Parcel Problems. by Jacob Diaz

Your boss's words were clear, "If we don't have a package leaving this building every ten seconds, I'm going to have to make some changes around here". This was quite a time crunch, but you can't afford to lose your job.
You can do it... Right?
Parcel Problems is a fast paced warehouse parcel packing simulator. You must cram items into boxes with the clock breathing down your neck in the hopes that you're making your 10 second quota. You could cut corners and forget items just to get that quota met. But every second that ticks is making packing tougher and you can feel your heart in your chest beating harder with every slip-up.
Fold, Pack, Tape, Label. Fold, Pack, Tape, Label. Fold, Pack, Tape, Label. Fold, Pack, Tape, Label. Fold, Pack, Tape, Label. Fold, Pack, Tape, Label... How long can you last?
CONTROLS:
There are only two controls:
Hold Left Mouse Button = Pick up item
Hold Right Mouse Button (while holding an item) = Raise Item Higher
INSTRUCTIONS:
You must grab a box from the left and place it down on the work surface. You then fill it, tape it up, label it, and finally send it off on the main conveyor belt. If you stay cool and calm while packing once per 10 seconds you'll really impress the boss!
Use the colored buttons to dispense the appropriate materials! Blue = Boxes, Yellow = Tape, Red = Labels
Good Luck!

Developer Personal best: 42 Packages, 3981 Points

(Note: A game-breaking display blurring bug was fixed)
(Note: The Linux build is an experimental build to allow Linux users to play natively! The Windows build is still the intended way to play.)
Download the ParcelProblems_LD51.zip, unzip it, and launch the .exe file:
| GITHUB Source | https://github.com/diazjacob/parcelproblems |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/parcel-problems |
Ratings
| Overall | 74th | 3.898⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 72th | 3.818⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 47th | 3.955⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 56th | 4.136⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 36th | 4.193⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 73th | 3.733⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 77th | 3.512⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 45th | 3.875⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 111🗳️ | 80🗨️ |
Really well done, and one of the most polished games that I've played so far. The physics can be a little wonky at times but that is part of the fun of this experience. I wish that I could see how well I was doing in relation to the quota but I might've been missing something. Good job!
The clocks on the left display the total time as well as the current package time, but *under the hood* the game is ensuring you keep an average packing time of less than 10 seconds! I tried to convey how the player is doing with effects but I can see how it could be a little confusing :)
my score \o/

really fun and smooth running game, great job! :)
If you can manage to deal with a fast conveyor belt full of items in the later stages it can actually help you, since it lets you hand in packages faster too!
Altough i had fun during the game ( strange ).
Nice job making This !
@senso, @last-angle Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!
No, I love the chaotic atmosphere. In such a messy environment, I love how you only need left and right mouse button to play. While moving items was a little awkward, that awkwardness didn't really feel out of place. It felt like fumbeling through all the mess in a stressful situation, and the heartbeat effect just added to all that.
I did have an issue with the visual effect. After a couple of restarts, it ended up blurring my screen to the point where I couldn't actually read the order I was supposed to package, and it was quite headache indusing to be honest. It did fade over time, sometimes I swear it faded back in... I believe I can understand why it's there, but I would have liked the game more if that effect just didn't exist, I think it was chaotic enough without it.
All in all it was pretty fun! I like the graphics, the picture of my family on the top shelf really kept my motivation up! I really like the simple controls and how everything is sort of tied together. (I had a fun "Ahhhhh!" moment when I realised the finished package had to be sent down the very same conveyor belt! Didn't know where to put it the first time I tried and got fired, but got it the second time! Sidenote; I never read instructions or tutorials, as of writing this I see you explained this in your description, that's on me...)
Now I'm rambling and I don't know how to wrap this up, so, in short, I ran into some issues with the blurry stuff and some items and boxes getting stuck, but I had fun!
I'm happy that the atmosphere felt right and that you felt the panic! And I'm also glad that my last minute additions (like the picture frame) get noticed. I believe you actually caught onto a bug that I found while testing that caused the display to massively over-blur when late in a playthrough. it was a small fix.
Really glad you liked it :D
It would make an awesome VR game!
The core reason I don't have a WebGL version is because WebGL doesn't support some of the important post-processing effects I use in some mechanics.
So I hopped into Unity, tried out a Linux build, and dusted off a Linux machine to test it. It seemed to work so I'd love to hear what you think. The Windows build is still the main build I've verified to work in all areas, but the experimental Linux build is now there next to it :)
It's also nightmarishly difficult to control with a trackpad. XD
But overall, solid experience!
I wish I could here the grumbles and failures from what I assume are countless other workers near me doing the same ridiculous job. Darkly funny and topical, but still remains innocent and fun. I never got good enough to get very far, but maybe I'm just not cut out for this type of work ;)
My one gripe: I had a very hard time moving anything around without it getting stuck. Specifically getting the boxes onto the conveyor belt -- they'd snap up to the top shelf, or go flying off camera, or they'd get stuck on the wall. It felt very clumsy, and I assume this is by intention, but I found it more frustrating than fun. I couldn't get more than two boxes out :slight_frown:
EDIT: After reviewing the instructions again I realized I hadn't used the right click at all. Getting the items to move UP was really hard with just left click :sweat_smile:
@lazzor I know about the exiting issue but I don't think I can change it at this point! Would adding a "tap *esc* to quit" be considered a new feature and not a big fix? I'm not sure. Thanks for the review :)
@googlypoo I'm glad you were able to sort out your control issue, and I'm happy the effects are working as intended! Thank you for taking the time to play :)
Some of the interactions felt way too clumsy for my taste, it was pretty difficult to move things around, even with right clicks. I suppose that was intentional, but it felt a bit frustrating to me.
It was pretty fun regardless. Also I think this is a great use of the theme.
Great job!
I've found that a lot of people seem to click RMB instead of hold it, the intended usage was a lot of holding (i.e: holding LMB and RMB together). Maybe that could help? If you were already doing a lot of holding then maybe I have to tune the clumsiness a little :D
I was hoping to make a VR fork of this, seems like it'd fit pretty well.
I'd love to see what could do with the project :D

