Post Morton by nanolotl 2017-12-19T23:07:53Z ♥ 1
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 ❤️
**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:
*The house numbers make no gosh darn friggidy sense.*
(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:
*Upgrades are cool*
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?
LD48 — Deeper and deeper (5)
Cave-In by JPshoe 2021-05-10T15:18:45Z ♥ 1
Got to level 11. Like the idea and mood of it. The upgrade system is really confusing tho and the way it scales with the amount of workers you have seems really weird, and I found myself kind of wanting my workers to die. It's also not obvious what stuff you have "selected"? (I think that's how it works?) I like idea that you get to the "end" but then oh what's this, there's more. I think some factor of that is pretty much needed for incremental games like these so nice. Rebalanced and with some UI tweaking I'd definitely waste some more time on this
Afraid to Turn by rhoff95 2021-05-09T18:56:17Z ♥ 1
Loved the atmosphere! That wolf's gonna give me nightmares. Art style is great. Audio is great (except the howling is a tad too loud). I agree with some of the people above that the throwing is a bit weird, and just the interactions with the wolf in general. It wasn't obvious that the moon was the start button, and I had no idea I was supposed to return to the wizard, so on my first playthrough I just ran to the right non-stop.
River, Carry Me Away by Noire 2021-05-09T18:43:25Z ♥ 2
Gorgeous. Gameplay would be nice, but you more than made up for the lack of it.
Untitled Simulator by Eugenik 2021-05-09T18:31:08Z ♥ 1
Repeating dialogue and slow text are my two major complaints. The prose could be improved (there were some grammatical errors), and the Hitler animation is somewhat distracting, though his dancing is quite nice. I enjoyed it for the effort you put into making a serious game about Hitler that's not a complete meme.
Robed Bird Reckoning by alexrose 2021-05-09T18:14:12Z ♥ 0
Only complaint was the ear shattering splash screen. Everything else was top notch and beatifully put together. Music and art are great, and the controls felt good, but not quite perfect imo (don't know what I'd change tbh). Didn't notice the slowdown, but the game was pretty beatable without it. Would have played more, and might have appreciated some more difficulty for this kind of game. A no checkpoint mode could be very enjoyable here given that the game is pretty short. Would love to see what you could've done with this in a week or month :)