It's funny. When I created Oh Shit, I honestly didn't expect many people to play it. If you could see the code base, you'd know how horrible it is - laden with spaghetti code and all sorts of no nos.
I originally coded it because I wanted to make a spin off of a CP game that was similar to an idea I've always had - a game where things fell from the sky. For some reason, I'd always wanted to create a game like that, lols.
Still, I had to assume that even though I was making it like some cp games, even though it was a side scroller with even the same interact key, even though it was using the same sounds, not everyone would know what to do. I made a game that was based off of a cp concept but which used *none* of the original code. Why should players expect that I would make everything work the way it worked in CP?
Also, what about the people who never played CP in the first place?
I'll admit, there are some Easter eggs and stuff in Oh Shit that are not told to you. People still don't know exactly how to unlock the runner. In terms of the game though? I think everyone's pretty clear. I tell you - move left and right, avoid falling rocks, get the items they drop, jump pits and avoid cannon balls, and get power ups. This isn't hand holding; a paragraph of text won't help you survive for 10 minutes. It'll just help you know... how to play the game.
I tried Mail Man. I read the first post, and the read me. I know what you said about it, and I know what you actually get when starting the game because I played. Deliver mail and then you'll have other stuff to deal with makes it sound like delivering mail will be the main course, like you'll spend most of your time doing it, and the other stuff will just be extras. No, the other stuff was not the extra, it was the main course.
I played for 3 minutes. In that amount of time, I walked around picking up blingers, killing ghosts because I happened to play CP and thus know that the little laughing things can be smacked down with my sword, avoiding trolls because again I played CP and know that those can't be killed, pressing enter on things and hearing weird noises, getting killed by I'm not sure what because my screen reader got interrupted, getting transported to random rooms with fires and fountains and doors and something which I *think* sounded like a factory?
Oh yeah, and also there was a mail box. I think it was a mail box - because like in CP, it sounded like someone tapping a pencil on a window. At least I saw it within 1.5 minutes of starting the game. Even still, I didn't know what to do with it, and I've probably clocked in hundreds of hours on CP over the years. Give me the name of any of the 230 minigames and I'll tell you the description without looking.
This isn't fun, dude. It's one thing to be cryptic - as someone who develops Oh Shit and Scramble, you best believe I enjoy being cryptic. I have plenty of cryptic little bonuses and such in Scramble that I want people to find, but I'm providing a manual that explains the game and its purpose. Even the most cryptic CP minigames give you enough instruction to figure them out.
You want your game to be cryptic? Give us a cryptic objective or a puzzle to complete. But for god's sake, tell us how to even begin playing the damn game! Just a key summary doesn't work in this case - especially if your players haven't played CP. I know for a fact that people who don't play CP have played Oh Shit.

Meh. I sat down with the game for about an hour? And honestly, I found it easy to work a lot of stuff out. I'm not at all trying to sound arrogant or mean, nor am I saying that the op totally did everything right and nobody can appreciate a masterpiece. Nope, I'm not saying that at all. I am just shocked that I actually had success with this game. I've tried other more recent audio games like The Blood Rain, Branble, Marina Break etc. Okay, admittedly not fair comparisons but, in all of those cases, I just got frustrated because I couldn't figure out how to get past the first level of those games comfortably. And those games had direcctions. Mailman was easy for me to get the hang of, once I read some of the info in this topic anyway, and I just don't understand how I'm the only one who actually doesn't mind the game as it is, for the most part. Maybe I'm just too easily impressed.

Anyway I was originally going to PM this to americranian but I think it might be better for the public to see this also. Since the game has received much negative attention and hardly any positive, I'll just lay my knowledge out in a vague format in the hopes that it will help those who turned away because of the blatently cryptic and uninformative readme. If you still want to see what the game is about, this is for you. But if you don't want any hints or don't care about the game, then you may not be interested...

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First the main objective is to walk up to mailboxes which make metallic dinging sounds and press enter to deliver mail. Why you're doing this I don't know. Why the game is called mailman, I'm not quite sure either, but delivering mail is the easiest way to earn points imho.

There are four mailboxes on the street. If you hear a buzz sound when you press enter on a mailbox, try another one. Hint; You need to use the mailboxes in a fixed rotation, similar to twisting the valves in Pipe 2 Blast Chamber if you're familiar with that. Get the order wrong and you lose points.

Kill the ghosts or bad things will happen. When you hear one coming, hit f immediately or else you'll be sent to a random spot on the map. You can't outrun them, don't even try.

The game board is not randomly generated and doesn't consist of simple chaos. It's actually a 3d grid consisting of a number of 2D grids stacked atop each other. Each 2D grid has a different theme or area. The street with the mailboxes is one area. So far as I can tell, three of the areas have specific tasks you can perform to get points, and the other areas are either really dangerous! or comparatively safer (I won't spoil what each area is, partially because I don't at all want to give it away and partially because I haven't quite worked out all the kinks of each one yet).

