Edited by: Tiffany Lillie

Willowbrooke Post is a story-based job management game in Early Access, developed by Dante Knoxx and published by Excalibur Games. After leaving unexpectedly to travel, your parents have entrusted you to take care of their beloved post office until they return. Set in your childhood home town of Willowbrooke, you’re tasked with managing the post office and keeping up your family’s stellar reputation, all while getting to know the town’s quirky residents.

GREAT CONCEPT

You arrive in Willowbrooke and settle in at the post office shortly after the start of the new year. With only a few coins to your name, and the local postman to help you in this new endeavor, you quickly begin to learn all of the responsibilities that running a post office brings. You must: sort out the mail and make sure everything is sent where it’s supposed to go, ship items upon request, handle delivered packages, pay your bills on time, keep your stamina up, and maintain your family’s warm reputation with the townspeople.

Though running a post office might not be the first thing you think of when mulling over dream jobs, it’s much more interesting and entertaining than you might expect. With charming townspeople to meet, and a surprisingly fun sorting mini-game to start, the idea of running a post office quickly becomes loveable. Overall, the premise of Willowbrooke Post is great, and has the potential to live up to similar titles that mix management mechanics with a more relaxed pace.

EXECUTION

As great as the concept of Willowbrooke Post is, its execution is sorely lacking. Although it is in the early stages of Early Access and bugs are to be expected, the current bugs are game-breaking and render the title completely unplayable at times. From the sorting mini-game screen turning a bright blue and freezing up, to the phone getting stuck in an endless dial loop that you can’t exit out of, the mechanics for the most important and necessary aspects of managing the post office are broken. There were times when I would have to restart five times within an hour-long period due to issues with freezing or items no longer being clickable. There were also several instances where I had to delete all progress and restart from the beginning just to get features to work properly, which makes progression difficult and frustrating overall.

VERY, VERY EARLY ACCESS

Despite it’s conceptual promise, there simply isn’t enough content at this point to justify dealing with the myriad of bugs. At the time of this review, there is only one in-game week of content, with the same events looping and restarting for each following week. You give one character their parcel and ship an energy drink for a second character, and that’s it. While you can sort the mail each day, there isn’t a feasible way for you to pay your bills and keep the post office running, due to there only being two paid interactions for the entire week. Though these two interactions do show some promise for later features and the characters seem unique, there is not enough content to be worth dealing with the severe bugs. In all honesty, Willowbrooke Post seems incredibly far from finished, even by Early Access standards. That being said, future updates could potentially add much more content and fix many of the technical issues.