Have you ever wondered what it’s like to have your own post office? Well, good news for you! The developers over at Dante Knoxx recently launched their game Willowbrooke Post. In the game you take over the post office from your parents who are currently on a trip around the world. While playing the game you will literally have to stamp the post, give the parcels to the correct customer, and of course pay the bills to keep the office running. Dante Knoxx decided to release the game in Early Access, since it is still a work in progress. But nice as they are, they gave us a chance to test it for you to see where they currently are.
- Original story: The story/idea behind the game is an original one. You literally have to take over an old post office and try to keep it running until your parents are back from their trip around the world. In addition to this, you will have to keep track of everything, like for example collecting the mail and giving it the correct stamp in order to sort it, or you will have to order/deliver packages to the right person. The ultimate goal behind everything is to keep the villagers of Willowbrook happy and make sure you don’t go bankrupt and make your mummy and daddy sad. With this game you finally have to make right what the post offices do wrong! If you don’t mess up at least.
- Challenging: Like I have mentioned above, it is your goal to keep everyone happy and make sure you don’t go bankrupt. The first thing is easy, just wish everyone a happy birthday when it’s their special day (forgetting special dates never work like in the real world). However, the second part can be a lot more difficult, since when you give one letter the wrong stamp, you will lose a lot of your money and just like in the real world, the bills have to be paid to keep the lights on.
- Sound effects: The developers surely put a lot of their time in adding the correct sound effects to the game. Every single thing you can imagine a game like this needs, is there. The sound when you stamp a letter, or when you are walking around or a little bell when someone enters the post office. I really enjoyed to hear them all and it gave the game somewhat of a more complete feeling.
- Graphics: Visually the game is a very difficult one. The current style that it is in looks nice and has a chance to remind you of games like minecraft. Yet, it can give you a feeling that they didn’t pay a lot of attention to the design as they did to other aspects. But in the end even I was able to tell the difference between every object so everyone can do it.
- Stamina bar: Another aspect of the game that will definitely jump out, is the stamina bar. For god knows what reason, the developers decided that it was necessarily to add one. The function of this is that during the day, you will have to walk upstairs, cook some food, and eat it. Okay to be honest, during a day of hard work you will need to eat. But in this game and the way they implemented it, it just sucks. If you love micromanaging it will probably be the thing for you, but I just wanna run my god damn post office.
- No voice-acting/music: In addition to the perfectly added sound effects, you may have the feeling that some voice-acting or music is missing. Of course, not everything should be voice acted, but maybe just the basic and standard things would have been nice. Since there is no background music, I felt a little bit lonely, without voices or tunes.
- Hard to read: Right from the start of the game, you will notice that the font is very hard to read. This problem keeps happening throughout the whole game and is a big pain in the ass. Okay, it’s probably due to the graphical style that the game is in but at some point I got like really annoyed by it and I can imagine that everyone will get a moment like that while playing.
- No tutorial: In addition to the point I have mentioned above, a tutorial would have been nice, since at some points it’s almost impossible to read what you have to do, a bit of help of a tutorial would have eliminated the struggles. Now, you just get dropped in your post office and you will find some letters with information but that’s about it. I can imagine a lot of people are like “well this sucks, I quit” right after the first day. So let’s hope they either add a tutorial or fix the font.
- Bugs/lag: The game is still in Early Access but while playing you will encounter a lot of bugs and lag. I even encountered a blue screen while playing the game on full-screen mode. So make sure you don’t play it that way. Sometimes you will see that you can’t click on things or that the mouse movement is really slow, or that you are held back while trying to walk around. The game is still in Early Access so let’s hope the developers will tackle this problem.
CONCLUSION
Score: 65%
The game provides you with an original gameplay/story that is fun and challenging to play. However, at some point, everything is very hard and difficult to read and the lack of a tutorial to cover this is even worse. But, if the developers are continuing the path that they have laid out for this game, and if they manage to tackle the major problems the game has, it can become a nice addition for your Steam Library.
Developer: Dante Knoxx Publisher: Excalibur Games
Played On: PC
Perfect for: If you are curious about running a post office, and love helping customers.
Steam Game Store link: click here
