Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → It's a Pipe Dream
By dracco-0n, 140756, thetourist591 and spring
🤖 AI-Assisted
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 32 | |||||
| Fun | 31 | |||||
| Innovation | 31 | |||||
| Theme | 32 | |||||
| Graphics | 32 | |||||
| Audio | 32 | |||||
| Humor | 29 | |||||
| Mood | 30 | |||||
Solid mood, satisfying steam sounds sending tubes through time! I liked the touch of the letters having flair from their era, and appreciate all the work that went into the writing, some great return letters when you sent packaged to the wrong year. Great vibe!
Love the atmosphere and gameplay. Just needs a bit more of an overall goal, really, and you've got a gem in your hands. I'd also recommend a way to get rid of some of the messages you get, since they seem to stack up infinitely & could definitely begin to cause lag after some time.
Interesting game! I liked the concept, thought it was fun to match stories to items. The transparency on the map to signify different lines was neat. I did feel the game went on a bit long, but I stuck it through to the end and chose the ending where I went inside. Art and music were very good. Overall, great job!
The mailman swore all the way up the stairs.
WOW, lots of fun. Theme is perfectly displayed though rather ironic that it is powered by a time machine which would be future tech. Never the less, full points for old tech! I actually spent a good 35 minutes playing before the game crashed on web, might have been something on my side. Lots of nice touches that are subtle details like the paper types and the language from their era.
I highly recommend expanding and making a full game out of this. It has all the ingredients that keeps you engaged. Little bits of each story is surprisingly interesting despite a short note.
Great work!
@maakole ahh a really great feedback, thanks I’ll definitely take it on board in future versions!
@delta I’ll check for any issues that might cause the game to crash, as one of my teammates ran into something similar during testing. I’ll also defo give some thought to develop it into a more complete game :) thanks so much for spending so much time playing our game and for the nice words!
@t-c thanks for playing it, hope u enjoy the ending! and yes it is a bit long haha, maybe we will add more fun during the gameplay in the future ;)
Wow. The game was amazing. The art, vibes, and sound design were all amazing. The art especially I loved the style. It felt like working an actual job (but in a good way). I have genuinely no complaints about the game.
@blake-mullin thank you for being the first person to leave a comment here and for mentioning those lil details! all those late nights over the past few days were worth it haha XD
@thanatosisanoob thankss! I'm so impressed as well haha, we have such an amazing artist (@spring) <333
The artwork is lovely! All the pipes, paper notes and little capsules give the desk so much character. Trading objects across different centuries is a really fun idea too, especially swapping a player piano for a toothbrush :D
Great job on this project! The visual style and audio fit together really nicely, creating an awesome vibe. Super impressive execution within the 72-hour limit! Left my ratings! If you have some spare time, feel free to drop by our page and try out our entry as well. Would love to hear your feedback!
Amazing 2D art I love this style, and the gameplay is really innovative! You guys did an awesome job omg
Such a creative take on the Old Tech theme! I love the idea of trading objects across different centuries, and the catalogue adds a really nice storytelling touch. Super charming concept!
I really enjoyed this game, the letters were compelling and figuring out which item to send to fulfill a request was a fun puzzle. The music provided a nice relaxed atmosphere and everything was very cohesive. Great work!
@landosystems thanks for the nice words!! hope u enjoy the story ;) we’ll be adding more interesting content in the near future!
超级有意思的游戏！画面和音乐都非常漂亮非常舒服，想法也超级有趣，看到很多内容的时候也是会心一笑，实在是特别天才的......美术实在是完美的，色调和质感都非常贴合游戏气质。故事设计也特别好，有一种跨越时间参与了很多人的生活一角的感觉，主角就这样在每个时间点之间游走然后短暂地掠过大家的故事，用这样的方式去呈现时光机真的特别有创意！请原谅我语言很贫瘠，但是真的是非常喜欢的一个作品......（顺带一提我不知道是不是因为便签太多了我玩到一半卡死了所以没能全收集！非常遗憾之！打算之后再重新尝试一下，是我会很想重复体验的作品）
@anima-animus049 谢谢你给我们留下这么好这么真诚的评论！我也觉得美术音乐好厉害，在Godot里面听着bgm把素材重新拼接起来的时候心情就是爆炸瘫坐震撼美味哈哈哈。以及@spring老师是我心中最牛的画手！已经好几个朋友反馈卡死的情况，一开始还以为是偶然，我今晚会紧急修补一下，并且对游戏流程做一点小改进，避免太多人玩不到结尾。在jam的评审结束之后我们也会继续在itch更新，尽可能让游戏可以更加完整，因为还有很多地方因为时间有限没能做完。期待日后我们还可以评论区再会！
I really like how the game looks and sounds. The little bits of story are interesting to read and the items in the capsules are often surprising and unexpected.
