Vidjama Gmaes Work

Gamers Don’t Game is a continuation of an old column I used to write where I look at achievement data after a game has been out for a year or two and joke about how gamers don’t actually play the games they buy.

Postal Brain Damaged released on June 8 2022 for Windows with an upcoming release on consoles. It is Steam Deck verified and I can confirm it runs fine on a Steam Deck. I personally bought it at launch, played it, beat it, and enjoyed the hell out of it. See my review:

The achievement stats for Postal Brain Damaged told me one thing; a fair number of people who bought this game literally did not play it. I’m talking nearly 30% of players who bought Postal Brain Damaged did not play through level one. In fact I’m going to say closer to half of them didn’t. How do I know this? Simple.

The highest earned achievement in Postal Brain Damaged is using portable armor, which a whole 71.5% of players have obtained.

69% of players have used a health pipe which is really hard to do if you even casually play through a couple levels, 59% pet a cat, and 51% burned five enemies with fire piss. A whole 44% of people managed to kill the first boss, Karen. Who appears in level 5 and can’t take more than maybe an hour to an hour and a half to reach given the entire story mode can be beaten in less than eight hours.

If you go further down the list, a whole 28% of people beat the second boss and 24% of players beat the third and final boss, meaning those who got to the second boss for the most part stuck around long enough to complete the game. It also means that nearly 20% of players who beat the second boss did it specifically to get the achievement, as 6% were able to kill the Coronavirus without using the vaccine mechanic.

One figure I find kind of interesting is how few players engaged with the reflect kick, given it seems to be a big part of the game. Only 20% of players reflected 10 projectiles during their entire game. You almost have to go out of your way to not use the reflect kick on ten projectiles over the course of eight hours. I think I accidentally stumbled on that achievement in level 1. There’s probably something the folks at Hyperstrange can learn from this data.

Obviously none of this is meant to be an indictment on Postal Brain Damaged as a game, nor is it meant to be some profound insight into gaming or gamers. If you haven’t played Postal Brain Damaged you should consider doing that.