Saccharine sweet and wonderfully colourful, it’s hard not to instantly like Mail Time.
One of the cosiest games we’ve sank into lately, Mail Time is a whimsical adventure that casts you as a Mail Scout. Set in a forest environment, it’s your job to deliver mail to the residents, and help them out with other various tasks.
Starting out, you’re given a letter to deliver to someone called Greg – but Greg is nowhere to be seen. You’ll quickly find other residents, though, and each of them has their own mini quest line for you to follow. You’ll need to help a young rabbit find the coins she’s stolen from her unscrupulous landlord. And you’ll need to help a goose and a snail proclaim their love to each other. Yes, we did say it’s ridiculously sweet, and we weren’t kidding.
Without any threat or fear of danger, Mail Time is the sort of happy-go-lucky game that’s almost impossible to play without a little smile on your face. Its dialogue is quirky and fresh; perhaps a bit too quirky at times, but it’s certainly kept us entertained, and we’ve enjoyed discovering each character’s unique personality as we’ve met them.
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The world of Mail Time is rather small, but as you’ll be going back and forth between different characters quite a lot, you’ll be glad of it. There’s still plenty of nooks and crannies to be explored though, such as bridges running through the treetops, a swamp hidden away out of sight and a riverside farmyard.
You’re able to customise your character by choosing their gender, as well as picking their hairstyle, hat and backpack. As you play, you can unlock more hats – based on different types of mushrooms – by finding them around the game’s world. For each new mushroom you find, you’ll also get a “cool mushroom fact”. Including one about cordyceps, which The Last of Us fans will get a kick out of.
We’ve encountered a couple of bugs while playing Mail Time, however. An item we were given to deliver filled our screen and stayed there, when it should have disappeared after a couple of seconds. When we quit the game, our mission progress was in limbo: we didn’t have the item, but the dialogue of the person who gave it to us suggested that we did. An annoying glitch, but one we suspect might be an unfortunate rare occurrence – and one that’s hopefully fixed via a patch shortly after release.
Bugs aside, though, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time with Mail Time. This is a cute, whimsical adventure that anyone who likes cosy, relaxing games will enjoy. The silly dialogue won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but we still reckon it’ll raise a smile or two even from the sternest of faces. Leave action and violence aside for a bit, and Mail Time is the ideal chilled-out experience to spend a couple of hours with.
Mail Time Review – GameSpew’s Score
