Post Master

Game had potential, but by the time you get to late game, your vehicles are constantly needing repair. They seem to need repair at 48%, but when you repair them, they only repair to 49%, so they go .5-3 blocks and need repair again. I tried replacing all of the vehicles at every location (because it doesn't tell you which shop the broken cars belong to), and they get replaced by vehicles at the same state of disrepair. I can't get the last two in-game achievements because my vehicles can't go anywhere.

This game I had on disk when I first got my first pc 4ish years ago and then when I moved 2 years ago I lost the disk and now I have it on steam I'm loving it again great for distracting you in maths at school

the game has a lot potential but the devs moved on. i think the game need moding support. it is decent casual game with a few bugs and very easy to learn. There's a lot of potential in this game and room for improvement. If they ever come back and make post master 2 they need to add details and other real life post office things like processing plants,international mail,and more competition

The tutorial glitched out and I could never be below 10,000 currency. Bought a few post offices and built a small empire of mailboxes.

Pretty easy going game tbh. Would mail again 👍

This game is kinda awful. I bought it when it was on sale because I wanted the trading cards/badge. I enjoy stamp collecting as a hobby, and I thought a PostMaster badge would be cute. I tried to play the game though and... It's like a cheap, awkward, and really boring SimCity.

I thought the instructions/controls were a bit confusing. Or maybe they aren't and I was just too bored to really care to figure them out. It's not like it really matted, It didn't feel like there's really any reward for doing a good job.

And maybe these faults could have been forgiven if it actually felt postal related. As I said before, I bought this because I have an interest in stamps and postal history. If it were just a boring game I'd probably be okay with enjoying some cute postal imagery. Unfortunately the whole thing looks uninspired. There's nothing really to even signify you are running a post office or package delivery. If it weren't for the shadows of generic post box shapes, I could easily assume I was running a bus route, street cleaner, ice cream truck, etc. The most post office imagery you'll find in this game is from the trading cards.

Curator Review:

This 2D Isometric Casual Indie Simulation game from Excalibur is a take on what it is like to be a Postmaster. Manage your own post office and create a monopoly on the three cities in your region before your competitor! Unfortunately, this game does not have multiplayer, but it is still a great little game for casual gamers or gamers wanting to get into the simulation genre for the first time without being overwhelmed.

https://youtu.be/9zauNNZu0ts

Ok since i wrote the original review i've switched to mac.
On windows it's fairly easy to get over the buggy bits.
On mac, it's crashing EVERY FIVE MINTUES or less.
REALLY bummer because this is a decent game and i wish they'd fix it.

I was enjoying the game until I realized how much clicking I was doing later once you become established. Sadly there is no form of ease of use menu management it is point and click each item indivualy and repeat whenever you want to add a new vehicle. There is no buy X amount or saved vehicle settings for creating a new vehicle. The simplest way to fix this is to have a menu specificly for the different type of mail vehicles have a global < local < individual settings. Where the global and local only need to be read when the vehicle is created to set the default. What it also needs is a place multiple function where with mailbox you have click confirm on each indivual one later on I ended up placing 100 at once so either a drag box selection or confirm after you selected both or even better incorporate both. These are fatal flaws that make the game tedious to play. Other than that it's fun.

Bought it for 0,99$ in the steam sale.
This game is really not worth more than 5$. I like Transport-, and Railroad Tycoon and a lot more of these types of games. The fun is only in the beginning to set up the routes. After everybody do dear jobs, their is nothing to do. No disasters, no bomb packages, just boring after a while. But for the time it takes to set it up and the price of 0,99 it's a "yes" for me.

+
Paid only 0,99$
Random city's
Setting up the entire logistics

-
Boring after everything is managed
lag of differences in gameplay
no disasters to get you back to work

7/10

I created a pair of post offices, staffed them, bought them vehicles and a few amenities, set routes and fixed prices. All of that took roughly ten minutes. I spent the next 50 minutes doing other things in real life. I cooked some soup, put together a decent sandwich (it even had some lemon zest in it), made a banana split, went to the bathroom, and got some things from my car that I'd forgotten earlier in the day. The whole time, the game was at 3x speed. I occasionally hit "ok" on the dialog that told me the day was over, but most of my time was afk.

I came back to the game and found that after a week, nothing interesting had happened. My operation flowed smoothly and made me a good return. Given a month I could open another office, given a year and I could probably edge out my competition with decent advertisements and expanded service.

Here's the thing - the game played itself. All i did was set it up. There's no management, the prices were already reasonable, there were never any problems, and I didn't have to do anything. Other tycoon games give you a reason to keep playing - more things to build, more people to attract, more stuff to see. This one doesn't - it's over as soon as you've finished setting it up. It's barren and simple. It's so simple that I can't recommend it, because you won't get anything out of it, unless you're looking for a screensaver that doesn't move, but takes ten minutes to set up.