"How do I go between the different areas?" you ask. The proper way is to climb. Check readme for a hint on something you can climb. But if you want to explore, then shamelessly kill all the ghosts that get near you otherwise you're gonna have a really bad day.

Climbing can be dangerous. Be very very careful!

As you progress, the ghosts get faster and more plentiful and other bad things happen. Most areas also get harder in their own way.

As cool as the different areas might sound, I'm not quite sure what the point is, other than to confuse unfamiliar players. Maybe the game is called mailman because you aren't actually scoring well unless you're delivering mail? That's the best I can come up with, though I feel like the other areas do have a purpose that I'm missing, or else I haven't found efficient ways to get good scores in other areas.

There are a number of other things I don't know, like sometimes I swear I should be getting a point but I don't, and sometimes I get 5-10 points and don't know how I did it. or sometimes I hear sounds I haven't yet worked out. So I don't know everything, but that should reveal information many of you are looking for.

Edit: added more personal explanation of how I felt about the game

I had written earlier after post 54 but decided not to post it. I think I will re-write it now due to 55's attitude.

First off, not everyone has the time nor inclination to figure things out with little to no documentation. The fact that some people are doing this is great, the fact that others are not is fine as well. The attitude I'm seeing from the dev is that the people who are doing the thing as they'd expect are good little lab rats, and the ones that are not are just frustrating. Excuse me, but that's just rude and condescending.

I play games for fun, if it's fun for me, I play it. If not, I will set it aside. I think people are generally in agreement with that statement. What is fun for some is not for others, and vise versa. But for the dev to be in here and talking down to us because of our preferences is bullshit in my opinion.

As a developer, I can understand the fact that you'd want to make a game you'd actually play. So, you'll get people who will want to play it, because the genre and content align with what they like, but you'll have others that won't want to play it. I was actually excited about this game until I spent some time with it, then saw it for what it was. And again, if people are cool with this, fine, so be it, play it and have a good time. But don't try to invalidate our concerns and feelings about the game, especially the dev. I can say from their attitude and presentation, I'll probably never try another game they make unless it gets a hell of a lot better reception. I tried this one without letting the rest of the thread influence me, and it just wasn't a good fit for me.

@53: Oh wow, I thought everyone knew it was based on CP! (And this is not me condescending to you or being snarky in any way, I was just surprised you didn't know. But you said you didn't play cp, so I can see why. I'm really glad you enjoy and are doing well at it . There you go though, proof that not everyone who plays Oh Shit plays CP.:)).

1: All people are different. It is impractical to assume that - because one person understands something, everyone else will as well.
2: They don't. The one person that really boasts understanding of the game still has major gaps in his understanding, and everything he's telling us is speculation except that maybe delivering mail gives you points and you have to climb to other, more dangerous areas.
(For the record when I got transported from the factory to the volcano, I never climbed once because I had no idea I was on a staircase to begin with. I assumed those would make noise, and consider there is jumping I just assumed there would not be a stair case everywhere. And Maybe there's not).

@59, thank you. That did help a lot.
I have just updated the read me with some information as to how to play. I do not give an explanation of the gameplay, but I do give a few bits of information. Let me know if this is enough or if you wish for more of an explanation. Links are in the first post

I was able to figure almost everything out.
The most cryptic part was the implicit rule of delivering letters. In my opinion, it cannot be logically explained other than "because that's how the world works in this game". What I wanted is adding such "logically unguessable" elements to the readme, just like you have done.
Another thing I want to see is the learn game sounds option. We are implicitly associating a sound to a certain physical object in the virtual world while playing audiogames. In order to think and experiment with the game world, we must do it correctly. In other words, knowing what each object is truly opens the opportunity for players to think.
Let me raise another example about how to handle pits. I browsed the sounds folder and how files were named. When I heard one of the sounds, I remembered how it was named and guessed what it was. It was associated with a different object in CP, so I couldn't have been correctly get the new usage of that sound without reading the file name. Now I knew what it was. Then, I was able to logically understand that it might be usable to handle pits. Do you get what I mean? Differences between what must be explained and what doesn't have to be.
Another option is making tiny bits of information scattered in the game. In this approach, readme doesn't need to be changed and "figuring out the world" consept survives. Plus, players will be able to naturally and gradually get how the world "truly" works, not their guesses that might not be 100% correct and sometimes don't make sense.
When we (not necessarily blind persons) buy a console game, what we do first? Read the xxx-page manual? Go to their website and search for accessible version of that manual? Nope. We insert disk, cartridge, or just run the game. And we can play. That's how mainstream games well design what I have just talked.
That being said, this game is yours. So, make it as you like. Generally the number of players will follow based on how we handle our releases, but it is still a choice that you do not care about how many players like it.
After knowing the mechanics, yeah, that's a challenging game indeed. You've certainly added new strategy to the CP spin-offs!