I ended up using the physics grab code I wrote for my own entry because it's a lot more stable than the stuff you had and includes rotation which does feel nicer in VR haha.
https://github.com/ShadowBrian/parcelproblems_VR_Fork
https://youtu.be/vizNUWfFLRQ
It gets pretty hectic in VR!
Also needs quite a bit of physical space because of how it's set up, pretty fun though!
Super impressive work! Thanks for diving into it, I'll have to give this a try on my headset :)
In particular, the most frustrating aspect of the game is how items tend to pile up and get in your way, e.g. if you drag something off the conveyor belt by accident. And the difficulty scaling really leans into this. The box starts to fly almost all the way off the box dispenser, making it annoying if you push the button too many times, as then there will be a flat cardboard box in your way. The labels stop being convenient to pick up and instead fall down, requiring frantic grabbing. And, of course, combined with the faster movement of the conveyor belt, all these mechanics combine to make it much more likely that you grab something by accident, and make everything even harder on yourself.
There is one aspect of the game that I find unclear. In particular, I'm not sure whether it is intended that some boxes are outright impossible, and that the intended strategy in that case is to simply make a bad package and move on. If so, I wonder what the best way to judge that situation is as a player.
In particular, I tried a run where I just submitted nothing but empty packages... it seems I failed after 6 packages. (Incidentally, the score display on that run might have glitched out? Here's a screenshot...)

So it seems like I can't just always make a bad package. As such, I'm not sure if there's, like, an upper cap on the total amount of bad packages I can submit, or if I have to submit a certain ratio of good:bad packages, or what. So, in the cases where it is impossible to submit a good package on time, I'm not sure how to figure out the correct strategy.
That said, I can reasonably assume that I can sometimes submit bad packages, due to the game description talking about "cutting corners," and I can reasonably assume I can't always submit bad packages, due to my empirical test and basically because of common sense. So I think it probably would be possible for me to play this game without necessarily needing elaboration on this aspect of it--I just won't be able to confirm that I'm not doing something wrong.
So overall, I would say this is a really nicely polished game that has a pretty cool set of mechanics and, in particular, a well-implemented difficulty curve.
I think you did encounter a bug, there is a small double counting bug that sometimes overlaps the terrible package counting with other package types. I *think* the score should still be accurate when this happens.
Inside the game, your "health counter" or number of failures increases by either submitting an untaped or still-folded box, or by submitting a package that has absolutely no correct items. So, if you submit something that has at least one correct item on-time then the game is happy with it, but you will get a drastically smaller end score by forgetting lots of items. I guess you could go the whole game with "okay" incomplete packages, but it would take a lot longer to get any high score by the end since perfect packages give a large boost to points. That's the balance that kinda has to be found.
The main way to accrue errors is of course by submitting packages a too slow. The package submission "failure" is based on a running average of recent submission times rather than each individual submission time to allow for a small amount of leniency and "smoothness" to ending the game. The 10s limit still holds on those calculations though. There is no cap on submitting terrible packages (still-folded boxes, untaped boxes, no correct items). But a terrible package will count as multiple failures when compared to just submitting something a little too slow, so you're encouraged to at least get *something* out.
I consider myself a lot more of a developer than a game designer, so I'm glad at least some of my gameplay decisions are enjoyable for people! Again, thanks for playing and for the great feedback.
Its actually very hard to get used to the controls, also its a bit annoying that sometimes a package gets stuck somewhere if put on the band wrongly.
But this reminds me of the Surgeon Simulator, which I also like a lot :-)
Well done :-)
Overall, this game was a hilarious and unique take on the theme, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. It felt very polished and like something I'd see on Steam or as a VR game.
