mantook 2023-05-02 14:44
Can't believe you made it alone in 3 days! It looks and feels very dystopic and the atmosphere with the audio reflects that so well. I was pretty bad at the game but I love it
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Pneumatic Postman
By klausklapper
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 171 | 4.01 | 46 | |
| Fun | 383 | 3.63 | 46 | |
| Innovation | 135 | 3.93 | 47 | |
| Theme | 6 | 4.63 | 47 | |
| Graphics | 125 | 4.42 | 47 | |
| Humor | 182 | 3.82 | 42 | |
| Mood | 51 | 4.32 | 47 |
Can't believe you made it alone in 3 days! It looks and feels very dystopic and the atmosphere with the audio reflects that so well. I was pretty bad at the game but I love it
Hi! First of all, I think you did a very nice work, I really liked your game. :) Here's some feedback from my few plays: - From the few first seconds, I was really curious about your game! The mood is very well done, and it gave me _Severance_ vibe right away. I like the music and the vibe. - Maybe it's done on purpose, but I wish I had a few seconds first to get familiar with everything. I got overwhelm on my first run because of that. (I was on my trackpad so maybe not helping) - I wish it would be faster between runs, I do like your intro, but still. - After a few try (and me picking up my mouse), I did get better at it, but I do find the game to maybe on the difficult side for now (or maybe I'm just bad at it!)
I would really love to play the game again, especially if you had more stuff and update, cause it was really enjoyable! Great work :)
I love this!! It was a bit overwhelming at first, but on subsequent tries I sorta got the hang of it (although I still feel I'd make a terrible employee at Faceless Corp.) This game reminds me of Wertpol's Menagerie series (specifically Archive), was there perhaps some inspiration?
The graphics & ambience are also really great. Awesome entry!
@samoussa Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it. I fully agree with the difficulty curve being too heavy. It's also missing a proper onboarding experience, where elements are being introduced step by step and properly explained, but I was lacking the time for that in the end. By the way, you can skip the initial intro by pressing ESCAPE :)
@orbitaldot I have never heard of Wertpol's Menagerie, but a quick Google search adds it to my ever growing pile of shame of things to try out, thank you! Conscious inspiration was definitely taken from "Papers, Please!" and the "Portal" series, although Severance also quite fits the theme.
Wow. I want the full version of this game. It's just superb, amazing work. I agree with the reviews above. At first the game seems confusing and my first runs I was failing very quickly. Anyway, great entry! The aesthetics and atmosphere are great. P.S. I like the way you wrote the description for the game, immediately sets the right mood for the game
The game is very fun, but it is also pretty hard. I really like the mechanics, how you have to search for names and desks and stuff.
Dayum, this is a solo project? Looks and feels great, though at the beginning it is a bit overwhelming. On my first run I got fired before I realized what I am even doing. Maybe some job onboarding would help.
At first we are greeted by pleasant music and 10 frames in the main menu, but let's write this off to my weak PC. But then the game itself begins. It looks pretty good overall, and if I had a wall-sized monitor, I would even appreciate the beauty of it. But the very high sensitivity of the mouse and the very very very VERY loud sounds, which are not adjustable, get in the way very much. Unfortunately because of all of the above I could not enjoy your game.
@thereddevil @grizeldi Thank you for your feedback! I agree the difficulty is too unforgiving for new players. I wanted a more natural progression system, but I lacked the time. I might extend this game past the LD scope and add proper onboarding, a tutorial and slowly introduce new gameplay elements.
@nikfus I'm very sorry to hear that. The game was developed by me on a desktop computer for my mouse settings and performance profile, I didn't have the time to optimise for smaller system or offer options like mouse sensitivity or audio settings. Still, I greatly appreciate your feedback and thanks for giving it a try! :)
Game won't load for me. HTML loading bar is stuck at 0%. Tried to download it but i can't unzip it. Skjermbilde 2023-05-02 225827.png ("uspesifisert feil" is unspesified error) Maybe a windows defender problem but i have downloaded a lot of unity games from here without problems
impeccable vibes. Loved trying to figure out where to put packages that had incorrect information!!! Definitely needs a sensitivity settings and a bit more clear indication on *what* the one mistake you made is, and maybe some leeway for mistakes on earlier days. All around super solid though!
Holy cow this is amazing! My favorite game of the jam so far!!
I usually skip intros but the mysterious mood, the foreboding music... You did a great job capturing my attention. The array of tubes was appropriately overwhelming, but I thought it was very intuitive and I picked up quickly how I was supposed to find the right tube. It gave me "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes" vibes. I loved the pressure from the loud clanking and accumulation of deliveries. I was panicking trying to do deliveries as fast as I could until I gave up and just started randomly stuffing them into tubes. Loved the ending, I actually laughed out loud as everything fell apart around me. The different items in the packages was also a cute touch.
I only did one playthrough for now, but I'm definitely recommending this to my friends and going to be aiming to get a high score later.
