Maily Melo by Blix

Game
As the mail distributor for the kingdom, you hold a great responsibility in your hands. Will you take your duties seriously or will you let your mischievous side take over and pull pranks.
Tuto
You will receive letters from the outside of the Kingdom. Your job is to redistribute it to the 9 residents and discover their reactions. Some of them will reply, if so, you need to send back it in the basket.
It's not time based so you can chill and take your time.
Controls
Mouse only: - Click and drag to move objects - Click on envelope to open/close - Click on portrait to choose mailbox


Team
Follow us !
| Itch.io | https://etyen.itch.io/ludum-dare-delivery |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/maily-melo |
Ratings
| Overall | 187th | 3.987⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 524th | 3.504⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 256th | 3.746⭐ | 116🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 84th | 4.409⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 16th | 4.724⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 117th | 4.06⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 67th | 4.154⭐ | 119🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 166th | 4.064⭐ | 119🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 87🗳️ | 61🗨️ |
The music, gameplay, graphics and details - it was really cute and enjoyable to play and read through all those letters! Kinda like Reigns, I would totally play a full game version of this! Amazing!
AKAB!
Love the graphics and the animations
While I do believe there's a lot of potential, I did find the actual implementation lacking a bit though. I managed to finish the game within a few minutes, and it doesn't seem to matter whether or not you deliver the mail to the right recipient. It's very hard to tell if you even did to be fair.
However, I can see this concept working out with proper little stories being told between different actors within your kingdom and outside it, making you a silent witness to staged coups, love affairs, family feudes and so on. I'd love to see you evolve the game past the LD scope.
Great job!
Really nice art and simple gameplay. Good entry :>
One thing that I would like to see improved is the basket giving a reaction when you return a letter, so you know you made the right decision.
And boy was I not disappointed ! I love the art style !
Music is simple yet very entertaining.
The narrative is really good and works well with the gameplay.
Two things to improve this already awesome game :
- Depending of where we open the letter, a part of it is masked by the screen size, and I needed to repack, move and reopen the letter. Being able to move the letter once open would be a nice QOL improvement
- (Clearly out of the scope of this jam but) an achievement system to track if we experienced the all storyline depending on if we sent the letters to the good people would be really nice.
Awesome entry, well done !
It bit too hard to understand right recipient, but still interesting.
Also graphic is so cute. =)
- Great graphics and animations!
- Sounds and music are on point.
- The whole idea of managing letters and choosing/guessing who should get it is exiting and could be engaging, although 40% of letters are too unlear (starting from the letter 2, because I have no idea who is that Barbacus or w/e his name is).
- Gameplay seemed pretty interesting until I founds out it didn't matter at all (at least I didn't see any consequences of my actions, except reactions from characters.
- Game lacks the goal. I didn't feel that I really need to be careful with letters, and it killed the mood and interest a little bit. Ending without any consequences was kind of bummer.
- Controls need some better explanation (only GIF helped) and polish: it's not clear that you need to pack the letter again; it's strange that you can't just drag-and-drop into character's face without opening him directly and trowing in the mailbox; hover and dragging items from the letters are pretty bugged and not very pleasant; UX overall could use some improvements.
- Nice humor, didn't feel too cheesy and seemed to the point.
Anyway great job, one the best JAM games so far. With some time and love it can grow into something really nice, and I would totally play it.
But for some it's not clear if we delivered the letter to the righ person or not.
But the game is really cool !!!
The art left me speechless! The soundtrack is very polished and well done.
The game is interesting but I confess that I'm not a very good postman. I made quite a mess. If it was real, I would have left until death.
Congratulations!
At first I wasn't sure if I sent the letters correctly, but I watched the reactions more closely and realized when I did. Some letters were a bit too cryptic but I guess you don't always 100% everything on the first few tries, which is fine. I wish there were consequences at the end of the game or a summary of how well I did, though. Edit: without spoiling it, obviously!
I can definitely see this game growing into something bigger!
I made a lot of mistakes. I understood some letters parterns only too late into the game. But at the end everyone seemed OK with it, so it wasn't that bad right. I will maybe try another run with that knowledge in mind to read more response letters.
Beau boulot !
So thanks a lot for your nice comments ~
@klausklapper Adventure Time was totally a reference for me, that's my favorite show ahah ! I'm happy that the vibe is here. Also I played Strange Horticulture recently and I mentionned it many times with the rest of the team so you got everything right ! c:
Nice game, love the art, sound is on point, all the little stories are fun & well written! Not always clear who to deliver the mail to but thats okay. Very good job!
The writing is great too, although the game itself has a little bit of an aimless vibe - more clarity on a goal might be useful, even though it's fun sending letters off to everyone!
Good job making a thing that works :D
I played this for longer than I care to admit. :joy_cat: It was fun to see the different reactions and read the letters between characters! The letters were cute and silly - very well written.
Sometimes the click to drag stopped working which made it hard to progress.
Great job!!
The idea is brilliant, I liked it a lot and I truly hope that you will expand it into full release!
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
In the points to improve, I think it's not very easy to know to whom you should deliver a letter and, in the end, you don't know at all if you made the right choice. But I think this part is more related to game design and we all know how complicated it can be to manage that, especially in 3 days!
In any case, thank you for this little moment of relaxation (which reminded me a bit of Strange Horticulture too), I would have liked to know the rest of this little kingdom!
PS: Vive Etchebest ;)
Here’s the stream if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts (timestamps in the description to jump to your game!) [youtube link](youtu.be/7zAPBeiWuqA)
A tutorial screen, explaining what to click, would have been helpful to get people started.
Maybe the letter texts could be a bit shorter/easier/give more graphical hints in the beginning though and become longer/more difficult with progress. The demanded reading motivation from the player is quite high in the beginning otherwise
@pfeyffer Thank you !! Indeed we realized that a better tutorial is missing to clarify some stuff (like where do the letters come from and all) Definitly something we are planning to do c:
@joscco Thank you a lot <3 I totally agree with you about the letters than can be a bit too much right away. The idea of making shorter letters to get the player involved easier (at least at the start) is great ! There are many possibilities to make variations that are funny and lighter and we have some in mind for the future 👀
Very enjoyable, but as some others say, if I had to pick a down side I'd say it's really not easy to understand some situations, or what to do with the reactions of the characters at first.
Et aussi, vraiment bien rigolé sur le ACAB ✊
Get my :star2::star2::star2::star2::star2: for it, because you for sure deserves it! :thumbsup:
Two small nitpicks:
1) I tried to drag the letters on the portraits and was confused, that it didn't work. It's a bit complicated (and I didn't get it immediatly) to first click on the portrait and then drag the letter into the letter-box.
2) Sending the answers back didn't make much sense to me, because the letter was also brought to me by the pidgeon. I think it should be the other way round. For example the King should throw over the letter and I will put it into the letter basket. Then the pidgeon brings it away. :laughing:
Good job with the game!
I agree with Stefan's 2 nitpicks, I had the same experience/feedback. My own nitpick would be that I found it a bit frustrating to close back the letters, especially when the content was on top, I had to move it out of the way then click on it, it didn't feel intuitive. I would love if you could close them by pressing right-click anywhere instead.
I see some people find there is a lack of a goal. It's true, especially if you want to make it a larger game, but for the current scope it doesn't really bother me. The content of the letters is good enough that I can see it as "the real goal was the letters we sent along the way".
I had a blast, props to the whole team, every aspect feels very polished!
I would have to agree with some of the feedback on a few of the letters being vague enough that I just guessed, and sending letters back didn't feel like it fit the flow. Totally understand that time is the enemy here though :stuck_out_tongue:
Good work overall!!
But I understand there is no time for everything, the idea was pretty original and funny still, great job guys!
After all, chances are you've already discover it all out, congratulations and thank you if this is the case !
The time of the jam prevents us from distributing choices than rather concentrates on the number