Mail Day Mayday! by Thomas_Bringer
Mayday! Packages incoming! Manage conveyor belts and machines to ship packages to their destination. Package stuff, scan to check for dangerous mail, and send packages to their addressee.
Mail Day Mayday! is a family-friendly management game, in which you play as employee Joe, attempting to deliver all packages in record time.
Play with arrow keys and space, or with a controller with left stick and X or A.
Made in 48 hours by Thomas Bringer for Ludum Dare 53 (Theme: Delivery)
Postjam updates (download below):
v1.1 - Overhaul of the carry/drop controls - Tutorials react to mistakes - Polish & bug fixes
| Link | https://thomas-bringer.itch.io/mail-day-mayday |
| Link | https://github.com/ThomasBringer/mail-day-mayday |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/mail-day-mayday |
Ratings
| Overall | 154th | 3.679⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 147th | 3.589⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 235th | 3.224⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 48th | 4.286⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 194th | 3.589⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 177th | 3.375⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 278th | 2.46⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 225th | 3.179⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
I felt like the controls were a bit too finnicky for something demanding such precise timing. Tough to drop boxes on the correct tile.
I stopped playing soon after the destination device was introduced. If the controls were a bit tighter and the levels were a bit shorter (often they drag on after I've "solved" them already), this would hold my attention a bit better. Nonetheless, a really solid entry. Again, love the mechanics. Would love to see you explore them more.
The character got stuck a bit while on conveyors and moving past objects like scanners. If I'm using Unity physics for my player characters I find it's best to turn off friction on the player and implement my own in game-code.
I enjoyed your game - Really impressive work!
I found it hard to guess where a package will be after dropping it, the indicator was not bright and the "aim" felt weird. Often it got placed on a tile to the left or right.
Some of the tutorials also broke after I did something wrong, having overlapping text.
Some ideas for future development are that you can add some meta game and maybe allow player to build their own layout for faster and more effective work.
This was really fun! I came in expecting a puzzle game, but instead got a micromanagement game about monitoring moving boxes. It was fun figuring out my workflow for the level and then executing it. "Okay, I need to watch for incoming boxes when the first hazard checker is in use to improve efficiency, watch for non-hazard boxes coming out so they don't go to the hazard tube by mistake, and move boxes that come out of the color checker into the respective tube. Now let's do this!" I think you could have turned up the difficulty more at the end because I three-starred every level on my first try. Maybe just make everything faster.
Pickup and place controls were pretty wonky. I'm not sure what it was, but the boxes often wouldn't go where I thought they would go, and sometimes the input wouldn't work at all unless I moved around a little. In fact, the only time I placed a box into the wrong pipe, it was because the game placed the box in a space I wasn't expecting it to. Just make the box always land on the space you're standing on and make the whole space glow brightly when carrying something.
But that issue aside, it was a fun and frantic game that had me hooked the whole way through. Great job!
- Overhaul of the carry/drop controls
- Tutorials react to mistakes
- Polish & bug fixes
I'm willing to make more updates in the future, stay tuned if you're interested! Thanks again for your support
The graphics are super cute and the music is pretty.
Good job, this is a very nice game! :)
@droiddare Overcooked is a favorite game of mine, and the original pitch for Mail Day Mayday was literally 'Singleplayer Delivery-themed Overcooked" haha
Crazy how you managed to translate the stress from a multiplayer Overcooked level into a single player game lmao
Question: why make all the pipes green? More easily distinguishable colours would've been better.
I was worried it would be very simplistic, but then around the first level with multiple machines I knew it was something more! some of the levels were very fun and were satisfying to nail perfectly.
The whole thing felt super satifying, actually. I could do this for a living...
Unlike some other commenters I found the pick up/drop ok, it seldom went where i didn't want it. the pace was chilled enough that the occasional mis-drop could be corrected. Keen to try the rework, though.
well done, this is a solid entry!
As others have said dropping packages where you want can be a bit tricky. One change I can suggest is making it so that if there's an obstacle where you're trying to drop the package, it gets dropped at your feet instead of cancelling the drop entirely. For reference, I played the browser version on the itch page. Not sure if that's post-jam or not
Regardless, the presentation is very polished, especially for a jam game. The visual style is very charming and clean. The sounds effects and music fit the game well. It's impressive that you managed to include a ranking system and a nice ending image. One thing I missed is a level select screen - I wanted to go back to levels I did bad on and get 3 stars!
It's sometimes a bit hard to aim for the right spot, may be the player movement would have been better if it were grid based;
But other than that, this is a great game !
Nicely done, and GG :)
+ it wasn't obvious to me in the beginning that you had to drop the packages in front of the tubes and not throw them into them.
+ dropping the the packages in adjacent squares was a bit clunky, it was hard to drop stuff in front of a tube because the tube was blocking the drop off, and sometimes the package didn't go to the square that I thought and wanted it to go and got sucked by the a different tube (it didn't help that the tubes were usually adjacent)
+ when walking with a package diagonally against the conveyor belt current the character barely moved, and it seemed like he got stuck on objects