Willowbrooke Post

Review

The game starts with you at the Stanbrook train station ticket office.  The bell is broken so you’ll have to knock on the window for assistance. You’ll be greeted by an old bushy grey-haired ticket officer; you tell him you’re here to pick up a reserved ticket. He asks you your name and then you have to enter your name on a ticket, after which he’ll hand you your ticket to Willowbrooke. You leave the ticket office and stand on the platform of the station; it’s a lovely starry night as a steam train pulls in to the station. While on the train you read a letter from your parents explaining that they’ve cleared off to travel around the world, leaving you to head back to Willowbrooke and run the post office in their leave.

You arrive at the post office, which you’ll have to run for the next year while your parent swan off enjoying themselves around the world. It’s not a big post office but rather quaint, pictures adorn the walls, lockboxes, stamp machine, writing desk and a post box for letters are around the room. Behind the counter you’ll find a fireplace, telephone, wrapping station for parcels. Also, behind the counter there’s a locked door, a store room and stairs leading to where you’ll live.

In the store room you’ll find the sorting desk for mail, a mail bag for mail which has been sorted and requires delivering, and a parcel shelf for any parcels which require collection. There’s also a computer and storage shelves, which have some ingredients for you to make an apple pie. You can take the ingredients right away, but everything else downstairs isn’t available to you, as it’s the night before you start working.

Heading upstairs you’ll find a small kitchen where you’ll be able to bake your apple pie.  There’s your parents' bedroom which you can’t enter, so no jumping around on their bed. You’ll also notice a ladder leading up in to the attic, which is also locked. However, you can enter the room at the top of the stairs on the left; this is your old room. Upon entering the room there’s a letter on your bed from your parents. Once you’ve read the letter, you’ll hear a shout from downstairs - it’s Pete! He’s worked with your parents for many years delivering the post around Willowbrooke. He’s popped in to make sure you’re ok and settling in and to give you a journal so you can keep track of everything. After you’ve had a chat, you’ll be able to go back to your room and get some sleep by clicking on your bed.

You’ll wake up at 6am and you’ll need to start working straight away, so you head off downstairs, where you’ll bump into Pete again as he’s collecting the mail for delivery. The mailbox will now contain letters which will need sorting and having the correct stamp marks applied to them. Once you’ve collected them, you can sort them in the store room and then Pete will collect and deliver them. Some of them will need a signature or may be damaged; every person who receives mail has their own preferences on how or what mail they want delivering. You’ll have to make sure you stamp them correctly according to the information you have on each recipient, as failure to do so will incur a penalty.

You’ll need to take care of needs, such as wrapping a parcel a certain way depending on the sender’s needs, or phoning them to say their package or letters are here etc. Make sure you read and check everything to make sure you’re doing what the customer wants. I didn’t, and I found myself missing some important information on what I needed to do. It’s not hard to figure, especially after going over and over the same things each time because of problems with the game.

The game is in Early Access and currently it’s got a lot of problems. I found myself starting from the very start of the game numerous times for one reason or another. It’s crashed on me several times; it’s had windows stay open which should have closed and you’re unable to close them. I’ve ran out of stamina which then ends your day and you go to sleep, waking up fully refreshed. However, I’ve woken up with no stamina at all and only made it to my bedroom door before being sent back to bed, meaning that I’d missed a full day's work. Items have disappeared after taking them from a customer and the mouse sensitivity in the game cannot be changed. I have a Corsair M65 and use 800dpi but even using that dpi it made me feel sick; luckily, I can change the sensitivity of my mouse, and had to lower it down to 400dpi for it to feel much better.

If the developer can sort the bugs etc out and they are updating the game to get rid of them; once this is accomplished,  it will be quite a nice little game. It’s quite fun to play if nothing breaks, so I’m going to give it a bare minimum recommend. I’d say ONLY get the game if you can deal with an Early Access game with some problems and would like to help the developer, if you can’t then I’d say wait, add it to your wish list and see how the game progresses in the future.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!