Glancing over the developer's history, it seems clear that this is common. Produce a bargain bin game that's very simplistic, release a new one every couple months. And hey, they apparently make enough money to stay afloat, so cheers to that. Given how many games I play that were made by people who tried 10x as hard and came out roughly equal to this one, I can't really decry someone who is literally in business making this sort of thing.

******* Adding this on 6-Jan-2015******
Game seems to be abandoned by the dev, no more updates, so yea... no patches, no fixes, no updates, nothing... So you should consider that before buying this game.. If you ask for my suggestion about to buy it or not, I'd still buy it, but at hell big discount, like 90% at least.

This is the link to their first ever, and last seen update
http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791435159972/announcements/detail/1424570746448987052

This is the link for their so called "community suggested updates", which was never really bothered
http://steamcommunity.com/app/275080/discussions/0/540734792228897478/
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This game doesn't have complex systems as compared to most of the sims out there, so I'll say this is a beginner friendly for those who are new to simulation games. However, I would not recommend it to those who are looking for sim with complex and advance system like Cities in Motion series. If you getting this, you should really get it while it's on sale! Okay ._. enough of my boring talk, let's take a look at my review

Overall game play rating : 7.4/10 (average of whatever score i gave below)

Money Value : 4/10
For $14.99, I personally think it's a bit too high, so grab it while it's on sale! The game should be around $4.99 in my opinion. (YES, I'm cheapskate x_x) Again, grab it while it's on sale!

Graphic presentation : 10/10
Kinda old school isometric artwork, it's simple, it's clean, it's neat, it's beautiful.

BGM : 7/10
You don't get to choose your BGM, but the existing one is good enough for us to play with.

User Interface : 7/10
Everything is simple enough, it's easy to learn and easy to monitor, but there's no hot key binded to any of them.

Simplicity : 9/10
Yes, the game is really simple, you probably won't go bankrupt any time soon. But it's still fun!

Cons:
- The game is slow... Even with the speed option, it's still slow at max speed... (might improve soon, because people are really complaining bout this).
- Though the game's graphic seems really simple, the recommended processor is at dual core 2.4 GHz, I'm running it on Core i5 1.6 GHz, living in warm climate (about 32 degree celcius outside at afternoon), it caused my laptop to overheat without proper air ventilation (fancy word for getting table fan and cooling pad to give my laptop a blow jo...b).

Pros:
- The game is not dead! I mean, there's still update for improvement and bug fixes!
- The game is not complex! (for those who don't like complicated sims)

This game advertized itself as some sort of super realistic, amazing, revolutionary game.

It was not.

This game has incredibly repetitive gameplay. Unlike games like prison architect, this game only has one thing to do: buy trucks and deliver mail. This game would be ok if it were a 99 cent mobile game but is in no way worth $14.99 though I have seen games worse than this before, this was the first of the terrible games that I was tricked into buying via false advertizing. Do not buy this game.

After a couple of hours of playing, all I can say is that the game looks like it has potential, but I kind of got the feeling that's all there is to it. Sure, I got my post office, I hired a couple of clerks, a couple of sorters, a few vehicles to collect and deliver letters, and I even got to buy another post office, linked them together and so on. So I switch to Fast Forward, watch as everything happens, and.... I'd say that's a nice start, but okay, what now?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a bad game, and the mere couple of hours I spent playing are hardly a fair chance, but so far, this game seems like it could be great foundations for a better game, but I'm not sure it's worth much on its own.

I will update this review as I give this game at least another hour of playing before giving up, it's definitely worth at least that much. :)

Want to love simulation games and can't wrap your head around massive numbers and calculations, strenuous start-up procedures and lack of proper tutorials?

Step forth Post Master. Excalibur brings a neat little simulation-lite that will tickle your management requirements without drowning you in complicated elements.

Take your post office to the top, crush your rival and own the city. As the game continues, the city expands and the oppurtunities increase, this also means you're constantly having to re-think post office placement and routes.

My one gripe in the game is that there is only a single rival post office, having multiple rivals would be fun for people who find one rival too easy - you can eliminate them from the game completely.

Okay. Where to start...

Graphics: Very simple, cartoony buildings and landscapes. The game almost looks like a slightly polished SimCity 2k, right down to the building models. It's uncanny. In the large post office garages, the vehicle interaction and information tabs actually go outside the border of the building screen, and can be hard to see with the city in the background.

Audio: Not a lot of variety in the background music loop. Note the singular noun there. It all sounds the same. Sound effects and incidentals are okay.

Control: Clickdrag to pan the window gets a little annoying at times. I'd also like the ability to zoom out further to save me the trouble.

Interface: Simple, but it works 95% of the time. An area I would suggest for polishing would be for changes in paths and other variables to go into effect while the game is paused instead of having to unpause the game, then pause it again to go back to what you were doing.

