Pigeon Post is a delivery strategy game where horses carry the mail and pigeons bring replies home.
While brainstorming ideas for the theme "Old Tech", I realized that pigeon post is also a form of old technology. After all, people used to build entire communication networks around carrier pigeons to deliver messages. Nowadays, we have the internet for that, of course. But what if we went back a few centuries?
As it turns out, pigeons have an amazing ability to find their way home, making them surprisingly good at delivering messages quickly. But there's a catch: a pigeon can only fly home. It doesn't know any other addresses! And that's where the idea for this game came from.
You're given a network of houses and roads, and your goal is to find the most efficient delivery routes. You'll need to plan carefully, figure out how to make the best use of your pigeons, and deliver all the letters on time!
*Learn the basics in the tutorial, then put your planning skills to work across the levels.* - Horses travel along roads. Choose a horse, select its movement option, then click a building directly connected to its current location. - Manage cargo at buildings. Horses can carry letters and pigeons. Letters are delivered when you unload them at the correct destination. - Pigeons fly home. They carry letters up to their cargo limit and can only be sent to their home building. - Prepare for replies. Some recipients write back after a waiting period. Hover over their timer to see the reply’s destination and how much time you’ll have to deliver it. - Check names and colours. Building names use matching colours to help you identify destinations. - Watch the deadlines. A late letter can cost you the level. - Finish every delivery. Complete all scheduled letters and replies to pass the level.
Controls
- WASD — move the camera - Hold left mouse button and drag — pan the map - Mouse wheel — zoom in or out - Left click — select animals, buildings, and menu actions - Hover — inspect animals, buildings, letters, and timers - Space — close the current window or cancel a selection - Z - slow down time - X - speed up time!
Cute game. Took me a bit to get used to Space to close UI menus and had letters hide behind UI a couple times so I missed them, but other than that I had a good time puzzling.
My pigeon approved the game, really nice! We made a pigeon post game too, just that it was for LD 58 :)). Really happy to see so many people add pigeons to their games! (The horse is adorable too)
Very lovely game with a lovely atmosphere! I found it a bit too tinkery with the menus as a large part of the time wasted on my part was on me taking a lot of time to open and switching menus, I think maybe a simpler ui would have benefited from this. The idea for the gameplay is very nice as I love games where you need to optimize routes, but I felt the time constraints were a bit too tight in the later levels
@fullmontis I added the ability to drag items directly from the world at the very last moment, so I didn't have time to explain this mechanic in the tutorial, unfortunately
@ronalchue ohh okay! I tried again and with your suggestion the game is much more playable, I would say that the times are still a bit tight cause there's a lot of variables to consider and i ended up relying on trial and error more than I think I should have. But the design for the game is lovely and well done ^^
Nice concept! :D The controls take a bit of getting used to, and the learning curve can be a little tricky at first. But once you figure out how everything works, you can actually get pretty fast, and the gameplay becomes really fun and satisfying!
I'm not sure how I am supposed to win this level if I have less time to deliver the letter than it takes to go to the first house and then to the second? Even if I go the moment that I get the letter the horse doesn't move fast enough to make it possible. Is it an error?
@Stingdragon Note that the pigeon in this level lives in the purple house. Consequently, this letter can be sent via that pigeon at the start of the level.
Could you let me know if the concept of pigeons having different houses is not clear enough?
@ronalchue Yeeaahh... I figured it out when I tried to send the pigeon and it didn't fly to the post office. I automatically thought that all the pigeons would fly to the post and you would send the horse there as a hub. I saw the colour on the chest afterwards.
fun game! quite challenging. I needed a bunch of tries for each level. I would have liked an option to quickly restart a level, when realizing that I've done something wrong and can't deliver in time. Enjoyed it, thanks for sharing =)
The idea of building a communication network with carrier pigeons and horses is such a fantastic use of the Old Tech theme. It was really fun figuring out the routes and managing the different deliveries. Great job bringing such a clever, historical concept into a polished puzzle game!
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I added few more levels. Please, rate the game and enjoy playing!
Overall, a really creative little game! nice job!
Could you let me know if the concept of pigeons having different houses is not clear enough?