Most of Easy Delivery Co.’s elements fall into the category of what I like. It has a nostalgic low-poly PS1-era art style, cats, casual arcade-y gameplay, an iceberg of a narrative, and more cats. So why was I not wholeheartedly on board with this? I know the game has easy in its title, but it’s complicated. Bear with me as I deliver my thoughts in five minutes or less.

Games like Iron Lung, Arctic Eggs and now Easy Delivery Co. all share this retro quality of giving the player the rudimentary tools to progress, but then you’re left to explore and figure out its quirks for yourself. In Easy’s case, you’re taught how to navigate the game’s interface, like how to start delivery jobs, alongside checking the map to source the package’s destination, and then it’s all up to you. The core gameplay loop sees you driving back and forth from various parts of town, loading up your truck and dropping it off at its destination.

There’s no pretext or anything narratively explicit to set up the why of Easy Delivery Co., just that I’m a cat delivering packages across a snowy town in my kei truck. Outside of its muted Crazy Taxi-style gameplay, the “vibes” are doing much of the game’s heavy lifting to retain my interest, and luckily, it does have a lot of that. I can’t help but be reminded of Silent Hill’s use of fog when it comes to Easy Delivery Co.’s adverse weather throughout its runtime. The ocassional blizzard immensly obstructs your view, navigation is tied to remembering routes and reading road signs, as there’s no in-game GPS; it’s almost set up like a survival horror game, except you’re only surviving the elements.

And the game will remind you of its weather, as it’s something you have to manage when you’re out delivering. There are very light survival mechanics that act as guard rails to obsfuscate the core loop of delivering packages. Your playable character will exert energy as they drive and pick up packages, when depleted, you’ll move sluggishly and are more prone to pass out from the cold if you’re out of the truck. The only way to top up your energy is to drink things like energy drinks and coffee.

Then you have a fuel gauge which can run out unless you buy more gas. Both the drinks and gas cost money, but so do the items you have to buy to progress the game’s story. The further the trip, the bigger the payout, but also the more strain it is on your resources, so you’re constantly balancing each factor. Creating these systems that you have to juggle keeps the gameplay loop more interesting, as opposed to just delivering packages without consequence.

Less importantly, but still part of Easy Delivery Co.’s library of systems, the packages on the back of your kei truck have physics. This makes driving more of a cautious act of patience then an adrenaline-fuelled race. The game is very forgiving to this though as you can just pick the package back up and put it back on, without real consequence. You can also duct tape the packages down to keep them more secure. However, I didn’t realise this till the end of the game.

This is where Easy’s retro sentiments dampen my overall enjoyment. There’s no sign posting, no light nudge to direct you towards figuring mechanics out, and no contextual gameplay moments to give you a deeper understanding of the game. There is a mystery behind the game’s narrative, one that doesn’t rear its obscured head till near the end of the game. Once I had figured things out, I realised there were secrets to find, but I just didn’t feel motivated to seek them out.

Easy Delivery Co. is a very fine few hours of the same gameplay loop, until it whacks you over the head with its plot, and it just wasn’t that impactful. I think mostly because by hour four or five, the loop had gotten stagnant, to the point of not caring very much. I see the interest though, I imagine Easy in the category of indie games that have longer fan wiki pages and YouTube videos than its gameplay time. For me though, it just felt a little too overmanufactured to be that. The narrative reveals don’t recontextualise what you’ve done in any clever way, you’re just given the why way past its delivery time.

Easy Delivery Co. is out now for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam

Developers: Sam C

Publisher: Oro Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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