Somehow I managed to lose one of my maps halfway through the game. I dragged it outside of the screen accidentally. 😁
The game gets a little bit repetitive after a while. I think you could have introduced new game mechanics after every few packages to make the game less predictable.
@woona oh my, maybe that map accidentally fell into a pile of items and got shipped out with the rest XD
And thanks for the suggestions! I’m also trying to come up some new mechanics to make it more interesting. I’d love to hear any ideas from anyone reading this in the comments as well haha, thanks in advance! :)
@nursultan wasn’t even going to reply at first, but I think you should know that using AI to mass-generate comments on other people’s games to promote your own is inappropriate. I keep seeing your comments like this _everywhere_ 😅
The idea of piecing together the secrets behind objects and letters spanning different centuries is genuinely fascinating. It creates such a rewarding sense of discovery, making the entire process feel like an archive investigation. Great work bringing such a unique historical mystery to life!
@eugenik Thanks for your feedback! That’s exactly the feeling we hoped to convey to players. We really appreciate it!
the pneumatic post office is such a wonderful setting, and trading objects and letters with people from other centuries through a strange machine is a great hook. i love that the letters have flair from their era, it makes the whole catalogue feel like a little museum. was the time travel logic planned out first, or did the objects come first and the story grew around them? really lovely atmosphere.
I really liked this! I considered pneumatic tubes during brainstorming as well. The premise lends itself well to some interesting little vignettes, and I learned about a few new things (I like the abacus ring!). The ending was great as well. Very solid all around.
@perrarancino The objects came first, and the story grew around them.
When we were given the theme **Old Tech**, we thought of the book *Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects*, especially its mention of the pneumatic postal system.
It made us think about the value of old tech. Some techs have survived as the foundations of things we still use today. Others have become symbols of nostalgia, or are remembered for their distinctive aesthetic qualities（when someone mentions "old tech" certain objects and a particular atmosphere naturally come to mind.）
Yet countless other techs have disappeared into the passage of time, fading from both everyday life and collective memory.
If we set aside the Whig view of history—the idea that history is a steady march toward progress—and even put nostalgia aside, we may find that **technological development is not a linear process. People and techs have always shaped and selected one another.**
People in the past imagined many different versions of the present we live in today. Perhaps, by looking at some of these forgotten techs, we might discover that our world could have turned out differently.
Borrowing the form of the pneumatic postal system, we wanted to create a **barter-based exchange system**. Rather than measuring objects by their monetary worth, technological sophistication, or aesthetic appeal, **we wanted every object to stand on equal footing.**
And since these objects belong to different times and places, exchanging them naturally becomes a journey through time.
music is very cool!
Really loving this game! The color palette, cozy and atmospheric vibe and pneumatic tube mechanics are fantastic. The deduction and map-based routing gameplay strongly remind me of Strange Horticulture.
@ancientpawz ah I've heard of it but haven’t played it before, will give it a go! and thx for the nice words :))
哇！这真的是一个主题选取、机制设计、整体氛围塑造、艺术性表达和完成度全都做得很好的游戏！我喜欢在把属于另一个时代的东西寄出去，看到对方的反馈之后，想象在这之间发生过什么有趣的事情的过程！按照年代和地图推理管道的过程也很大程度上增强了游玩沉浸感！正如另一个评论提到的，玩起来感觉自己真的在做这份工作！另外UI交互上的考虑也很全面！真是在72h内达到了惊人的完成度！Nice work!!
I love this. The artwork, the stories, I even learned something. I still have a lot left to unlock but I really enjoyed it.
@bay-l 感谢游玩🙏 最初主要是想用物品的独特来营造一种“志怪”感，没想到在写信的时候越写越对味，大家反而都对信件内容比较感兴趣哈哈哈。年代和地图推理那里有点灵机一动，没想到效果还不错，谢谢你的喜欢，希望我们之后都做出越来越好的游戏！
@ludumdaredevil thx for playing! I’m planning to add some new mechanics to make the gameplay less repetitive and encourage player to unlock other fun items 🏃
I really liked the atmosphere! I spent quite a while playing and had a great time. The music is awesome, and the puzzles were a bit challenging, but in a good way haha. Also loved the art. Great job!