Seriously, you are super talented and this is an amazing short experience. Amazing attention to detail, and everything felt just right. 5/5 from me :)
Wow, looks very classy both in the screenshots and in the game. It took me 2 tries in the game and then reading the "How to Play" section on the page to start playing But in 6 attempts I was only able to correctly distribute 2-3 parcels. It was too hard for me right away.
I actually really liked having the ability to figure things out on my own. A suggestion I have is to have adaptive difficulty. Maybe don’t send the first package until the player looks at the directory. Maybe don’t send more packages until the first one is delivered properly. Maybe if several wrong packages are sent something prompts the player to look at the directory. The first thing I did was look around and click on things, and I clicked on the book. Which might explain why I didn’t have any problems.
I also had really bad mouse issues. I'm playing games mostly on my laptop after sitting at my desk so much during the jam. Trackpad was bad so I plugged in my mouse, dpi 800, but that didn't help, nor did lowering my sens through my OS. Since I also work in Unity and have spent quite a bit of time (albeit in my limited dev experience) trying to make first person cameras work, I'm guessing that how ever you wrote your camera controls doesn't play well with trackpads (like auto max acceleration or something) and can't detect if a mouse is there to behave properly. Hope that helps if you try to debug for a post LD release.
SUCH a good opening, this game oozes atmosphere. Having played it I can TRULY understand how foreshadowing that opening was. I don't know if my eyesight is going out on me or if I'm just a trash mailman but good lord it was hard to read some of those capsules.
That said I think it REALLY delivered on the overall experience. Idk if I've ever seen a game so truly capture the feeling of being given a hopeless thankless and merciless job. I got one mail delivered successfully but quit out before losing my second play through because I was TERRIFIED of the sound it makes when everything explodes.
Great job, easily the most atmospheric game I've seen so far.
Really cool game, loved it from the first sight. I liked the vibe and simplicity of the gameplay part. Besides 0 tutorials i knew how to play from the first glance. Congratz of the submission!
If u decide to make a full version please ping me : )
@helekopeter This is interesting. Are you by chance on a 32bit OS? That might explain why the mono DLL isn't loading properly. I only released for 64bit systems. I will look into doing a 32bit release as well. Also, I have absolutely 0 clue why the web version won't load, but am currently stuck in real life obligations. I might get some time to fix it over the weekend.
@reaxt @francis @out1oud @oter @groundwater-studio @sparklingsushi Thank you all so much for playing my game, your feedback and your kind words, it means the world to me. Realising I succeeded in conveying a certain type of atmosphere and feeling is an astonishing first time experience for me like this.
At the moment, I'm a bit swamped with the daily grind of life again, but I will definitely put out a new version including Sound settings and better mouse support, instructions as well as the option to play blind or with a guided tutorial. Although that will have to be outside of LD as I think it's against the rules to update your game for non breaking bugfixes.
Whether I will add actual new content (story, more interactions, upgrade systems, etc...) remains to be seen, but your feedback certainly makes me want to extend on this idea.
Got it working. I was on 64-Bit Windows 11. The problem was with unzipping the file. It worked when I unzipped in 7zip but not with Windows Explorer. Weird, I have unzipped lots of Unity games with Explorer without problems. Anyways I'm glad I got it working. This is definitely a 5/5 for mood. Feels very polished for a jam game. Great job!
@klausklapper I'm exciting to see it! The music and coming down from the pipe in the opening IMMEDIATELY had me thinking of Little Nightmares, maybe there's some juicy inspiration to be found there as you build things out ;) course I'm biased cuz I love Little Nightmares.
I'd love to see where you go with this, Do you have any socials anywhere? This was our first LD so idk where to look to find em hahaaa
@groundwater-studio Thank you! Little Nightmares is amazing, loved the second part as well (check if out in case you haven't yet). I created an itch.io page over here https://racoonteur.itch.io/pneumatic-postman including a discussion board, feel free to follow along. I'm not sure how quick I will get to it, so make sure to subscribe to updates :)
@klausklapper done and done!
Such a great concept, the atmosphere and visuals are stunning, and I love the sense of urgency it creates. Especially once you start finding mistakes in the recipients details. A little stressful but a very enjoyable experience!
Nothing others haven't said here : cool game with a really nice atmosphere!
Onboarding is lacking, but after a couple of tries you quickly become way more efficient once you've figured out the workflow and tube layout. Mouse sensitivity was unfortunately very high for me which made it a bit tricky.
Great job!
I was immediately dragged in by the aesthetics, so you definitely succeeded in that field!
In terms of gameplay, I understand that the pacing was hacked in quickly - on my first playthrough I wasn't even able to deliver a single mail due to me overanalysing everything. I also do think that the pipe leakage isn't really indicated clearly - I wouldn't even know something is leaking in the first place if I hadn't read the note on failure note.
I also have some mixed feelings for the control scheme. Have you considered using something else than a default first person camera? The fact that you're required to constantly use the zooming sounds weird. I was wondering if this formula would work better if it was more of a point-and-click perspective, with camera being static and transitioning to given sections of the level when they're clicked. It's more of an idea than anything, you'd have to mess with it and see what feels better.
