Return To Sender

You are the only clerk at Branch 7B of the Lesser Fold post office. Above you sits the Ministry of Post. Its motto is "Correspondence, Correctly." Its rules arrive every morning by pneumatic tube.

Customers slide their letters and parcels across your counter. Weigh them. Count their postage stamps. Check the address against the rulebook. Then bring the rubber stamp down: ACCEPT, or RETURN.

The rules start simple: one stamp per 100 grams. Then the Ministry is on the fourth floor, so mail to the Capital needs an extra stamp for the stairs. Then no parcel may outweigh the Minister's cat. Then mail to persons named Gustav is suspended. Then feelings become a controlled substance.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Pell keeps writing to her late husband in Heaven, Upper District, which is not on the list. A man from a private courier keeps leaving banknotes under his parcels. And something is going to happen on the tenth.

• Ten days, about an hour to an hour and a half

• A new absurd regulation every morning, eight at once by the end

• Characters who bluff, plead and bribe; choices that come back days later

• Three endings, decided by what you stamped and what you didn't

• A guided first day, a rulebook always on your desk, three strikes a day

• All art and sound made from code; music composed in code and played on recorded instruments

Controls: mouse only. Drag mail onto the scale. Click a rubber stamp, then click the mail. Click the rule pad for the full rulebook. Esc for options.

Credits: font Nunito (SIL Open Font License 1.1). Music performed with the MuseScore_General soundfont (MIT). Made with Bevy.

a Red Thread game