Up-front, I don't think I'm your target audience, so take this with a huge grain of salt! I thought this was a well-made game, but it's a genre I don't normally play. I figured I'd give you as many impressions as I can so that you could see if you're hitting the mark you sought out to hit, not because I think that my opinions are correct! :)
I thought it was a really cool idea to turn a Zelda-style trading quest into a non-linear narrative game! The randomized nature didn't really click with me, though; I think a hand-crafted series of items/descriptions would have served the game better than the current generic requests and responses. The writing and environmental storytelling are two very big draws (the generally macabre nature of the letters and item descriptions crafted such an eerie mood), but getting mostly generic requests/responses reduced their impact. It's possible that this is a side-effect of the English translation, and it might read more fluidly in the native Chinese
Similarly, because of the semi-randomized nature of the gameplay, I had a hard time with a few of the requests; some of the solutions were very ambiguous, and others didn't feel like they matched up very well with the request. On one request, I was asked for something "small and finely made", when I had a pocketwatch, kaleidescope, and klein bottle. It was a big surprise to me that they were asking for the klein bottle, when any of those items felt as though they satisfied the request. I was later asked for "something worth keeping" when I had a pocketwatch, music box, and money, and was shocked it was the money that was being requested, as that felt like the only thing *not* worth keeping of the group.
In terms of UX, there were so many nice little touches that I really appreciated! The subtle click-into-place of the map overlays was quite thoughtful, as was the way that letters collapsed down into just their date/location when you closed them. These two things turned route-finding into a pleasant little activity, rather than feeling tedious at all - Well done! The only feedback that I have around the main gameplay loop is that changing the time machine clock felt detached from the rest of the game, and *did* just feel like a bookkeeping chore, because it didn't interact with any of the other systems. I pretty consistently forgot to set the clock before sending a response out to each letter, and it added an unfortunate layer of frustration to an otherwise quite pleasant experience interacting with the game systems.
Also, I absolutely loved the background music! I would be happy to just put it on in the background while I do chores or go about my day to day activities
Overall, this was really charming, well-polished, and there was clearly quite a lot of care put into it! Even though it's not my style of game, I still think it's a good game! With a little bit more polish, I could see this being a really fun and creative way to tell a story across several generations :) Well done!
@koolruz first of all, I really want to thank you for taking so much time to properly play and review our game, especially when it’s not a genre for you. Critical feedback is always so much more helpful. I was initially quite unsatisfied with our game, but after receiving so many positive comments, I guess I was starting to get a little carried away. Your review rly gave me the motivation to revisit the things I was unhappy with in the first place, and to work towards polishing the game further (and ofc making better games in the future!)
Given the number of items (we have around 40 items, each with its own set of properties), letters and replies, and the semi-random systems (I’m personally very interested in procedural content generation, so I wanted to experiment with some randomness in the game), it's still quite challenging for me to figure out how to improve the narrative sequence. To make the system work with random combinations, we had to organise everything using tags and functions of items, write the corresponding logic for all the items, and make sure the game wouldn’t get stuck in an unwinnable state. Just finding all these unique items and handcrafting the letters associated with them was already a huge amount of work, so we simply didn’t have enough time during the jam to design a complete narrative arc on top of that.
and yes, a handcrafted sequence of items would have made things so much easier to manage, but I still kinda wanted to find a way to use randomness to give the game a bit more variety and flexibility. Either way, I will definitely be reworking the entire narrative system in near future.
As for the time system, players can actually change the date quickly by simply typing in a number (but I get it can still be a bit boring!) I also added a special mechanics involving it: if you deliberately send an item to its recipient a year or two too early or too late, they’ll give you a unique response XD I hinted at this in the manual, but I realise now that most players probably won’t read it very carefully haha. will probably try to integrate the time mechanic more naturally into the gameplay by adding more narrative content that makes use of it :)
Many thanks!!!
Very cool entry! Fun idea to be able to send objects across time and get different responses based on both your input =) The art and music + sounds all fit the game really well. As mentioned in another comment I felt like some of the connections to the hints and objects you had to send weren't always the most obvious however. The catalogue of items with their descriptions was a nice touch, as well as contextualizing the tutorial as a manual. Being able to load and continue is really nice for a game jam project as well (although the credits didn't seem to work anymore when loading the game again - the screen stayed black after clicking on the menu button) I really enjoyed my time with it!
