The Postage Code

I have to give Postage Code massive points for what seems like a simple thing: it starts when you double-click it. It’s a Python game, you see, and while I’m used to those requiring some command-line incantations to get running – witness Free Bird, from this Comp – so this level of ease of use is definitely an improvement. Its pixel-art graphics also help it make a positive first impression, as does the cozy premise that tasks you with making mail-delivery rounds to get the quirky inhabitants of a small village their packages. Admittedly, my virus-checker did throw up a false positive on the executable, and it loses some points for the title – wouldn’t the postage code be setting out how much you charge for shipping, rather than governing your responsibilities as a mail carrier? – but still, I went into this one with high hopes.

The fact that I just did a paragraph transition probably flags that those high hopes, alas, were quickly dashed. I can see a core gameplay loop here that could work – you deliver packages, earn money, and use that money to buy stuff you need to deliver more packages, with a couple of different entertaining Easter Eggs and more nice pixel art carrying you through to the end. But unfortunately Postage Code’s spotty implementation of basic parser mechanics combined with cruel design choices make it a pain to play; I persevered through to the end, but this really isn’t the kind of game that should require grim, Dark-Souls-style stamina to play.

Let’s start with the parser, since this is ParserComp, after all. Postage Code doesn’t contain any instructions, or respond to ABOUT or any similar commands, but it does have a quick rundown of accepted commands on its itch.io page. Unfortunately, some of the listed commands don’t seem to work – I was never able to successfully TALK to any of the character I met – and at least one critical command isn’t listed at all. That command is GO, and it’s what you need to type to get out of the very first screen; I spent a solid five minutes trying to look at stuff or use the directional commands to progress before I lucked out on the solution. The parser also lacks most helpful abbreviations as far as I can tell; I suppose that’s not the biggest deal in the world, but having to type out ordinal directions is quite the pain (thankfully, TAKE ALL is implemented). Oh, and DROPPING a package causes it to disappear from the world, meaning you’ll fail the game (there’s no save or undo, of course).

As to the design, as mentioned the basics of the puzzles are fine. There are a couple of completely straightforward deliveries, one that requires making a fairly intuitive purchase to complete, and finishing the first three unlocks a final tier that are more challenging. These last challenges aren’t particularly fun, though, inasmuch as two of them are impossible-to-predict gotchas that are trivial to solve once you know they’re coming, but first time out will cause you to instantly fail and have to restart (again: no saves). The last one, meanwhile, is a maze you can only solve with knowledge of an old-school video game reference (Spoiler - click to show)(the infamous Konami code); it’s clued in the game, at least, but by the time you’re stuck in the maze you’re not able to go back and reference the clue, so that’s another restart. And while we’re talking about restarts, I had to do one more because trying to microwave some shrimp crashed the game – though I have to confess that I’m a vegetarian so I don’t know whether that last was something no one in their right mind would ever attempt.

Put it all together and you get a frustrating game that’s all the more annoying for its missed potential; I did like the variety of people and places I got to visit in this little village, and a gentle mail carrier simulation seems a perfect premise for a piece of chilled-out IF – heck, I swear I can see what this game would look like if it was implemented in Adventuron. But punishing gameplay, an underbaked parser, and an inability to interact with the world by talking to folks or examining its finer points takes the Postage Code out of the idyllic realm of Postman Pat and into the era of 90s postal workers on the edge.