Gameplay: Incredibly uninspired. A sim junkie can figure out how to game the engine within the first hour or so. Get both your first and second post offices fully developed (which can take maybe two hours after you've taken the engine back behind the tool shed), and you can then just leave it running and walk away while the money pours in. On medium difficulty, I completed all of the "missions" and eliminated my AI competitor by day 45 or so using the walk-away method.

Bugs: Surprisingly few and far between. Kudos on this.

Final thoughts: This is a very shallow game across the board, definitely not worth the full $15.00 price tag. This game is categorized under the "casual games" category, and should have been priced as such (if this were maybe half the price, it'd be a little bit more reasonable and falls in line with the one-and-done depth). Save your money and spend it on something with a lot more teeth and replay value.

Nice idea but lacks complexity.

Possibly one of the most shallow tycoon type games ive ever played. You can pretty much unlock and have done everything within the first day. After that its just increasing the size of your business which seems to be free to do whatever it wants as theres no competition.

Somewhat disappointing.

This game is quite poor. There isn't as much to it as it promises. The speed at the highest level is too slow. The gameplay isn't immersive, and therefore I think the price is too high. You can find mobile games for a 10th of the price that are much better, with better graphics, and have clearly had much more time spent on them.

fastest gameplay speed is so painfully slow that a single day in the simulation takes real-time what seems like a half hour or more. And, after the workday ends, the clock continues to slowly increment instead of switching to the next day. It doesn't have much depth, but I wouldn't mind that as long as I could actually play the game. Instead, it feels like a screensaver after the first ten minutes. Perhaps if the game devs address the speed issue I will play it again, but as of right now it feels unplayable.

Post Master is an intriquing game. You have the ability to run your own privately ran post service much of the likes of UPS and FedEx. You start out in a medium sized post office in a small commercial city and you're trying your best to get your mail service up and running by getting workers for your post office, a fleet of vehicles, and their routes assigned. The game starts out slow though as you're only running a limited amount of routes and trying to invest in infastructure to increase your mail coverage of the local area. It's quite enjoyable. I haven't played much as of yet though I can at least give a brief overview of the features.

You basically micromanage both your post offices keeping track of demand of your business while trying your best to get enough service. You can invest in new vehicles, add amenities to your post offices to keep customers/employees happy, and also hire enough employees such as customer service(front desk workers) and sorters. In the garage, you can choose the vehicles you want to buy but you must first unlock them as well as other things via Bonus Stars which are an alternative currency of sorts which is earned via the Missions system or District Competitions. These bonus stars unlock items to place in your post office, new vehicles, and helps pay for advertising runs. Vehicles though are from bicycles to big trucks with fuel cost, maintence, etc becoming higher but also allowing you to use less vehicles and take in more demand by increase storage capacity of the vehicles.

However, you're also competing against rival companies for a market and coverage. Offer the best coverage, best priced service, and you might be able to conquer a city. On my current playthrough, i'm trying to get a hold of the commercial market in town before moving onto another town entirely. I have my competition on me but i'm currently at the biggest advantage in terms of price and coverage. I've invested alot in infastructure and i'm sitting at at over 60% of the market of the town as mine. Competition is a great feature of any serious business sim or any sim in general as it keeps you on your toes. It means that I must constantly invest in new infastructure in order to keep a hold of the market. It's stressful and fun all at the same time.

The last thing is the graphics and music. The game style reminds me of Sim City, plays a little like Transport Tycoon, but it more focused on mail as being the games title. The music is calming but I wouldn't listen to it for extended play as i'd recommend for any deep sim fan who will spend hours on one game. The game also has very nice ambiance which without music would really bring the world to life. It's the one thing that I like hearing because it makes it feel like a real place. Kind of wish though there was vehicle traffic of general traffic as it would add alot to the game. It's great as is though and if any future updates come then I think i'll put tons of hours into it.

So, if you're into micromanagement, I recommend this game. It's worth the price. Not expensive, not too cheap. You get what you pay for and it's awesome.

Edit: So this review has been sitting here awhile but i'd like to add that the dev did one or two updates then abandoned the game. There's some short little fun in it every once in awhile but it's not a game that'll dedicate all your time. It's fun is the equivalent of a mobile game.

The potential is there, but the implementation is very lacking. The UI is very clunky, and the game is at once very micro-mangement intensive while making it hard to actually monitor status and figure out what needs to be done. Feels unpolished.

A proper mail-bussiness simulator. Although the game has a somewhat small scope, it offers me the critical 'fun' part (in contrast to certain other "XXXX Simulator 201X" games (all by the same publisher *ahem*)) and I really enjoy playing it. The graphics are good, the style almost nostalgicly similar to past simulators. The only downside might be that it can be quite a watch-and-wait game sometimes, but for 11,99€ I would certainly recommend this.