What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

Why call it POSTAL 4 when you’ve disowned POSTAL III?

But it’s not going to suck like POSTAL III… Right?

Are you guys aware you’ve spelt ‘No Regrets’ wrong?

Why a new Voice actor for the POSTAL Dude?

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

Design

Humour/Satire

Game world

Main Errands

Prison Guard- While functional, this errand is currently missing some elements from the design such as a section that explains how the Taser Baton will work, polished cinematics and more scripted gameplay. Overall, this is the errand that needs the most work still in the current build.



Sewer Worker - The core of this errand is implemented. Future updates will improve some of the platforming and include more integrative puzzles. We’ll also include an event that takes place once all the tasks in this errand are complete as you leave the sewer to make completion more rewarding.



Animal Catcher - The animal AI and animations will receive more attention during the early stages or Early Access.

Cat Errands - The Cat Dude mechanics are still heavily work-in-progress and will eventually be expanded to function as a new mechanic to work with Cat Grenades, etc.



Border Smuggler - All of the major elements are in place and working. This errand will receive continue to receive additioonal fine tuning to make the gameplay smoother and more balanced, as well as a potential new surprise or two in the future.



Tag Turf - The majority of the elements are in place. The cinematics will receive improvements, and the new characters are not yet final.



Pay Fine - Both routes are fully functional, but there is still need for adjustments and balancing to the combat. More helpful signage will be added to the police station to direct players to the important areas.

Side Errands

Weapons, items, and vendors

Bystanders/AI

Bystanders will randomly stop and chat to each other, as well as use their cell phones



Bystanders will react to the POSTAL Dude when holding weapons, doing something weird, or forgetting to up his zipper after watering the flowers



Basic combat AI and reactions



Living their (soon to be cut short) lives with purpose - NPCs will go about their day visiting various establishments and performing actions then they get there.



Home invasion – NPCs will not like you just barging into their house uninvited!

Routines – Many bystanders will be going about their day and you can follow them and see what shenanigans they get up to, assuming you can resist the urge not to ruin it!



Better pathfinding – Rather than randomly wandering around, Bystanders will take more logical routes with purpose.

Police

Dress up!

In-game cinematics

Optimization

Menus and save system

Controller support

Crashing

Co-op

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“To date, we’ve been 100% self-funding this title through Steam royalties, but now we need to grow the team further, and we believe involving the community is the best approach towards making the best POSTAL game ever happen. We considered a few alternative options of funding, such as approaching publishers, many of whom showed interest but ultimately backed away due to fears around the controversy P4 may generate. We also considered a Kickstarter but then decided selling a paper pitch to the community was not our style. We want to show and demonstrate actual gameplay before looking to the community for help.Working with a publisher this early on would have no doubt seen us having to hold back on some of the more outrageous ideas we have planned (not to mention most of them wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot dildo), so going at it our own way with the community’s support is an exciting prospect for us. This way, we can make sure we’re prioritizing the things that are central to our fans and players as well as getting a clear idea of what features you would like for us to implement and what aspects of the game you feel are the most important.We had entertained the idea of calling it something like The Real POSTAL 3 or even POSTAL 2x2 as a play on words. We could have also confused everyone and done the whole reboot thing by simply calling it “POSTAL”. Ultimately, though, POSTAL 4 makes it clear that it’s the next big game in the POSTAL franchise.Fuck no! POSTAL 4 is being made in-house by much of the same team that brought you POSTAL 2: Paradise Lost and POSTAL Redux – a team that understands and respects the community and what made POSTAL 2 the timeless classic it is. POSTAL 4 will be the true sequel that fans have been craving for well over a decade!We Regert Nothing!Rick Hunter was not available to reprise his role as the Dude for POSTAL 4. We are, however, excited to announce that industry veteran Jon St. John, best known as the voice of Duke Nukem among many other memorable characters in his venerable career, has joined us, and we are very pleased with his take on the Dude.”“Until Mike J’s bidet runs out of water. Most important is that we work our asses off to give you our best effort, and of course we’ll be providing updates after its official release to add new features and make improvements.”“POSTAL 4, much like POSTAL 2, will be split up into 5 days (Monday to Friday) with a new set of errands to finish each day. As you progress through the days, the game’s map will open up to reveal more of the world.See our tentative road map for upcoming updates!We have a bulk of the design and concept art done for areas of the game not yet implemented. We won’t be sharing the core design of the game ahead of time in order to not spoil some of the things we have planned (or have someone like Rockstar steal our ideas for GTA 6!), but rest assured, we know where we are going with it. Future errands will get ever more outlandish and involved.We may, however, share some design documents that focus on various game mechanics and planned features.We plan for the humor to be more outrageous than ever! With the addition of Tuesday and other updates since Early Access launch, we've had the time to incorporate more of our trademark satire, parodies, and other pop culture tomfoolery into the game. However, we are still planning to improve and further revise what's already present for Monday and Tuesday, and there is still much more to come in the upcoming weekdays. Plenty more satire and parodies will be hitting you hard and fast in true no holds barred, low brow, RWS-style!Around half of the planned final world is explorable, although the art and level design will undergo many improvements. Many buildings that are inaccessible or incomplete at the moment will be opened up in future updates. Others will have their artwork improved, and we will also be working to improve the overall lighting in the maps.Each day, when fully implemented, will open up new areas of Edensin, each having their own theme and style. Monday’s part of the map includes the suburbs in the northern end of town, and Tuesday introduces the Commercial District and Mexican border in the southern desert area. Future areas will include more city-like built up areas and more lush green sections. There will be more variation in the overall world design.The main errands for Monday and Tuesday are implemented and fully playable in a “Janky Alpha State”™. These errands will receive much more polish throughout the course of Early Access development.Of course, we’ll be adding more errands as we expand the map and implement the rest of the days of the week.As for the state of the existing errands:As well as the main errands, optional varied side errands will be added which will be activated through different means. So far we've added two: Put out raging fires with your Hose! Steal fancy art for a shady art dealer! Next up - Race Mobility Scooters!Each preceding day will have its own set of side errands to complete in the future as well.Side errands will grant the player rewards, such as a secondary means of earning money which can buy weapons, power-ups, or maybe to bribe yourself out of trouble with the law, and other unique bonuses.POSTAL 4 is planned to have guns. Lots of guns And other household items that aren’t guns being used as guns. For now, a small selection is currently available in Early Access, including the return of several classics as well as some handy new weapons. The arsenal will be expanded throughout development, and additional variations in the forms unique ammo types and weapon modes will also come into play to support different playstyles. Try out the Spurt’n’Squirt 9000’s different canister types and imagine what’s to come!Additionally, the Catnip and Energy Drink return and are present in EA, and the new Vitamin X has been implemented which supercharges your melee abilities. There will be some new power-up types and items that allow new abilities and actions. To acquire all of these things (aside from scavenging and theft), we plan for a more elaborate economy in POSTAL 4 where players can use their hard earned (or stolen) cash to purchase various power-ups and weapons. Vendors and vending machines will return.Right now, the AI already an improvement over what it was in POSTAL 2 with NPC's having a wider verity of animations and actions. They live their lives with more purpose and some have routines. We plan to take this much further in coming releases to make the AI more engaging and varied to interact with, as it is the attention to the little detail here that made P2 somewhat ahead of its time back in the day.What’s there:What’s coming:The first inclusion of the police system is in and is fairly rudimentary - akin to what was seen in POSTAL 2, but we have plans to take it much further over the course of EA.Not a fan of the Dude’s new threads? While you’re objectively wrong to think it’s not totally awesome, fear not! In a coming update, the POSTAL Dude will be able to acquire his iconic trench coat, or dress up in any number of ways to fit your mood. Dressing up, much like in P2, will also influence the gameplay, especially if you sneak a uniform out of the police station.The in-game cutscenes are implemented on a basic level and functional. We have started making significant improvements to these and future cinematics, as well as improving overall lip syncing and animation work.We have come a long way in this area since the launch of P4 onto Early Access and it is an ongoing effort throughout development.While it needs more work, we have now finished implementing all the fundamental features such as volume sliders and keybinding. Should there be a demand for a certain menu option, we’ll prioritize based on feedback and look at implementing them sooner rather than later.While the game did launch onto EA without a proper save system, it's now been implemented. We have a bit of work to do to make it more fluid and respawn points make more sense.Full controller support is implemented and we will work on improving things like aim assist in future updates.Crashing frequency will vary from build to build, it's just the nature of developing a PC game that's targeting so many different configurations. After each update we compile a list of reported crashes and make sure they get dealt with. We will not call the game final until we have eradicated all crashing issues.How soon we implement this into development will depend on the sort of feedback we get from the community, but we have designed the game with it in mind and are making our game mechanics network friendly, so when the time comes, we’ll be ready for a smooth implementation!”“In the current Early Access release, Monday and Tuesday are fully playable, although much is in a state of alpha jankiness. The meat and potatoes are in place for everyone to jump in and start going POSTAL to see the potential of where we are going with it.”“We plan to make incremental increases to the price as we add content and progress through Early Access, leading towards the final release and price.”“We are using the in-game Feedback system (where players can submit feedback, along with a screenshot, directly from within game) along with the Steam Community Hub, our own community forums (postal4isjanky.com) and our Discord server to monitor feedback and collect information as well as post updates about our progress. We will be making updates with various minor improvements often and aim to have bigger content updates each month, all accompanied by full changelogs.We’d like to take this opportunity to say that we do not believe in the crunch culture. We care about our members’ (and their families’) well-beings. For this reason, we ask for your understanding should we miss a milestone we set for ourselves. We’re a small team undertaking BIG goals. We have always been honest and open, and that will not stop now. We appreciate your consideration.”