Guinea Post - Rodent Delivery by Deke

My entry for the Ludum Dare 40 Game Jam!
Enjoy the thrills of experiencing life as a guinea pig post office worker! Can you survive stamping letters, sorting parcels and even checking bank accounts for five days?

Controls:
Keyboard: E | F | J | O | Space - It's all you will need!
Quick info: some virus scanners tend to give false-positives on GameMaker executables. Don't worry, though - the games are of course perfectly safe. Thanks, YoYo!
Watch out for criminal guinea pigs and the infamous guinea pig mafia!
You can find some screenshots on the itch.io page if you like! :)
Have fun!
| Windows | https://dekedev.itch.io/ld40-guinea-post-rodent-delivery |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/guinea-post-rodent-delivery |
Ratings
| Overall | 174th | 3.848⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 175th | 3.773⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 375th | 3.394⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 709th | 3.266⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 366th | 3.818⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 106th | 3.864⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 50🗳️ | 0🗨️ |
I feel like the money minigame is slower than the other ones, but they are all great!
Thanks for the great stream, and all hail El Presidente!
The only thing, which annoyed me a little bit, where the gifts, or more precisely that there is no indicator, when you can stamp them again.
Pacing is a little off - the levels are probably about twice as long as they should be.
But otherwise, a fantastic game. Enjoyed!
I liked ringing the bell for fun. How come the bell also made a stamping noise? Very mysterious.
Great sense of humor. I love how all the customers don't care at all that their gift was messed up or someone just got arrested in front of them. Even explosions don't fluster anyone.
I wonder if you would maximize your score by autofailing the gift-wrapping customers so you could move on to someone who gives more points per second. I'm not sure, since I'd have to go back to replay the levels to find out, and I don't want to play the first and second levels again.
Anyway, well done! I'm glad we both did Papers Please style games.
I liked ringing the bell for fun. How come the bell also made a stamping noise? Very mysterious.
Great sense of humor. I love how all the customers don't care at all that their gift was messed up or someone just got arrested in front of them. Even explosions don't fluster anyone.
I wonder if you would maximize your score by autofailing the gift-wrapping customers so you could move on to someone who gives more points per second. I'm not sure, since I'd have to go back to replay the levels to find out, and I don't want to play the first and second levels again.
Anyway, well done! I'm glad we both did Papers Please style games.
BTW, is the SCORE:00120000 on the top right corner a text or sprite? I wonder since I use GMS too.
@raogs @niphram: the money minigame is actually a bit slower on purpose. I tried to throw the players' rhythm off with every new minigame introduced :'D. But yeah, with a bit more time I could've worked on showing the next button press a bit better. Thanks!
@nehvis: They do indeed feel a bit long, at least in the beginning. It's an unfortunate side-effect of not having any more time to properly balance stuff, sorry! :D
@josehzz: Making the bell "feel good" was one of my top priorities! :D Thanks!
@soerensen3: You first put them in the right "slot", then stamp them five times and then sort them :)
@weizengaming: I wasn't actually too sure if I should include a timer for the present minigame. I decided against it to throw the players rhythm a bit off :)
@blay09 @badly-drawn-rod: See my answer to @nehvis. Thanks for your kind words! :D
@carraka: Thank you so much for your comment! I'm happy you liked the game :)
@falak @xephrys: Thanks so much! :D
@yishalee: Thank you! The score indicator on the top right is completely done in text. There's actually just one sprite-based font which is used in the letter bomb minigame.
Art style works great and the music's nice. At first the changing rythm in the minigames confused me, but given the reasoning, that is a great mechanic. The difficulty ramps nicely. A fun experience throughout. Also, the buttons feel very satisfying, kudos.
One thing though: There seemed to be a slow down at more than 5 or 10 waiting customers, which broke the present minigame, as i had to wait upwards of 1.5s for the next button.
All in all: A great game.
The art style reminds me of something, but i can't quite pinpoint what it is. Any hints?
where should we start, I played your game all through the end and I have to say… awesome job!
The idea is definitely unique, at least I never played something like this before. The later levels were really fun and the constantly new mechanics which come with each day didn’t let me stop playing.
At first, I didn’t get why you choose the E,F,J,O keys, it seemed a bit weird. But the longer I played the more I got the feeling of sitting in this small post offices and do my daily job (in a fun way). An unexpected but very nice immersion :grin:
What I really liked was the random character generator. (The names got me a few smiles^^) I’m amazed that you made all the different characters in that short time. The artstyle is really nice, the audio well chosen and fits perfectly to the mood. But my favorite part of the game was the smashing FX its soooo satisfying even after hearing it a hundred times. Props for that^^
One little note: Keep the time limit at the first two days shorter like 1-2 minutes, they’re pretty easy and a bit boring while no new customer arrives.
But this is a minor problem and didn’t affect the experience.
Overall funtastic game! :smile:
PS: Seeing your avatar, foxes FTW!