首先要感谢作者来评价我的小小作品，也正是因为这份意外的缘分，让我发现了这样一部精彩的作品！非常享受游玩的过程，目前还在努力收集全部图鉴中！
游玩时最让我惊喜的部分，是发现多位相同收件人的信件竟然横跨了不同的年份。想到作者仅仅用了三天时间，就构建出了这些人物各自的故事、经历与时间线，实在让人佩服。我变得更享受逐封拆阅信件的过程期待熟悉的名字出现。但随着时间推进，他们的诉求、处境与心境却已经悄然改变。这让我忍不住去留意每一封信的日期，试图从只言片语中拼凑出他们未曾被直接讲述的人生：在两封信之间的几年里，他们究竟经历了什么？是什么让他们从当初写下那些话的人，变成了如今的模样？我们并没有真正见证这些人物的人生，只是偶然经手了他们在某个时刻寄出或收到的一封信，却仿佛透过这些零散的文字，窥见了时代如何在普通人的生活中留下痕迹。
尤其记得一封信，似乎是战后的 Helen（希望我没有记错人物！），她提到战争已经结束，请不要再寄来带有火种的物品了。
读到这里时，我脑海里突然响起了中岛美雪的《时代》。
现在是如此的伤痛欲绝，眼泪也早已流乾了，大概再没有机会有展现笑容的时候了。但是有一天一定能够坦然开心对人讲：我曾经经历过那样子的时代。相信一定能够笑著脸对人说：曾经有过那种时代的呢。
或许正是那种被轻描淡写地写进日常通信里的时代变迁，战争结束了，这对历史而言是一个明确的节点，但对于身处其中的普通人来说，生活并不会随着某个年份的结束就突然恢复原样。那些曾经理所当然的需求、恐惧与习惯，仍然留在他们的语言里，同时留下“幸存者”的讲述。
而作为玩家，我们只能从一封封信中，慢慢意识到时间已经过去，世界似乎正在改变，那些写信的人也在继续生活。
通过这样的设计让玩家主动去想象文字之外的人生，我觉得是一件非常了不起的事。非常感谢作者带来这样一段体验！
I like the concept but I'm missing something the containers don't have any address on them, I starting sending them anywhere because it would come back with code I can match to a line number, what am I missing?
Maybe the first container should be a bit more of a walk through.
@gbt13 wow I think you're the first player mentioned the manual here haha, some ppl said it's too long for a game (maybe it is) but I somehow enjoyed writing it. and yes we'll defo change the mechanism to make letter & item more related to each other, and look into the credits bug. thanks so much for spotting these :)
@darkshadow u need to match the postcode in the letter to the correct item, then send the item to that address (and the corresponding year)
@supernova191919 啊啊啊谢谢你也来试玩我们的游戏并且写下这么好的feedback！说起来你应该是为数不多注意到多封信件是来自同一个作者的玩家（当然也是因为随机性没有设计得足够好导致那封信似乎不太容易被随机到），感谢你这样认真！战争题材尽管我们没有刻意选择，但是因为气动邮政本身存在的年代以及一些物品的时代与之高度重合，因此很自然地成为了叙事的一部分。正如我在另一条评论里回复的，我们其实花了最多的时间在选择那些千奇百怪的物品（old tech XD）上，最后留给撰写订单的时间并不多，因此目前的内容还有不少瑕疵，有些地方是根据特定的条件触发组合的。但最令我惊讶的是，即使是这样缺乏主线、有些漏洞的叙事也还是游戏中最引起大家兴趣的部分。果然真正打动人的还是人的故事啊！！
回复你提到的关于游戏中寄信人们的人物小传——我们最初本来是决定设计一个“物品流通历史记录”，让每个拥有过这个物品的人都留下一个简短的关于物品也关于自身如何使用的记录，不过因为工作量太大最后干脆先隐藏不显示了。人物小传也是一个特别有趣的想法，不过还需要仔细揣度一下可行性（）以及我也会继续想办法将整个游戏完善为更完整的叙事结构，欢迎以后更多讨论 :)
I'm speechless - this game is so cool! The art style is really nice; you can tell right away that you put a lot of effort into it! The gameplay itself seems pretty basic, but for some reason, I just want to keep playing and progressing further, reading the letters and the replies to the objects I send them.
The concept is great, and the animation, story, and atmosphere all work really well together. The whole experience feels very comfortable to play, the art is beautiful, and the story really sticks with you afterward.
The interaction and guidance could use a bit more polish, though. I’d suggest giving the clock a much more obvious hover effect. Before reading the instructions, I had no idea I was supposed to change it manually.
I found this concept and design to be extremely creative and unique. I also am very fond of pneumatic tubes. I especially love the characters, the backdrops and story interaction through letters is fascinating. This was a wonderful experience, thank you. https://www.youtube.com/live/1jKZ760uuDk?t=4159
哦真的是我这次jam目前玩到的最完美的游戏了，简约但是可视化的2D美术，很棒的质感以及这个把一个时代送到另一个时代的点子真的超级美味啊喂！我或许是无数次幻想过这样的有趣场景，但是这个游戏真的结合的太好了（）以及真的很羡慕这样超级配合的团队（）
I don't understand the first letter is sent from year 1900 from RC24. According to the map it should route 2 but all of the items respond with incorrect :(
I might be stupid. Just now have i noticed that the year display in right top is interactable. Wonderful game, really liked the idea behind it
:) This was fun! Lot's of great narrative and microstories. Very satisfying tube wooshes! Cute items. I think it needs some additional system or mechanic to make it a bit more interesting or give us some more interesting choices. But this was fun and well made!
