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Mail Menace's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #707 | 3.775 | 3.775 |
| Style | #812 | 3.971 | 3.971 |
| Creativity | #950 | 3.794 | 3.794 |
| Enjoyment | #959 | 3.559 | 3.559 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The core of the game is scaling objects in different axes to solve puzzles, and you are "scaling" a tower that is being progressively built.
Development Time
96 hours
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
https://shapeforms.itch.io/shapeforms-audio-free-sfx
https://kenney.nl/assets/input-prompts-pixel-16
https://freesound.org/people/Iwiploppenisse/sounds/156031/
See description for full credits
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Comments
Yo, I saw someone else say wizard gang and I love that! I like your take on the different scaling spells and the level design seems really cool. I got stuck on the third level with the horizontal scaling after dying quite a few times to the red attack from off screen, I had to stop for my own sanity. That being said I think this is really neat and original!
This is such a great game. Very cleverly designed levels and unique mechanics, and the music is fantastic as well. Awesome job!
Wow! Amazing work! This game is very polished and has great level design. Good job
Very impressive game ! Good level design and overall a great entry for the game jam!!
Art is cool but the levels just flowed so seamlessly great design overall was a blast to play.
Wizard gang! :) Very good story and the game looks great :) I enjoyed the puzzles, sprites and the music :)
Good gameplay and great character animation. The story is interesting too. My congratulations!
Great concept. Art is good and gameplay was fun. May I suggest some sort of checkpoint once the puzzle is solved as dying and have to redo the puzzle on the level can be time consuming. Hope this makes sense. Great effort on the game congrats.
nice puzzle game!
I liked the difficulty level of this game. I will mirror what some other commenters have said that maybe mixing action platforming and puzzle platforming didn't work the best, but I didn't find it too bad. I do wish that the wizards fireballs were maybe 50% smaller so they were easier to dodge. As is, it felt like a lot of times I died because there was nothing that I could do, rather than me doing something wrong.
The general vibes of the game were pretty great. I liked the spell-casting mailman, and the music was absolutely a bop.
Fun game! I wish I was better at platformers so I could get further.
Really fun game! I really liked the core mechanic of the game, since it not only provided a good base for interesting levels, but it was also implemented very cleanly. Very nicely done.
A bit of feedback:
- The game does feel like it has a bit of an identity crisis in later levels. It starts off as a planned out puzzle platformer which was very appealing to me. However, continuing with the spikes and fireballs and all that, it felt kinda unnecessary. You spend all this time solving one half of a level just to misstep on a fireball and lose all your progress. It was a bit antisynergestic with the puzzle strategy aspect of the game. I also didn't find the core grow/widen/etc mechanic too helpful for dealing with such obstacles too.
Overall though, it was a very fun experience!
EDIT: So I went back and grinded out the rest of the game because I was curious how the mechanics would be used further (I stopped at level 3 before once I lost all my progress to ANOTHER FIREBALL LOL) I think my thoughts from before are just even moreso after seeing the rest of the game. I think you guys found two distinct and fun mechanics for this, a puzzle platformer, and an action platformer. Mixing the two however in the same level I feel took away from the experience. I found the purely puzzle platforming (First couple levels) and the purely action platforming (final boss battle) the most compelling levels. Levels 3 and 4 which mixed the two just made the experience frustrating. The final boss had this a bit but to a lesser extend in my opinion. I think one of the worst feelings you can get is having to repeat and go through the motions of a puzzle you already know the solution to. Especially if it takes a while to do so, and this was something present whenever you mixed the puzzle and action aspects together. Overall, I think the two concepts are both very fun on their own, but mixed together took away from the experience of an otherwise very good game.
Hm yeah, I admit level 3 is probs the weakest and I should have designed it a lot better. In hindsight I would have probs have made it linear with a checkpoint halfway through the level due to its length. As the level designer I found it to be the hardest stage, but I wasn't exactly sure why. Your comment made me realize why it was hard- it feels more artificially than naturally difficult if I design stages to puzzle platformers in the future akin to this I will take this into consideration.
I'm not sure what you mean for 4 though, can you elaborate on it?
Yeah for sure! I don't think the fourth level was actually harder objectively than the third level. I actually didn't have a big problem with levels being difficult, but rather them being tedious. On the third level, I'd spend quite a fair amount of time figuring out the puzzles (which were great!) and that had that nice sense of difficulty and problem solving. What made the level make me groan and want to close my tab was when I caught a stray fireball because I messed up a jump slightly. The same principle is what made me a bit offput to level 4 too. I actually got through first try, but the stress of trying to maintain my health so I wouldn't have to do everything over again as I was solving the puzzles took away from the puzzle solving experience to me.
But I don't think the death mechanic was all bad, not after seeing the boss level. Since the boss level had an air of "you can die here" and the puzzles themselves didn't take too long to do again and actually emphasized more the mechanics of movement rather than a long Rube Gobert sequence of steps, it made the action more enjoyable!
Very impressive! The puzzles, the mechanics, the art, and the music are all great. Great job!
Love the pixel art on this one, as well as the gameplay! The puzzles were interesting and polished, along with pretty much everything else! I honestly cannot believe that this was only made in 4 days, because it's just that good. Great work on this one!
10/10 imo! Engaging gameplay, a cute story, and visually appealing. Really embodies the spirit of the jam by taking simples concepts and making something so interesting!
This is a really cool game, fun to play. The visuals, animations and music all feel so polished!
The game was very cool, I like the concept and the character controls are pretty smooth and satisfying.
Really cool game. The idea of shooting scaling areas is really unique. Nice art and music too
Very cool game, this might have taken so much work
Nice game ! Love the use of the theme, and the pixel art is on point !! I had a few bugs with being stuck between boxes and the wall. Good job !