a new order before understanding. I think some kind of feedback (or stronger if there already is) on when packages are accepted would be nice. Graphics where really good, sound-design was spot on and the gameplay was fun! Great job!
Good game, but control is bad for me
Graphisc and gameplay remind me of Job simulator! Cool game!
Nice work! Once you get the hang of the controls and the flow of the game it's a lot of fun! Maybe i was just missing it but I didn't seem to find an option to close the game other that good old alt+f4. Great job on the graphics and general athmosphere (ambient sounds!) though!
I found some issue. Player can ignore 'Begin Shift' button and start packing items right away.
At some point I had several loaf of bread creating a barrier and making every item fall off the belt. Who orders bread ?
@logovostudio @negdo @daandruff Thank you for the feedback it's really appreciated!
@lazzor I know about the exiting issue but I don't think I can change it at this point! Would adding a "tap *esc* to quit" be considered a new feature and not a big fix? I'm not sure. Thanks for the review :)
@ronn-fever I'm super happy that the theme seemed to come across in both the atmosphere and the gameplay. I love the idea of adding grumbles and gripes from fellow co-workers :D Thank you for the feedback!
@googlypoo I'm glad you were able to sort out your control issue, and I'm happy the effects are working as intended! Thank you for taking the time to play :)
Hey Jacob! I really enjoyed playing this on stream. It was cool trying to figure out how to put everything together and the wonky physics were fun to struggle around with and just perfectly sitting on the border between easy and frustrating. The atmosphere and general vibe fit the theme really well, you should be proud of this compo entry!
@misterstripey Thank you for playing! I really appreciate the feedback. It's been a while since I entered the compo so I'm very happy people are enjoying it.
Wow, good job on this game. It felt really well put together.
Excellent graphics, sounds and mood, it feels very polished.
Some of the interactions felt way too clumsy for my taste, it was pretty difficult to move things around, even with right clicks. I suppose that was intentional, but it felt a bit frustrating to me.
It was pretty fun regardless. Also I think this is a great use of the theme.
Great job!
@mvasko2 thanks for playing and for the feedback!
I've found that a lot of people seem to click RMB instead of hold it, the intended usage was a lot of holding (i.e: holding LMB and RMB together). Maybe that could help? If you were already doing a lot of holding then maybe I have to tune the clumsiness a little :D
@jacob-diaz I was, indeed, doing a lot of holding. I the case of RMB I've found the behavior of the items to be a bit too "bouncy", for the lack of a better word. But then again, the problem might just sit between my keyboard and my chair :smile:
It's much harder then I thought at first minutes. Ant it's cool!
A bit hard to manipulate the box and the objects but it makes it funnier for me =), at first I didn't get the mecanic of pressing button to have the items to finish the package. But overall great idea, nicely excecuted and the graphic style is nice. I liked the intro text humour and the heart beating sound SFX.
Amazing game! very simple and addictive
It's very funny. I like this kind of game, at the beginning you are doing randomly and at the end you are very efficient :thumbsup:
Your sourcecode isn't set to public :p
I was hoping to make a VR fork of this, seems like it'd fit pretty well.
@shadowbrain thank you for speaking up! I believe I've made it public now.
I'd love to see what could do with the project :D
Lovely! Will have something up tomorrow. :)
It got me busy in packing！So hard！and I put the box under the table then It never shows up again（rate back？） sda.JPG
Got it done! I ended up using the physics grab code I wrote for my own entry because it's a lot more stable than the stuff you had and includes rotation which does feel nicer in VR haha.
https://github.com/ShadowBrian/parcelproblems_VR_Fork
https://youtu.be/vizNUWfFLRQ
It gets pretty hectic in VR!
Also needs quite a bit of physical space because of how it's set up, pretty fun though!
@shadowbrain Wow! I definitely see how a VR specific grab system would be needed, my system is quite physics-ey, and tailored to the flat screen version of course.
Super impressive work! Thanks for diving into it, I'll have to give this a try on my headset :)
Thanks! Would love more ratings on my VR entry since you've mentioned you have a headset :p
This game has so much juice! I especially love the particle effects when you place/label a box, it looks so polished! One thing I would add is some background music, but if you're going for a more realistic feel then it's perfect as is.
A solid entry. :thumbsup_tone2:
Fun game! After a couple rounds I was able to score 20 packages with 2599 points. I have to say, it's definitely worth playing to the point where it starts to get more difficult, as I think the difficulty is implemented really well.
In particular, the most frustrating aspect of the game is how items tend to pile up and get in your way, e.g. if you drag something off the conveyor belt by accident. And the difficulty scaling really leans into this. The box starts to fly almost all the way off the box dispenser, making it annoying if you push the button too many times, as then there will be a flat cardboard box in your way. The labels stop being convenient to pick up and instead fall down, requiring frantic grabbing. And, of course, combined with the faster movement of the conveyor belt, all these mechanics combine to make it much more likely that you grab something by accident, and make everything even harder on yourself.
There is one aspect of the game that I find unclear. In particular, I'm not sure whether it is intended that some boxes are outright impossible, and that the intended strategy in that case is to simply make a bad package and move on. If so, I wonder what the best way to judge that situation is as a player.
In particular, I tried a run where I just submitted nothing but empty packages... it seems I failed after 6 packages. (Incidentally, the score display on that run might have glitched out? Here's a screenshot...)
6_packages.png
So it seems like I can't just always make a bad package. As such, I'm not sure if there's, like, an upper cap on the total amount of bad packages I can submit, or if I have to submit a certain ratio of good:bad packages, or what. So, in the cases where it is impossible to submit a good package on time, I'm not sure how to figure out the correct strategy.
That said, I can reasonably assume that I can sometimes submit bad packages, due to the game description talking about "cutting corners," and I can reasonably assume I can't always submit bad packages, due to my empirical test and basically because of common sense. So I think it probably would be possible for me to play this game without necessarily needing elaboration on this aspect of it--I just won't be able to confirm that I'm not doing something wrong.
So overall, I would say this is a really nicely polished game that has a pretty cool set of mechanics and, in particular, a well-implemented difficulty curve.
@honey-pony Thank you for all the feedback! It is super valuable to have someone really dive into the game like you have. I also appreciate that you stuck with it to get to the later difficulty section as I really tried to "tune the chaos" with the belt and labels/boxes having more force to them :D
I think you did encounter a bug, there is a small double counting bug that sometimes overlaps the terrible package counting with other package types. I *think* the score should still be accurate when this happens.
Inside the game, your "health counter" or number of failures increases by either submitting an untaped or still-folded box, or by submitting a package that has absolutely no correct items. So, if you submit something that has at least one correct item on-time then the game is happy with it, but you will get a drastically smaller end score by forgetting lots of items. I guess you could go the whole game with "okay" incomplete packages, but it would take a lot longer to get any high score by the end since perfect packages give a large boost to points. That's the balance that kinda has to be found.
The main way to accrue errors is of course by submitting packages a too slow. The package submission "failure" is based on a running average of recent submission times rather than each individual submission time to allow for a small amount of leniency and "smoothness" to ending the game. The 10s limit still holds on those calculations though. There is no cap on submitting terrible packages (still-folded boxes, untaped boxes, no correct items). But a terrible package will count as multiple failures when compared to just submitting something a little too slow, so you're encouraged to at least get *something* out.
I consider myself a lot more of a developer than a game designer, so I'm glad at least some of my gameplay decisions are enjoyable for people! Again, thanks for playing and for the great feedback.
Nice game idea for this theme! Also I like the sound background and the graphics. Its actually very hard to get used to the controls, also its a bit annoying that sometimes a package gets stuck somewhere if put on the band wrongly.
But this reminds me of the Surgeon Simulator, which I also like a lot :-)
Well done :-)
I agree with the others about the physics being wonky at times, but things generally went better when I tried to just drag things straight from the conveyer into the box. Once they'd touched the surface under the box, it was hard to get them back in, even with lifting them higher. Another side note is that the timers could be a bit difficult to read at times with the blur around the edges.
Overall, this game was a hilarious and unique take on the theme, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. It felt very polished and like something I'd see on Steam or as a VR game.
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