Personally, the new readme makes things a bit more cryptic for me than it actually helps, but it told me something I don't know. The game is not actually supposed to get too chaotic if you're able to do things which keep it in check. That's one I'll have to figure out. And I've probably inadvertently triggered it too.

Amerikranian, I legit believe there is a communication gap here and I'm gonna try to help you.

Let me explain why this is a truly horrific start.
Firstly I get it. You're frustrated, I can see it in your word choice and you've said so a number of times. And as the only person who is "boasting about his limited knowledge" (which is probably very accurate btw) I can relate to your frustration. But as a developer, it's expected that you adopt a professional attitude and set your frustration aside. It's a skill that everyone, self-included, struggles to deal with, but as a dev it becomes way more important to do so. So when responding to criticism, it's hardly ever a good idea to get personal. Even if the person criticizing is saying an awful lot about you. Whether you feel they were right or wrong, try to steer it away from a personal level unless you believe you can keep calm. Use I statements if you have to: "I believed..." "I feel..." "I thought..." "I'll try to..." and so forth. But at this stage of the game, I think it's better to avoid that entirely if you can, since your personal statements often come out as more condescending than you intend. I think you're safer addressing the criticism, not the person making it. Granted, I didn't much care for the way your audience was referred to as lab rats either, but it's a valid point. I know you know this, but you're making way too big a deal of acknowledging you've read it.

The other things you mentioned, the writing a tips file for each grid because you care about your players, or the remark of "don't tell me what's wrong, show me or I frankly won't listen to you." Same principal as above. No dev should be saying that. If you care about your players, write up the tips instead of confrontationally telling us why you were going to do so. Don't even respond to the person who infuriated you.

If I were in your situation, I wouldn't continue to ask why people don't like my game, and how their brains are different. It's a perfectly valid question, but I think you've gotten much of the explanation you're going to have. Whether you change anything is up to you.

If you're looking for a more specific answer which actually explains someone's personal experiences with figuring out cryptic things (and don't worry, I'd be looking for that too) I think you'd be better off getting a good team of people to beta test/brainstorm with you. If you have any good friends who are gamers, talk to them about it. If you can find one who has the motivation to sit down and try your game with minimal instruction, even better. Have them try it and get their feedback. Even watch them work it out. If they seem frustrated, ask them why. I'm not a dev, but if I were, I would be doing that right now. I think either doing that, or having a design/beta ttteam to brainstorm with, would help you immensely to work a lot of this frustration out and find compromises that you and the players will be happy with.

Of course, not everyone is comfortable with a team, and some just like doing things solo, which is fine, but as has been demonstrated here, a lot is at stake when you do that.

@62, thank you for the suggestion, I'll see what I can do about a learn sounds menu.
@63, why can you not play the game? Do you get a fatal error dialog? If so, can you paste the contents of the error.log file here?
@64, points noted down for the future. Thing is, it's really hard to get a team of people together who can successfully test a game. I mean this with no hostile intent, but a lot of people who sign up for beta testing just play the game, spread it around, and don't give any feedback on what should be improved, which kind of defeats the point of having such a team in a first place.
@65, maybe the learn sounds option will cut out some of the guessing out of the game? I don't know. I will also reduce the volume of the ambiances or add an option to do so within the game, we'll see.
Again, I want to thank you all for sticking with me despite the rough start I seem to be having. I am learning a lot from this already and am hoping to continue doing so in the future.

I have no plans to stop developing, no. I won't be doing anymore spinoffs, though. I do agree with the statement that we have enough of those already.
Like I said earlier, this is learning. I understand where I need to provide more documentation should I touch the concept of figuring it out on your own again, and I also have begun learning the necessary attitude one must maintain when releasing a product.

windows in a VMware doesn't run well as an x64 system, and it won't work

Not your fault. The blame rests squarely on Apple and VMWare.

well, this is a really interesting game, despite all of the silly criticism. Unfortunately, the lack of goals has got me puzzled. But its fun to avoid things like pits opening all of a sudden and to know you can actually jump over them, though it definitely gets harder. The ghosts are just annoying but nice to have because it gives you something to concentrate on killing. I really have not figured out other stuff, like what else am I supposed to do besides delivering mail. A learn sounds option or a description of them would have been nice. At least a list  of what items I can get would also have been nice. But well, at least I got to 45 points.
You should also point out that the ladder has a door sound and that you can get from one area to another by climbing on it and mention at least how many areas there are. I have not a clue what the fountain does, either.
Looking at the sounds you apparently have appearing power ups, and you can use boards in some way.