Oh, to be a postman. That sultry steward of the mail. That lovely bastard with the letters. That outrageous freak of parcels. That strolling obscenity in Gore-Tex crimson. That creep who lives inside a van and can’t die, as a result of the postman is each one and lots of, in all places and nowhere, at all times and by no means. Ding-dong, goes the siren track of the elusive postman. Can you signal for this? The historical phrases slip from his moist mouth like forbidden lyrics to a forgotten ballad. And then he’s vanished as a wisp. And in your arms the printer cartridges you ordered. And all continues to be as soon as extra.
That’s a poem about pretty postmen that I simply got here up with, as a result of I really like submit. Thanks.
Willowbrooke Post is an attractive prospect, promising an escapist simulation of an idyllic rural occupation which you can’t assist however really feel instantly drawn to: the dignified lifetime of a postperson. The game boldly presents itself as a three-dee, first-person Stardew Valley through which you are taking administration of a village’s submit workplace, sorting by means of their letters, wrapping and labelling their parcels to make sure they get to their locations safely, whereas enhancing your repute with the native townsfolk by being variety to them and asking them how their day’s going.
That’s a really great concept for a game, and one I actually want to play, however Willowbrooke Post falls method wanting this easy pitch. This isn’t the wistful and uplifting expertise I had imagined. Not even almost. Masquerading as a postman for a short while is exactly the kind of distraction we want proper now, however even with the Early Access expectations bar set inches from the ground, Willowbrooke Post is an incomprehensible mess of dangerous concepts, and doubtless the worst factor to occur to me all day.
You are, on the very least, technically a postman, albeit one trapped inside your personal submit workplace with a set of postage paraphernalia and little or no to truly do with it. Letters seem within the mailbox on the far finish of the room, to be collected and brought to the sorting workplace the place a Papers, Please type sorting minigame has you checking for dangerous addresses and chubby envelopes. You’ve bought a set of stamps with which to stamp every envelope in flip, relying on whether or not all the things is so as or not, or on the actual preferences of the recipient. Some don’t need spam, some have lockboxes, and so forth.
It’s simple sufficient, however buggy past all redemption. Sometimes you get caught on this display screen perpetually, trapped in letter sorting hell till you go out from exhaustion. Using the mistaken stamp hits you with a advantageous (it’s not clear why, or from whom, however operating out of money abruptly ends the game), unexplained icons litter the display screen, and addresses typically hover above invisible envelopes like a nasty Hogwarts spell gone mistaken. It’s about as entertaining as sorting a handful of your personal enamel.
Occasionally any person from city will present up, although I’ve solely encountered two of them. The first is Magnifique, a superb, smokey-eyed drag queen who desires you to retrieve her digital camera from the shop room. The second is a man who asks you to ship a parcel – so far as I can inform the one time you’re ever requested to do that – by urgent a sequence of arcane buttons on the rear wall of the submit workplace. And that’s it when it comes to buyer interplay.
I’m largely assured there’s nothing extra to see or do after that, nevertheless it’s troublesome to be completely positive as a result of this game about being a postman additionally has a set of incongruous and punishing survival mechanics. A stamina meter is consistently depleting as you endure the unbelievable effort of shifting round on this tiny room choosing up letters. Willowbrooke Post is much less of a postman simulator than it’s an inventive expression of any person residing with continual fatigue. By round midday every day I used to be blacking out on the entrance desk and waking up in mattress the next afternoon with a punitively docked stamina meter and a model new stack of payments to pay.
Unless yow will discover some scraps of meals within the spam that arrives each day in your doorstep, the protagonist’s hummingbird-like structure requires that you just sleep for about 20 hours every day, utilizing the few hours of power you possibly can muster to type just a few bits of mail earlier than crawling again up the steps because the tunnel imaginative and prescient units in, like some oxygen-starved mountain climber. This game is ready inside a postman’s private imaginative and prescient of hell. Nothing right here is smart. This is the Twilight Zone of submit workplaces, and your incapacity to ever go exterior or keep awake compounds the sense that you just may really be useless. After all, what’s a mail depot if not a sort of postal purgatory?
And for causes recognized solely to the developer, he’s coded it in order that your lightbulbs can explode at random, however set the possibilities of that taking place method too excessive. By the second day you’re haunted by the sound of breaking glass each few seconds. Bulbs pop again and again, as if a malevolent poltergeist is throwing a tantrum, when all you wish to do is be a postman prefer it stated on the Steam retailer web page. It’s so unusual and upsetting, and no enjoyable in any respect.
I used to be a postman, as soon as. When I used to be 10 years previous, a neighborhood double glazing salesman requested me to ship flyers round city, handing me a fats stack of yellow, postcard-sized sheets to take door to door. It felt like such an necessary activity, and I used to be honoured that an grownup had trusted me sufficient to do it. Ten minutes in, I threw many of the flyers within the pond close to my home the place I’d catch tadpoles in the summertime, and used the cash to purchase Panini stickers for my Premier League ‘98 album.
Perhaps that’s why Willowbrooke Post’s equally botched try at a postal simulation has left me feeling so personally shaken. It is finally a mirrored image of my very own failings as a postman. But I did end that sticker album, after swapping for the left half of the Spurs workforce picture with Darren McCabe in school. So that’s one thing.
