Mail owl by vidarn

[raw]
made by vidarn for Ludum Dare 53 (COMPO)

You're the mail owl! Explore the castle and help people get their mail delivered.

if you have trouble with the puzzles, there are solutions below

Play on itch.io for fullscreen and phone support

Controls

Use the arrow keys to move and interact with other characters

Hints

There are 4 rooms in the game (west, east, north and center) and 4 letters to deliver. You can visit the rooms in any order but to solve the puzzle in the north room you will need information from the other three rooms.

Puzzle solutions (spoilers)

If you have trouble solving the puzzles, here are the solutions:

Post-compo updates

  • Fixed some camera updates
  • Added support for touch screens in portrait mode

Ratings

Overall 122th 3.75⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 144th 3.596⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 169th 3.44⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 176th 3.923⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 102th 3.904⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Audio 101th 3.635⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 59th 3.692⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 69th 3.808⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 24🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

Terry_Crow
01. May 2023 · 11:07 UTC
So other guys said "mi", and the owl side "lool", the game was good ,puzzles are interesting, I like it
sami822
01. May 2023 · 12:20 UTC
Great graphics, plot and sounds. I loved the mood.
osullivp
03. May 2023 · 11:31 UTC
Nice chill game with some interesting puzzles.
MKRaw
03. May 2023 · 11:36 UTC
Beautiful art, I love the music, I really like the transition effect, very polished game, I couldn't figure out how to open the door though
EqualEnergy
03. May 2023 · 11:41 UTC
Struggled with the puzzles but a really good looking and sounding game
🎤 vidarn
03. May 2023 · 11:46 UTC
Thank you for the kind feedback!

@mkraw Thanks for letting me know. I've added links to the solutions to the description page. Did you find the other puzzles all right?

@equalenergy Thank you! Which puzzles did you find particularly difficult? Perhaps I could update the description to make it clearer for other players.
MKRaw
03. May 2023 · 11:48 UTC
@vidarn the other one are not hard
snesgaard
03. May 2023 · 11:52 UTC
Really great atmosphere and art. Thought the puzzles were just the right difficulty.
🎤 vidarn
03. May 2023 · 12:11 UTC
@mkraw All right :) Thanks for the feedback and for the quick reply!
@snesgaard Thank you! I'm glad you liked it
LorenzoCgt
03. May 2023 · 17:33 UTC
so, when is the rabbit's birthday ? :(
PerfectSquare
03. May 2023 · 17:36 UTC
Fantastic game! The art was excellent and the music and sound effects really set the mood. In terms of the puzzles, I found them just the right difficulty. I solved them all without looking at the hints or getting frustrated but they each took a bit of trial and error so it was very fun and engaging. Very well done :smile:
jvolonte
03. May 2023 · 20:25 UTC
Cute game with clever puzzles. I liked it!
🎤 vidarn
05. May 2023 · 18:44 UTC
Thanks for the comments! :blush:

@lorenzocgt haha, that's a good question. I guess whenever you play the game, it's not that day :grin:
cheesepencil
05. May 2023 · 19:29 UTC
cool character design, the puzzles go way over my head but its a complete package and a great compo entry with plenty of polish for the time constraints
ardorugus
07. May 2023 · 03:26 UTC
Enjoyed your game so much! Despite it being a bit wooden, it's a really cute adventure with simple but interesting puzzles and fun sound design. Great job, keep it up!
Remco
08. May 2023 · 13:01 UTC
That was a short, but very sweet experience. I usually like my puzzles to be a fair bit harder, but this is mostly a story game anyway. Great art-style, not one you see often in games -- a bit like a children's book.

The most interesting part was the mirror puzzle. That has some potential, maybe if there where mirrors that flipped upside down, or rotated.
Dinoraz
08. May 2023 · 13:13 UTC
Cute! Nice characters and dialogue in particular
HitchH1k3r
08. May 2023 · 13:35 UTC
This was very nice looking, and the sound effects were nice to. I don't think the music detracted from the game, but I liked the sound effects much more. The art was certainly the strongest part of this game. The characters were silly (in a good way), and the mirror room was very inventive. Good job!
🎤 vidarn
08. May 2023 · 14:11 UTC
Thank you all for playing the game!

@remco it's really interesting how different people experience the difficult of the puzzles. Thank you for giving me another data point! I tend to agree, I'm a fan of puzzle games and I felt the urge to make them a bit more difficult. But as you say, this game turned out to focus more on the "story" and characters, so I wanted to find a good balance. I also didn't want to make the game too long (for once :laughing: ). Oh, and thanks for the nice comment about the art style, I'm happy with the comparison to children's books, that's kind of the vibe I was going for.

@hitchh1k3r Thank you! I agree with you on the music. I'm fairly new to making music and I pushed it until far too late this jam. I'm glad it wasn't too distracting at least! I wanted the different rooms to feature different parts of the song, but I think I got to involved with the techinical aspect of making that, instead of actually making something that sounded good :sweat_smile:. It was a good learning experience though, and I'll give it another shot next jam!
bartalomew
08. May 2023 · 15:53 UTC
nice puzzle game. the art is beatiful.. the puzzles were a bit overwhelming as the game doesn't explain much and it takes an effort from the player to do them, but that makes them rewarding. still, a tutorial would make this game much more approachable I feel. great job nonetheless!
Meta-link
08. May 2023 · 20:59 UTC
Really cool game. The puzzles are fun and the art style is lovely. Good job :slight_smile:
SurWeaver
09. May 2023 · 09:52 UTC
Great game!
It's very cool that you managed to do so much for Compo.
I'd love to play more if you continued to develop the game after the jam.

I like such short and meaningful dialogues, good characters.

By the way, I had a curious bug in the mirror puzzle. I somehow moved the third owl to the left, and for some reason texture flipped (it was to the left below the rabbit, away from the mirrors), which is why the rabbit said that the character looks mirrored. Maybe it's something with other two interacting with mirror.

I really like the whole game, congrats with that nice entry!
LDJam user 362790
09. May 2023 · 13:09 UTC
I enjoyed playing this game. It has a nice style. Well done!
HitchH1k3r
10. May 2023 · 14:23 UTC
@vidarn I was trying to do the same thing with music this jam (well a track that gets added to over the course of the game). I did it once before (with a teammate dedicated to making music). I'm not sure what technology you developed or used, but for me one if the big issues was keeping multiple music streams synchronized, even a small drift can cause nasty dissonance over time. Please do try it again next jam, I'll be sure to checkout your progress.
Stephen Kyranakis
19. May 2023 · 05:21 UTC
This was very cute! I particularly enjoyed the art and the sound, and I liked how there was humor, but it wasn't really in-your-face. Well done!