Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Postage Please!
By bts
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 131 | 4.07 | 22 | |
| Fun | 332 | 3.70 | 22 | |
| Innovation | 880 | 3.00 | 22 | |
| Theme | 136 | 4.34 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 275 | 4.15 | 22 | |
| Audio | 331 | 3.62 | 22 | |
| Humor | 241 | 3.71 | 21 | |
| Mood | 266 | 3.89 | 21 |
Brilliant take on the Papers Please genre, and overall very polished and finished game! It was a bit hard to figure out that you have to click the while its on a letter to use it, I just thought it would stamp when I put it on, and after that there were still some responsiveness issues with it, I guess due to it thinking I want to pick it up instead.
@blumbye Thanks for playing and the feedback! I added a note to the page for the stamp clicking in case others have issues. The click-vs-drag stuff might be a bit sensitive depending on the mouse/OS settings used (not something I tested much) so I'll look into it after the jam.
Funny game. Never played Papers Please, so I can't compare it. What bugged me was the fact that I had to stamp a letter without a postage stamp as valid on the first day. Which felt completely wrong, as the rules were already laid out before me (quite literally), but there was no "invalid" stamp yet. Other than that, I had fun playing it.
@thomas-karcher Thanks for playing and your feedback! I considered a few ideas for the first day, but in the end I decided to lean into the whole 'feeling wrong' aspect of having a fully free mail system for that day only. I hoped it would inspire people to open the handbook to check the 'valid mail requires' list, because it isn't how many people would expect a mail system to work. Basically, it was a kinda weird setup to introduce 'how to stamp mail,' introduce your co-worker, and to try and set up the narrative that this isn't just a copy of a real-world post office. (Which is also why it's super short with only 2 customers.)
Thanks for another PICO-8 game. I've never played "papers please" and the controls were very confusing to me initially (I couldn't figure out how to recycle the instructions).
But I eventually figured things out and got promoted :). I loved the dialogue and hated the job, which I think was the intention.
I love pico-8 games. We used pico-8 for our game music cause it was what we were used to. This is feeling just like papers, please. I bet you had a fun time making this.
Extremely well-made game! Seems we had the same basic idea, but our games are very different. The art is create and everything is very clear. Liked the idea of getting notes passed.
I really liked the art in this game, you really pulled a cohesive visual style out of such a small screen. Props on doing all this in Pico-8 as well, I've heard really cool things about it but have never been able to check it out myself.
Took me a second to figure out the stamp but an extremely well put together and polished game. Bonus points for using pico-8, I have a soft spot for pico-8 games.
Really cool game !
Though I had some issues with it, probably because I never played Papers, Please! myself.
First off, it took me a while to understand how to turn pages. You should probably add a short message to explain it somewhere as playing without being able to open the books is impossible.
After figuring that out, I had a good experience, I was doing perfects or just 1 mistake, most often I forgot to check the weight. But it was going smoothly.
Until day 6, with the return addresses. I retried the game like 6 times, I was doing everything right and every single time on day 6 I got the return addresses wrong.
I first assumed the return address was the last line, because by that point I had tried flipping the letter the same way I turned pages on note stacks or books, but it did nothing despite trying lots of times, so I was convinced you couldn't.
I thought it might be wrong initials ? but no, those were correct on many letters.
Maybe it's the format of the whole line ? nope, they are all [2 letters] [2 digits] [1 letter + 1 digit] and still some wrong some right
One of them had the recipient be "Mx EDWARDS" and it turned out the return address was wrong, so I thought maybe that name isn't the recipient but the sender, and Mx is incorrect ? wrong too, as another letter had "Dr TAYLOR" or "Rev SMITH" but it said return address was bad.
I seriously was confused. I thought day 6 was not supposed to be beatable and that it was some sort of cheap way to make a forced ending.
Turns out you can flip them by clicking in the bottom right corner. Up until that point I assumed the entire left and right sides were the triggers, and had I not recorded to try and check what was wrong in post, reviewed it and noticed I hadn't tried spam clicking everywhere on the letter, I would have left a significantly lower note.
It also really doesn't help that clicking in that corner while the letter isn't selected doesn't flip it, so when you're on the town almanac you have to click the letter twice to flip it for example.
Thankfully though I gave it another try and confirmed it was in fact on the backside, where I was expecting it to be.
Anyway, TLDR is it's not lacking much in terms of tutorial, but the turning page and flipping letter interaction really weren't obvious to me and nearly made me very frustrated with this otherwise really good game.
My only other critique is much more tame : I wish the font had a bit more pixels, as it was a bit hard to read, I got used to it after trying again and again but still.
All that to say that it's crazy how a simple small thing can make such a huge difference.
I think a couple solutions to solve this would be : - Have a tutorial step ensuring the players knows how to open the book, you have the call button blink, you could have a rectangle blinking on the handbook to show where to click. - Change the cursor when hovering over an area where flipping is possible - Could also have a different interaction to flip, maybe double click or MMB or a keyboard key that would work no matter where it's done (though that could still lead to problems if you try normal clicking on the side and don't try this method)
I did beat day 6 in the end, at least it was the last day so had I not found the flipping interaction I at least wouldn't have missed any content, apart from seeing "promoted" at the end I guess haha.
Well anyway, great game still, I had fun and liked it enough to give it many more tries than the average jam game !
@patatenouille Hey, thanks for the feedback and for playing the game. I think the comments you've left are great.
Regarding the font; because I used Pico-8 I was pretty limited with what was achievable in the time limit, and just went with the default font. The resolution of the game itself is so low (128x128) that something larger wouldn't be super easy to lay out with the amount of stuff going on-screen.
The flip interaction was an interesting and tricky one; for most places I tried to make it obvious by representing anything that could flip as a stack of paper. (The intent being that you click on/near the next sheet.) The envelope, as you found, is the outlier. I wanted to add an additional affordance for this (I was considering either a different cursor or a highlighting rectangle) but unfortunately I just didn't have the time to put anything in, so I left it as-is for the submission. I will probably make an update after the voting is over and this is one of the things I want to add.
Thanks again for the feedback and for liking it enough to play to the end.
Really enjoyed this game! The writing was impeccable and it had enough gameplay elements to keep me entertained. The interface was a bit small (especially the font) and cramped, although I understand that is a limitation of PICO-8 and the claustrophobic feel of the workspace fits the post office booth anyways :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: As @patatenouille mentioned, I got stuck on level 6 because I couldn't figure out how to flip the letters for the return adresses. (luckily I went back to finish the game after I read their comment, I had too much fun the first to miss that promotion ending!) I think a folded corner would've clued me in. I think a few QOL improvements and a touch of music could make this a worthy successor to Papers Please! Awesome work! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Very different from what we often saw here, congrats for your entry :D
Excellent Papers please take on the subject!
The tediousnessis real! Good execution. It got a bit confused whern I stamped with both stamps though.
This is really well made, the amount of polish is very high, the chip sounds are very convincing! Only shortcoming is this is a clone of papers please so there's not much new here, but everything else is fantastic!
Glad I finally got the chance to check this out! I found the controls intuitive and appreciated the different highlight colour on the cursor when items were held/the flashing "call" button when trying to initially figure out the gameplay. Thew colleague passing notes was a great take on citations from papers please, although they did feel very chatty when they were supposed to be working :) Also the extra pages on the sides of the books to show you whether you can flip in that direction was a really nice touch. Nice job!