Other than that, interesting piece of a game. Love the visuals (the varying content of mail tubes was a nice touch) and gameplay has potential. If you add some new mechanics that are progressively introduced and also mix some story into it, then you have a pretty neat "Papers Please"-esque game. Not to mention that what you **delivered** right now feels like a finished product for something that was created in 3 days, so good job! (also, I appreciate that you made a web build!)
@krzyhau Thank you so much for your feedback. I agree that the first person view can become quite hectic and the zooming is not the best solution. My initial idea was to use keyboard controls only, with only one output pipe where you had to set the address by entering Floor and Desk in a terminal - but I quickly fell in love with the idea of countless tubes and the chaos deriving from them. Going with a static camera is an interesting idea, I'll bring it into consideration for future development :)
That is a great entry!
It would be nice a "relaxed" mode where you only deal with post at your own pace
Survived two days
Oh wow, so much content here! Well done! Intro was super well done and set the great mood. Very interesting take on the theme, very original! The game ran pretty well, but I have a relatively beefy compuser. I like how smooth everything feels, especially when reading through letters and books!
My main complaint here would be a mouse sensitivity; the whole game is super sensitive, and interestingly, going fullscreen made it several times worse, with me moving the mouse just a tiny bit, but the view flying all over. But when not fullscreened, it was still playable. However, this is super impressively put together and you did an amazing job, definitely one of my favorite entries this jam, well done!
Absolutely insane, I have played this game with my students and they loved it and have understood instantly, tho on the sound was very loud on the web player, but gg seriously !
Nice work! The game is very hard for me but I love the visual and audio. Wish there is a mode that I can be the bossy distributer and don't care about time haha
First up, the graphics and the audio are really good! I really liked it. It is an interesting concept as well! However, there are some things which made it very inaccessible to me: - I would really appreciate the ability to change the sensitivity as it was wayyy too fast than I am normally used to. - Things get overwhelming extremely quickly for me, so unfortunately I was only able to play the game for a very very short time. Maybe it was intended, and in that case, it is alright.
Other than that, this is very well done. Great job!
Awesome game, one thing though is the mouse sensitivity which was very high, so maybe add a settings option.
Was really tough at first, but yeah I did get better over time.
I like that the game is played from a fixed perspective just rotating the camera around and zooming in.
Found that information just being wrong was a bit unfair, ended up just looking at the employee number on every package.
@kromeboy @dzejpi @routard @callbackthefunction @jatinstic-gaming @zarple Thank you all very much for your feedback! I'm really glad people are enjoying the game, that's such a fulfilling experience.
Also, I promise to publish a post LD version including a better onboarding experience and - most importantly - sound and mouse sensitivity options ;)
If you'd like to stay in touch, head over to https://racoonteur.itch.io/pneumatic-postman in order to get notified when a new version is out.
Great game but I had to turn my sensitivity all the way down. It reminded mee of I expect you to die for some reason and I feel the game could really benefit from some dialog that tells you if you are doing a good job or not. Stunning graphics i wish i could accomplish that in only 72 hours.
Very nice. Nice team fit and great graphics. The music was super along with the effects. I was so losts and only managed to get 1 in the first round, then 2 then 4 but I am still lost xD Congrats doing this all alone! Great job!
The game is very fun and it is so impressive for a game jam game it's 10/10!
OMG my anxiety! this really gave me that feel of working an "high end job" 4/5
I'll try playing it later but I was watching a streamer playing it now... and I think it could be fun - or at least funny - if there was an option to play it like Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, with a second player dealing with the binder for the first one.
I loved everything that I saw. It's nice how the scoring is conveyed through a letter instead of having it in UI. The menu intro was something I'd expect from a full game, so... "cinematic".
If I were to suggest something, it would be to space things out so the first day starts easy with simple deliveries, then the next day (or later) introduce valve failures and so on.
Oh man! This game was very hard and very loud :P I didnt manage to get past day 1, I just shipped out the first package when the game told me i lost and blew out my ear drums haha
The title screen in this game is one of the best ones ive seen in any game jam and the game looked like a lot of effort and fun once you get the hang of it. A more gracious intro would've gone a long way tho
Nice intro scene! This is SO professional-looking and polished! It's quite complicated though, and quite loud too. The titlescreen was so awesome too, amazing job! It's totally on theme for the jam!
Very solid entry. Good job! Wish it was a little bit easier, or have some difficulty curve, so u can get familiar with the game.
@sebastiaan-wouters @remus @tul-games @rookrules @wendel-scardua @blue-pin-studio @weirdbitgames @daniil-vakhrushev
Thank you all very much for your feedback, it's really appreciated. It's taken me a while to respond as I've been busy with life, but I do plan to release an updated version soon, including sound & mouse sensitivity options as well as a more gentle introduction to the game.
Stay tuned! If you want to know more or follow any further progress, feel free to visit https://racoonteur.itch.io/pneumatic-postman and subscribe to any updates.
Cheers and have a great weekend everyone!