SpeciAl Delivery
A puzzle game about constructing routes to deliver parcels.
And because sound advice always gets thrown out the window during game jams, this jam entry is woefully incomplete and unpolished. There is no tutorial, and very little sound and animation.
Because there is no tutorial the best thing I can do is include the rules in the description.
Your job is to control an AI truck to deliver parcels (marked by small squares) to their destinations (marked by circles). The green parcel goes to the green circle, and so on.
To do that, you drag and drop roads from the top into the grid cells. Each grid cell can hold at most 3 roads.
Once you've finished placing the roads, press the play button to dispatch the truck. The truck can only hold one parcel at a time, so make sure it has the right parcel when it reaches the destination. After delivering all the parcels, the truck must return back to the depot to complete the level.
On the left side of the screen, you can drag and drop left and right arrows into the box. These instruct the direction for the truck to turn when the truck comes to a T-junction (i.e. grid cells with 3 roads). After the truck executes one such instruction, the next instruction will be executed at the next junction. There can be at most 12 such instructions, and when the end is reached it loops back around.
If you want to start over, you can press R to reload the level.
I think that's all you need to know. I've only included 3 levels, because I made the excellent decision of leaving level design to the last minute.
Personally, I didn't really feel like I overscoped for this jam. I felt that the main reason I didn't complete the game was because the main gameplay loop took too long for me to implement, around the entirety of the first 3 days, which left little time for other things. I have never implemented the drag and drop mechanic before, which was probably why it took so long, and the parcel collecting mechanic was only added in the last few hours. Still, at least I managed to salvage something playable from it.
Ironically enough, while playtesting in the final hours, I felt that dragging and dropping each road was too slow and arduous, but by then there was no time to change it. So much for implementing the mechanic. Perhaps you could take note of it while playing.
Other than that, I do think there are no other major bugs or issues (yet), which I guess is a plus.
If you've read all the way until here, thanks for taking the time to read all of my rambling thoughts. I do genuinely feel this jam could have gone a lot better for me, and I've submitted much better entries than this. Still, I hope you can enjoy what I made.
Made with Godot 3.5 and Inkscape.
Comments
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Took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do with the arrows (even after reading the instructions). It really wasn't clear to me what "box" you were talking about, I though it meant the thing to the right of the trash can. I think this issue could've been fixed by something quite simple, like making the two arrows the same color (again, this was confusing for me as the red/green combo is usually for selected/not selected or activate/cancel type of stuff) and putting an outline of the same color or a background of the muted version of color in the box, or there's probably better ideas than what I came up with while writing this.
Also, the incomplete roads were again quite confusing to me, although this took only a few short tries to understand. Maybe a little outline on the sides and none on the end to show that they're not dead-ends.
So, all in all, my main critique is about giving the right visual cues to make the game speak for itself intuitively. With that nailed down, very few instructions would be necessary, guessing how it works could even be part of the fun.
(Of course, I completely understand you didn't have time to polish any of that, I still thought I'd say it because feedback is good.)
That being said, I do like the concept and the general aesthetic you got going on. You could easily elaborate on what you've already got by adding new mechanics in later levels and have a solid puzzle game that isn't repetitive and gets progressively more challenging. The drag and drop mechanic didn't bother me that much, a way to make it less tedious could be to center the boxes you drag from (instead of being in a corner) so the movements you have to make with your mouse/trackpad are shorter. And adding a right-click to delete function or something.
Thank you for your comprehensive feedback. There is in fact a right-click to delete functionality, but I forgot to put it in the description. I think the idea of making the mechanics a bit more intuitive to figure out is good, I will keep that in mind.
Laying the roads is indeed really tedious and I can't figure out how to get past the first level. However, I really enjoyed the dice game you made though and I hope to see more games from you in the future!
Well I wasn't expecting a comment this early, but thanks for playing and encouraging me! Hopefully my games will be better in the future.