Mailbox Mania by Wuppos

Oh no! You're an intern at the post office and you slept in until the afternoon. You have one minute left to collect all the city's mail. This frenzied race against time will test your precision as you speed through a quiet residential town. How many letters can you collect?
- Press Up/W to hit the gas, Down/S to brake or reverse, and Left/A and Right/D to turn.
- Down coffee along the way for a speed boost and grab the magical clocks to turn back time.
- Collect as many letters as you can within the time limit!
Play the game here: https://wuppos.itch.io/mailbox-mania
Leaderboard: 1. @Wuppos (41) 2. @pastry-chef (37) 3. @cody-raethke (34) 4. @thiefviolinist (33) 5. @kinnerk (29) 6. @aurora-bee (27) 7. @robin-schmitz (27) 8. @zactyl (27) 9. @pigeonic (24) 10. @dis0rder (17)
Let us know your score if you want to join the leaderboard :)



| Link | https://github.com/YannVeld/LD58 |
| Link | https://wuppos.itch.io/mailbox-mania |
| Link | https://wuppos.itch.io/mailbox-mania |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/mailbox-mania |
Ratings
| Overall | 230th | 3.721⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 175th | 3.698⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 491th | 3.102⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 198th | 3.989⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 156th | 4.205⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 147th | 3.779⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 322th | 3.179⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 420th | 3.512⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 40🗳️ | 40🗨️ |
I like the direct controls of the vehicle, the fitting and energizing soundtrack as well as the tasteful pixelgraphics. Well done! On my second go, I even upped my highscore to 27 pieces of mail collected :) The bonus time from pickups helped with that. Great job on your entry.
@preef Thanks a lot for your constructive feedback! I can fully understand your struggles with the game. The letters indeed just disappear for gameplay reasons, but I like your idea of a rival picking them up instead. Lets go with that :D
@robin-schmitz I am happy you liked it! Thanks a lot for playing :) I agree that the time pickups are really strong for getting a high score. I now made a leaderboard on the gamepage, so lets see who can beat your score :D
The isometric perspective is nicely done graphics-wise, however for me it's a bit difficult to navigate a car in an isometric view. ^^ For my personal taste the game also felt a bit too fast (even without the coffee) so I just kept colliding into everything.
Was incredibly fun yet incredibly hard, I'm pretty sure I tore down every single house. If you ever do post-jam version, plz add some visual representation how bumped car or houses are. Or maybe in the endgame stats.
Great work!!
@squashi, @ciph3rzer0 I fully agree that some way to see the car behind buildings would have been good to implement. It should be relatively easy to do with shaders I think, but I am not too comfortable with those (yet). Thanks a lot for the nice feedback :)
@binarydiv Yeah, it seems that more people are struggling to control the car. A bit chaotic steering was intended, but I think we overdid it XD I am happy you enjoyed the graphics and music
@t90 Haha, I am happy you enjoyed it even though you are 007 XD Some extra visualization of destruction would have definitely been fun! I was also thinking of destructible objects along the road, but unfortunately there was no time left to add those things (as always :P) Thanks a lot for your kind words!
@ave2brave Ah, yeah, I was wondering if the control scheme would be confusing to people, but we couldnt come up with anything that made more sense to us XD I am happy you enjoyed it though!
@pigeonic Thanks a lot for playing! You have been added to the leaderboard :) I am curious how you did the mail collecting, so I will definitely by checking out your game!
@the-default-team I am happy to hear that you liked it enough to put in the time to learn how to control the game :D Thanks a lot for playing and for your feedback
What really stood out to me is how you need to precisely trigger the front mailbox to collect letters instead of just driving up to the house. That means you’ve got to plan your drifts and positioning carefully to pick things up efficiently, and it kept me try to stay on the road most of the time, which made for a really fun and unique driving challenge.
All in all, great job!
What I didn't expect was the hitboxes for the mail to also kind of be "isometrically" in front of the house if that makes sense? I thought it'd be a fixed radius around the mailbox or something, but it turns out bumping into the mailbox from the side doesn't collect it. :sweat_smile:
Also at least with the html5 build I had an issue where the first collectible of each run gave me around a 2 second lag spike? Not sure if you were already aware of that and didn't have the time to fix or what, but bugs like these aren't unusual for shuch a short jam anyway :sweat_smile:
Also I love the art! The skit marks are a super lovely touch and I like the pixelated 3d look of the mail van ^^
Looking forward to see what else you'll be making in the future! :3
@zactyl Huh, getting your highscore on your first run is pretty unusual. Beginners luck I guess :D Yeah, I can see how you can get stuck behind those houses. I think the collisions need a bit of work, such that it is harder to get stuck like that. Thanks a lot for the feedback!
@kinnerk 29 is super good! That puts you on the first spot of the leader board after the two developers (who have a bit of an unfair advantage of course :P). Yeah, I see what you mean on the letter collect time. We were planning to have the background of the marker slowly deplete, but implemented the shrinking marker as a temporary solution >_< I am happy you enjoyed the game :D
@foursay Hi foursay! Yeah, controller support would have been really nice. We (or at least I) was actually inspired by a game called 'absolute drift', which does indeed have controller support and feels super nice to control. Perhaps we can add it in a post-jam version. I am very happy you enjoyed it :D
@aurora-bee 27 is a really good score! You are now on the leaderboard :D I see what you mean about the hitboxes. I kind of like the current implementation, because it becomes a bit more about precision and staying on the road. Although, it also seems that people have a much harder time controlling the car than we thought, so perhaps a fixed radius would have been better XD
I am sorry about the lagspike! I actually have the same problem on my laptop, but because I havent heard anyone else complain about it I thought it might just be my problem. Are you using firefox by any chance?
The 3D look of the van is done using a technique called 'sprite stacking'. It is super easy to implement and gives a really nice effect. I am happy you like it! :D
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I really like the graphics and simplified color palette you've chosen. The roofs of the houses could probably use a little variation, but apart from that everything's nice and neat.
The HUD and different indicators are polished as well. My only nitpick concerns the blue letter-marker. The way it gets smaller to indicate how much time you have left somehow _"doesn't feel right"._
It might be just my own weird sentiment though, so pay don't mind to that remark if it feels otherwise redundant.
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The steering felt a bit janky, but would probably improve with minor tweaks and tuning.
I tried three times and this is what I managed to score.

Keep on jamming! :love_letter: :mailbox_with_mail:
Eerily similar to my first jam game, though quite a bit more polished :laughing: Fun graphics and gameplay, and I liked the small details like the speedometer and the mailbox flags going up. I did get a little annoyed at how much the car spun around when crashing, and how you could drive off the side of the screen, but both minor things. Nice work!

The graphics are fun and the music is really energetic, bringing a chaotic fun vibe to your game
This game is really well done, especially for a team consisting of a seasoned- and a firsttime LDer. @pastry-chef, congratz on your first entry! I hope you have fun over here
19 was my best score.
IMHO steering adds to the difficulty of the game - and I'm guessing it's already difficult for a lot of people because of isometric view. For me it sometimes felt a bit unpredictable whether I hit something or not. I'm guessing that was due to the relation between the layered car sprite and the isomeric pixelart. Driving backwards was somehow easier at times.
The mail disappearing was a clear game mechanic for me, though I'd prefer another visual (and possibly, audible) feedback than making it smaller because it was quite hard to figure out If I'd reach it on time or not.
Other than those small remarks, I feel the entry is done very well, especially for a Jam timeframe. Congrats!
Oh yea my measly score:
