Where the idea for Parcel Flow came from
The idea of Parcel Flow is not quite the same as the previous two. It’s from a more everyday perspective: how people make judgements when there are more things to do and the pace gets faster.
At first I thought a lot about how I could express intuition in everyday life, and I thought that each of the three game themes would be from a different field. It wasn’t until I thought about the courier element that everyone comes into contact with; I was attracted to the idea of courier sorting because it looks like a rule, but it’s easy to mess up in practice. At first you will think clearly about what to do at each step, but once the tasks are stacked up and the pace increases, it’s easy to lose track of what you’re thinking, and in the end, you can only rely on your feelings to deal with it. This process of slowly shifting from following rules to doing things by feel makes me feel a direct connection with intuition. In addition, I think it is possible to add some roguelike elements to the game, so that players can experience the feeling of upgrading the system step by step.
So in Phase 3, I took this direction as an attempt to try ‘judgemental intuition’, to see how intuition appears in systems and processes.
Game Logo
How does Parcel Flow work?
In Parcel Flow, the player is constantly dealing with parcels that appear on the screen. Each parcel has a different place of belonging and needs to be delivered to the correct location. The gameplay is straightforward, with players dragging, clicking, or simply manipulating to complete the sorting.
The pace is slow at first, giving the player time to look over the rules and confirm what to do at each step. But as the game progresses, parcels appear faster and faster and information becomes more and more available. When the courier truck is full it needs to be sent out to distribute the courier, and you can’t place a courier to where that courier belongs while waiting for a new one to arrive. It’s easy to lose track of the pace if you’re still trying to analyse it line by line.
Slowly, players will start to change the way they handle things. There are many upgradable systems in the game, such as shortening the time between courier trucks or expanding the capacity of courier trucks. They no longer deliberately think about the rules, but according to the different needs of each person to make different actions. The actions start to become more consistent, and mistakes are no longer made because of ignorance of the rules, but because the rhythm is disrupted.
This process is at the core of the Parcel Flow experience: the transition from rational processing to feeling. Below is a rough diagram of the gameplay I created.
And then there’s a game concept sheet I did early on
The relationship between Parcel Flow and intuition
Parcel Flow demonstrates another form of intuition: the habit of judgement formed under constant pressure. Intuition here is not a split-second action, but rather a growing confidence in rhythm and flow. As the player moves into the later stages of the game, the actions become smoother and the judgement becomes more natural.
Compared to Falling Mind, the pressure here is continuous rather than instantaneous; compared to ROOM-9, the sense of space is weakened and replaced by the rhythm brought by the system. The player’s intuition is reflected in the judgement of which one I should deal with first and which one can wait.
During Phase 3’s exploration, I was well aware of the challenges in this direction. Once a system is complex, it becomes difficult to control and requires more precision in design. If the rhythm is not handled well, the game experience can easily become chaotic.
Because of this, Parcel Flow was more of an exploration of ideas at this stage. It helped me understand how intuition manifests itself in ‘flow and order’, and it also helped me see more clearly that different types of intuition can lead to completely different game experiences.
Prototype example
Gameplay diagram made on figma