The long way around by Fluburbio

[raw]
made by Fluburbio for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

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Controls : WASD/Arrows to move and select dialogue options Space or click to advance text

Oops, your neighbor's mail was wrongly delivered to you! Arm yourself with all your courage to get off your chair and deliver that misplaced mailedpiece! What could possibly go wrong?

Ratings

Overall 638th 3.538⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 780th 3.231⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 784th 3.115⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 649th 3.865⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 292th 3.596⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 667th 3.442⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 35🗨️

Feedback

KyleTheCoder
01. May 2023 · 11:55 UTC
I recently moved into a new house, and it's genuinely _difficult_ to get off my butt and take mail elsewhere. Thank you for modeling that in a game, makes it way easier to procrastinate actually doing it!
LDJam user 280509
01. May 2023 · 14:12 UTC
Charming art!

And the bartering part is also cute.

The GDevelop icon occluded the dialog. And the collision masks are sometimes tricky.
🎤 Fluburbio
01. May 2023 · 14:44 UTC
@kylethecoder It is, isn't it? :smiley: Thanks a lot for playing!

Thank you @xlores-liang! So cool to see you back for LD53! :smile: I found a way to disable that icon (didn't think I could), I'll update my game before the deadline.
Volnyii
01. May 2023 · 14:48 UTC
it looks awesome! I enjoy your game)
LDJam user 280509
01. May 2023 · 15:07 UTC
@fluburbio I personnaly don't put UI close to the edge of screen so I didn't notice this when I tried GDevelop. But I remembered managing the collision masks was a disaster in a drag-n-drop engine...
TofuCat
01. May 2023 · 16:19 UTC
Hey, the W and A keys aren't working for me. S and D were working, though... arrows worked just fine :) I really like the art style and the game concept. I just suck and I couldn't figure it out, haha!
🎤 Fluburbio
01. May 2023 · 17:30 UTC
@volnyii Thanks! :smile:

@xlores-liang Usually, I don't either, but this time I was trying to go for a retro pokemon-style look. It's true that managing collisions is a chore in gdevelop, I could have done it better (and cleaner) but I opted for the quick and dirty way, ie using a fully assembled tiled map as a single png, plus an overlay png for treetops and such!

@tofucat Your feedback is invaluable, especially so early while I still have time to fix things. Many thanks!! I'm not a WASD player and didn't think to test that control scheme... it works now. I have also added to more NPCs to clarify how to progress in the game, one is near the house at the beginning and provides a general piece of hint, and the other straight up tells you what to do according to how far you're in the game.

If you can spare a few more minutes, would you like to try again? The game only takes 2-5 minutes to beat.
TofuCat
01. May 2023 · 18:17 UTC
@fluburbio WASD works now, yay!
I managed to play it, the extra NPCs definitely helped. I enjoyed my little adventure a lot more this time! I thought the minigame was a cute extra touch.
The only feedback I have now really is at the end, after the Dad moves the barrels, I had to take a bit of a janky route to try and avoid him without triggering the conversation with him again. I couldn't just walk straight past him.
🎤 Fluburbio
02. May 2023 · 16:58 UTC
@tofucat Many thanks for giving it another go! I'm glad you enjoyed the improvements 😁 Sadly I didn't have time to publish the fix to the dad route, but thanks to you my game is way more intuitive!
DzejPi
02. May 2023 · 17:49 UTC
Absolutely charming, lovely artstyle and nice music! I enjoyed the gameplay a lot. Perfect jam game; short, fun and I liked the pong-style game, that was a nice touch! Apart from accidentally triggering some dialogs sometimes, this was perfect, and I really enjoyed it. Great job :)
Johnsensei
03. May 2023 · 02:28 UTC
Probably one of my favorites so far. The controls and goal of the game were very easy to understand. I was able to finish it and enjoy it. Got some Persona vibes from the music and the gameplay. I have friends who use G-Develop. It seems like an interesting tool. My only feedback is some dots on the road would make it clearer it was a road. I thought the thick black lines were walls at first.
🎤 Fluburbio
03. May 2023 · 02:55 UTC
@dzejpi Thanks a lot for your kind words! they are very encouraging to me :smile: Indeed, sometimes the path is too narrow and dialogue triggers accidentally, I will move some NPCs in more open spaces post jam to mitigate that.

@johnsensei Wow, thank you for such a great compliment! I'm a massive Persona fan, I played through Persona 3 way more times than I care to admit, so much that even the minor social links feel like family members to me now :sweat_smile: I wanted this to feel mostly like a quick mix between Earthbound and old school Pokemon with some Persona-like music on top, I'm really glad I struck a chord with you.
GDevelop is quite easy to learn and use, I'm currently making a 3D dungeon crawler that's inspired by the older shin megami tensei games with it, the first part is on my itch page if you want to check it out sometime! 🤓
ruruie
03. May 2023 · 03:02 UTC
I had to walk so far. :|
🎤 Fluburbio
03. May 2023 · 03:10 UTC
@ruruie Yeah, that neighbor just doesn't realize what you've been through! Thanks a lot for playing! :smile:
KingZero
03. May 2023 · 07:57 UTC
Great game, great art. Enjoyed the experience and the nostalgic feel.
Kristallllllik
03. May 2023 · 10:58 UTC
Good game!
iggy lonely
03. May 2023 · 18:06 UTC
interesting idea but I feel like the pong minigame is just padding
🎤 Fluburbio
03. May 2023 · 18:30 UTC
Thank you @kingzero and @kristallllllik, I'm glad you enjoyed the game!

@iggy-lonely Thanks! I stand by that mini game 🙂 The ball was originally a doll, but I changed it to add a bit of variety to the gameplay, plus it fit perfectly in the narrative. Similarly I wanted to include a sokoban-like section with the barrels, but at that point I needed some sleep in order to be able to go through my working week 😅
BalimaarTheBassFish
04. May 2023 · 00:05 UTC
A nifty experience which I found entertaining :) I did have to restart once because I had somehow managed to duplicate the sound track (except the dupe was half a beat behind) which was most distracting. Congrats on your second Ludum Dare and congrats on making a game as solid as this in the time!
InfinateFalcon
04. May 2023 · 16:55 UTC
A very cute game with good humour. The controls felt a little stiff honestly and the detection for talking to the npcs was a little annoying, otherwise quite the enjoyable experience.
YurisCat
04. May 2023 · 20:51 UTC
This road is really long... I love the overall color scheme of the game, it reminds me of those classic retro game consoles. As a nostalgic fan, I really enjoy this feeling. Thank you so much to the development team for bringing us such a great game!
5huNo.3
04. May 2023 · 21:19 UTC
I enjoyed the string of side quests from one delivery to another. I'm basically the mailman at this point making all these deliveries to these people. Great choice of colour scheme and love the pixel artstyle. A bit clunky with movements when it comes to moving around, and activating a dialogue unintentionally when I pass by. But regardless, great work!
TheParticularPixel
05. May 2023 · 07:45 UTC
You weren't kidding about the long way round :) had a good time with this one, gave me a few chuckles too. the art fits it really well, love the old gameboy style color palette. it was great how it started as a simple task and snowballed. my only complaint would be that the movement felt a bit stiff.. it's annoying that your character stops when you press two directions. I can understand the style choice of not having diagonal movement but I don't think it would have hurt the gameplay at all. great work!
Paul-Maxime
05. May 2023 · 18:10 UTC
I agree with some of the comments above: the movements are not very smooth, it's very easy to hit walls and when pressing two directions at once it should at least select one of them, even if there are no diagonals.

And damn, the story was pretty expected, but I clearly didn't expect the pong minigame, nice job there!
Tex Killer
13. May 2023 · 07:32 UTC
Good job, this game was fun!

The visual art-style immediately reminded me of the Pokemon games and, now that you mentioned it, the humor is very characteristic of Earthbound, so I believe you hit your mark :)

Like others above I also had a little trouble moving and avoiding collisions, the music played twice simultaneously with a delay and it was a little hard to get past the dad at the end, but for the time of the jam it is well enough polished. Well done!
Tan90
18. May 2023 · 14:45 UTC
I really like your game style! Really brilliant game art! And the translation software I used translated a great name for the game! It's really cool!!
Nekuake
18. May 2023 · 20:21 UTC
The visual style is very elaborate and giving it an RPG touch is something that adds a lot of value. It reminds me a lot of MINIT, a game somewhat similar in style both visually and in gameplay.

Very good job!!! 😊
🎤 Fluburbio
20. May 2023 · 00:48 UTC
Thank you everyone for giving my game a go! Due to unfortunate circumstances I didn't even have half the time to make it, but all things considered I'm pretty pleased how it turned out.

@balimaarthebassfish Thanks for your very kind words! I always have some issueor other with GDevelop and music, there must be something I'm not quite doing right, but I'm happy that you still had a good time!

@yuriscat Thank you for your praise! I'm glad it struck a chord with you 😊

@infinatefalcon @5huno-3 @theparticularpixel @paul-maxime @tex-killer This was my first time making a topdown game and I took some shortcuts, but I took note of what I could do better next time. The collision masks were a bit rushed, so that can easily be fixed. I'm glad you enjoyed the game anyway!

Thanks a lot for your king words @tan90 and @nekuake ! I don't know MINIT, but I have to check it out now. Thank you!

@tofucat Many thanks again for your comment that helped me realize the game wasn't nearly as evident as I thought, thanks to you a lot more people enjoyed the game 😁
EthernalStudio
20. May 2023 · 11:59 UTC
Woow, really nice, i would simplify some of the mechanics but its incredible, the story, the game, the idea everything fits the theme a lot.
TofuCat
20. May 2023 · 16:36 UTC
@fluburbio you're welcome <3 best of luck with the results!