Pneumatic Postman by klausklapper
Edit: I heavily recommend downloading the game if you can for a proper experience, but feel free head over to https://racoonteur.itch.io/pneumatic-postman if you'd like to check out the web build.
Faceless Corp. is one of the leading market providers of valuable services to businesses, government agencies & private customers alike. Become part of a beloved, ever growing behemoth by joining our team of diligent postal service workers, responsible for running & maintaining our extensive pneumatic tube post system.
What you will be working on:
- Ensuring that capsules are delivered to their intended recipient within a timely fashion
- Utilising our (patent pending) Staff Ledger and Employee ID Sheet to keep track of our highly diverse company department structure
- Keeping the pneumatics and valves running within the parameters specified by the manufacturers (original manual provided)
- Working around violations against our code of proper addressing by investigating the proper recipient with the tools at your disposal
Benefits
- Engaging and rewarding work atmosphere, totally safe and free from physical or psychological hazards
- Plenty of responsibilities to keep you on your feet
- Generous benefit package
- Team lunches & events, at least once a year.
- Taco Tuesday
We hope to hear from you soon!
Klaus Klapper Faceless Corp. Employee ID 14128 Human Resources Floor 09
The Meta
So here we are, my submission for the LD53 - it's been three days of social obligations and getting around the quirks of Unity (again). All visual art and code was done by me within more or less 48h, but distributed over the total of three days. I will give credit to sound, music & fonts at the bottom of this post.
What's this game about?
The staff fluctuation for the postmaster job at Faceless Corp. is quite high, and you're the latest hire. Can you stay on top of the challenges that come with the system, such as
- staying on top of your inbox, don't let capsules pile up too much or you can kiss your new job bye bye
- keeping the mechanics in check: make sure to address any leakages in a timely fashion to avoid a breakdown
- working efficiently against the clock, and your co-workers. Faceless Corp. has a very specific code of how capsules sent are to be addressed, but lately more and more staff have started to slack off. Can you find the right recipient for all capsules?
How to play
The game is mostly played with your mouse. There are some keyboard shortcuts, but they're explained in the game. Use your right mouse button to zoom in (trust me, it's needed). Use your left mouse button to pick up items from your inbox, send them off into one of the various tubes available to you or consult your employee list or staff ledger.
Some capsules do not provide all information needed to make an informed choice on where to send them. You can use both the employee list and your ledger to find the right address for each capsule. Sometimes, given information on the capsule might also be plain wrong, as it's really hard for each employee to remember names, ID numbers, departments and floors of each of their co-workers. Make sure to stay diligent and double check.
Rarely, a member of the staff might send a capsule to a fellow co-worker who's no longer with the company. Those may be safely disposed in your bin.
You can skip the intro by pressing ESCAPE.
Future ideas
I did have a lot more planned for this project - an actual story that leads you through the belly of the beast, a progression system, more interactions. But alas, it's the same as always. I'm really grateful for any feedback you have. I might continue to pour more content into this after this LD is over.
I might try to provide a web version of the game in the following days, but I can't promise anything as I've never built for web with Unity before.
Feedback
The day system as well as the difficulty curve were hacked in during the last few hours and need play testing by more people than just me (as I now know my way around the game quite well). If you fail early on, don't be afraid to keep giving it a few more tries. You will get better. And most importantly:
Thank you kindly for playing & have fun!
| Third Party Sources | https://pastebin.com/tZfzD2jd |
| Itch.io | https://racoonteur.itch.io/pneumatic-postman |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/pneumatic-postman |
Ratings
| Overall | 171th | 4.011⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 383th | 3.636⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 135th | 3.933⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 6th | 4.633⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 125th | 4.422⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 182th | 3.825⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 51th | 4.322⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 75🗨️ |
Here's some feedback from my few plays:
- From the few first seconds, I was really curious about your game! The mood is very well done, and it gave me _Severance_ vibe right away. I like the music and the vibe.
- Maybe it's done on purpose, but I wish I had a few seconds first to get familiar with everything. I got overwhelm on my first run because of that. (I was on my trackpad so maybe not helping)
- I wish it would be faster between runs, I do like your intro, but still.
- After a few try (and me picking up my mouse), I did get better at it, but I do find the game to maybe on the difficult side for now (or maybe I'm just bad at it!)
I would really love to play the game again, especially if you had more stuff and update, cause it was really enjoyable! Great work :)
The graphics & ambience are also really great. Awesome entry!
P.S. I like the way you wrote the description for the game, immediately sets the right mood for the game
But then the game itself begins. It looks pretty good overall, and if I had a wall-sized monitor, I would even appreciate the beauty of it. But the very high sensitivity of the mouse and the very very very VERY loud sounds, which are not adjustable, get in the way very much. Unfortunately because of all of the above I could not enjoy your game.
@nikfus I'm very sorry to hear that. The game was developed by me on a desktop computer for my mouse settings and performance profile, I didn't have the time to optimise for smaller system or offer options like mouse sensitivity or audio settings. Still, I greatly appreciate your feedback and thanks for giving it a try! :)
("uspesifisert feil" is unspesified error)
Maybe a windows defender problem but i have downloaded a lot of unity games from here without problems
I usually skip intros but the mysterious mood, the foreboding music... You did a great job capturing my attention.
The array of tubes was appropriately overwhelming, but I thought it was very intuitive and I picked up quickly how I was supposed to find the right tube. It gave me "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes" vibes.
I loved the pressure from the loud clanking and accumulation of deliveries. I was panicking trying to do deliveries as fast as I could until I gave up and just started randomly stuffing them into tubes. Loved the ending, I actually laughed out loud as everything fell apart around me. The different items in the packages was also a cute touch.
I only did one playthrough for now, but I'm definitely recommending this to my friends and going to be aiming to get a high score later.
Seriously, you are super talented and this is an amazing short experience. Amazing attention to detail, and everything felt just right. 5/5 from me :)
But in 6 attempts I was only able to correctly distribute 2-3 parcels. It was too hard for me right away.
That said I think it REALLY delivered on the overall experience. Idk if I've ever seen a game so truly capture the feeling of being given a hopeless thankless and merciless job. I got one mail delivered successfully but quit out before losing my second play through because I was TERRIFIED of the sound it makes when everything explodes.
Great job, easily the most atmospheric game I've seen so far.
I liked the vibe and simplicity of the gameplay part. Besides 0 tutorials i knew how to play from the first glance.
Congratz of the submission!
If u decide to make a full version please ping me : )
@reaxt @francis @out1oud @oter @groundwater-studio @sparklingsushi Thank you all so much for playing my game, your feedback and your kind words, it means the world to me. Realising I succeeded in conveying a certain type of atmosphere and feeling is an astonishing first time experience for me like this.
At the moment, I'm a bit swamped with the daily grind of life again, but I will definitely put out a new version including Sound settings and better mouse support, instructions as well as the option to play blind or with a guided tutorial. Although that will have to be outside of LD as I think it's against the rules to update your game for non breaking bugfixes.
Whether I will add actual new content (story, more interactions, upgrade systems, etc...) remains to be seen, but your feedback certainly makes me want to extend on this idea.
Anyways I'm glad I got it working. This is definitely a 5/5 for mood. Feels very polished for a jam game. Great job!
I'd love to see where you go with this, Do you have any socials anywhere? This was our first LD so idk where to look to find em hahaaa
A little stressful but a very enjoyable experience!
Onboarding is lacking, but after a couple of tries you quickly become way more efficient once you've figured out the workflow and tube layout. Mouse sensitivity was unfortunately very high for me which made it a bit tricky.
Great job!
In terms of gameplay, I understand that the pacing was hacked in quickly - on my first playthrough I wasn't even able to deliver a single mail due to me overanalysing everything. I also do think that the pipe leakage isn't really indicated clearly - I wouldn't even know something is leaking in the first place if I hadn't read the note on failure note.
I also have some mixed feelings for the control scheme. Have you considered using something else than a default first person camera? The fact that you're required to constantly use the zooming sounds weird. I was wondering if this formula would work better if it was more of a point-and-click perspective, with camera being static and transitioning to given sections of the level when they're clicked. It's more of an idea than anything, you'd have to mess with it and see what feels better.
Other than that, interesting piece of a game. Love the visuals (the varying content of mail tubes was a nice touch) and gameplay has potential. If you add some new mechanics that are progressively introduced and also mix some story into it, then you have a pretty neat "Papers Please"-esque game. Not to mention that what you **delivered** right now feels like a finished product for something that was created in 3 days, so good job! (also, I appreciate that you made a web build!)
It would be nice a "relaxed" mode where you only deal with post at your own pace
Survived two days
My main complaint here would be a mouse sensitivity; the whole game is super sensitive, and interestingly, going fullscreen made it several times worse, with me moving the mouse just a tiny bit, but the view flying all over. But when not fullscreened, it was still playable. However, this is super impressively put together and you did an amazing job, definitely one of my favorite entries this jam, well done!
- I would really appreciate the ability to change the sensitivity as it was wayyy too fast than I am normally used to.
- Things get overwhelming extremely quickly for me, so unfortunately I was only able to play the game for a very very short time. Maybe it was intended, and in that case, it is alright.
Other than that, this is very well done. Great job!
I like that the game is played from a fixed perspective just rotating the camera around and zooming in.
Found that information just being wrong was a bit unfair, ended up just looking at the employee number on every package.
Also, I promise to publish a post LD version including a better onboarding experience and - most importantly - sound and mouse sensitivity options ;)
If you'd like to stay in touch, head over to https://racoonteur.itch.io/pneumatic-postman in order to get notified when a new version is out.
I was so losts and only managed to get 1 in the first round, then 2 then 4 but I am still lost xD
Congrats doing this all alone! Great job!
I loved everything that I saw. It's nice how the scoring is conveyed through a letter instead of having it in UI. The menu intro was something I'd expect from a full game, so... "cinematic".
If I were to suggest something, it would be to space things out so the first day starts easy with simple deliveries, then the next day (or later) introduce valve failures and so on.
The title screen in this game is one of the best ones ive seen in any game jam and the game looked like a lot of effort and fun once you get the hang of it. A more gracious intro would've gone a long way tho
Thank you all very much for your feedback, it's really appreciated. It's taken me a while to respond as I've been busy with life, but I do plan to release an updated version soon, including sound & mouse sensitivity options as well as a more gentle introduction to the game.
Stay tuned! If you want to know more or follow any further progress, feel free to visit https://racoonteur.itch.io/pneumatic-postman and subscribe to any updates.
Cheers and have a great weekend everyone!