Nice twist on the theme, as a big fun of the story telling aspect of video games, I had fun pushing forward in the story and experimenting, I didn't really find a need to save, maybe I'm just an overconfident dummy but I did pretty good! just a recommendation: you should play some other games so your game is recommended more to people

Really great game, I really enjoyed exploring all the possible endings, not sure if I got them all though. Well done!

Really fun game! The story was good, with fun endings and just enough puzzle solving/reckless handling of packages to suck me into the story. The only remotely negative thing I really have to say about this game, is that the undo and reset buttons are a little wonky and there were some spelling mistakes hear and there (I was a little confused if it was "Causality" or "Casuality" Couriers). Overall a genuenly fun game with good endings!

Woah very cool game you made there! Enjoyed playing it :)

Woah, the mood on this one! :O

Thanks for the kind comments everyone!

@kylene Glad you enjoyed it! There are six endings in total.

@jondalnas Writing "Casualty Couriers" was my biggest fear and it appears I've realised it. Appropriate considering some of the bad endings though. I've made a small update which should fix most of the obvious spelling errors.

I found it quite fun and the story was rich an interesting.
Fun spin on the theme, it kinda stands out as well.
Good entry overall.

Really cool twist on the theme good job

Time-traveling couriers was an interesting take on the theme!

I enjoyed the game a lot - the story was compelling, and there were plenty of options to explore and interact with, and an interesting variety of endings as well. I managed to get all of the endings save two - perhaps some of them were time/"number of moves"-based?

I also liked the twist regarding the role of aliens in history, and the variety of tracked achievements/events displayed at the end screen. The latter especially gave motivation to play multiple playthroughs to see all of those outcomes.

I played the version on your website, and it seemed that undo and loading a saved game did not work as expected. It would only show the description of the scene, but not display any of the choices. It wasn't too much of a hassle though, since the game is relatively fast to replay.

The use of AI-generated art seemed a good match for the text adventure format, due to the very distinct locations represented by a single still image. Together with the writing, it worked well to set the mood of the game. I'd be curious to know how easy Stable Diffusion was to work with in this regard, and if much "post-processing" was needed to adapt the output to the needs of the story (or alternatively, having to slightly adapt the story to the limitations of the generated illustrations)

All in all, this was a very enjoyable game, with an engrossing story - nice work!

This is a nice modern take on the text adventure genre, pressing buttons is so much easier then typing commands and having all the information about the environment and inventory always on the screen is great.

@somnium Thanks for all the feedback! And thank you for uncovering the bug with saving and undoing, I'll fix that as soon as I can.

On the subject of the illustrations, I'll probably go into more detail when I write a postmortem for this game, but there was little post-processing required -- I cleaned up some weird details here and there, as well as combining images & making explosion effects in GIMP.

Getting a picture I liked took a few iterations of fiddling with the prompt and generating variations. For a couple of the pictures, I started with a crude drawing of my own as an image prompt, but the results I ended up liking most were usually the ones that bore the least resemblance to said drawing. I couldn't get an image I was happy with for the interior of the tent, so I ended up using a exterior tent picture instead. That was probably the most specifically described room, so I guess there's a lesson in that. I mostly avoided changing text to match images, but I did alter a few minor details in the end.

@flying-dog-fish Yes, it also keeps the game more manageable to develop. When I've tried to write text adventures with parsers, I end up spending most of my time writing different "you can't do that" messages for all the weird things players type in! Wish I could take more credit for this aspect, but the interface is 95% Gruescript.

Excellent! I was totally engrossed in the story. You really centered this game around the theme of "delivery" and created a unique experience.

Exciting story! Well done!

I feel bad for the alien I delivered wine to, and I can't seem to find any other options (anything else I choose just leads to nothing and I inevitably end up giving the parcel to the alien). And he was so happy about the wine and said he liked it, so it's upsetting he exploded, it must mean the wine was tempered with maybe? If he likes it, he must have tried it before and survived. Fletcher set him up to be murdered and we died because of that too ^^'' I wonder if you have a walkthrough for this game :)

I liked the way story was told, the atmosphere was created nicely, and you worked well on choosing AI images that fit together in a similar style, only the alien doesn't fit the general art style, but it can be excused since he is an otherworldly being.

Also, saving and loading did work for me (played on your site). I didn't encounter any bugs or anything like that :)

Thank you for the kind comments @madbarron and @jminor!

@kanity Thank you for playing! There's a way to save the alien, though I might have made it a little too obscure. Hint: see what you can do with the parcel when there's no-one around, and be persistent. A walkthrough is probably a good idea, I'll write one up.

@david-yates thank you for your tips!! I got to save the alien and got this ending:


You got the Maverick Ending (6/6)

Delivery status: DAMAGED IN TRANSIT

Payment received: 25 credits

Times parcel was shaken: 50

You've earned the Hustler Achievement, for attempting to extract an extra payment from both the consigner and consignee.

The graphics in this game showcase the developer's progress and improvement, with noticeable attention to detail and artistic growth

The Egyptians had “highly advanced knowledge of mathematics and especially geometry” — this is very true, but sadly overlooked nowadays. It’s good to see it recognized here. I also like the artwork in this game. It brings to mind Jean Giraud/Mœbius of _Métal Hurlant_ fame.

The multiple endings and the overall mood of this game remind me of the _Choose Your Own Adventure_ books from way back when. It seems that the far future and distant past serve as bookends here.

@gamebuilder Yes, I felt that having aliens present at the building of the pyramids, but only as observers in awe of the human builders would be an amusing twist on the ancient aliens conspiracy theories. And you're spot on about my influences: the art is very much intended to have a Mœbius comic book feel, and the CYOA books were formative for me.

Great job, solid art style and mood! 5/5

what a great entry, i like textadventures. just a pity that an exciting music was missing

Thank you everyone for playing and commenting! I hope to see you all next time!

Here's a blog post about some of the dev process behind this game: https://davidyat.es/2023/05/20/postmortem-ludum-dare-53/