Cat Mail Co.

OVERALL ★★★★★ (5/5) ☾ ˖°˖☆ ˖°˖☽ Cat Mail Co. is the game I expected it to be - simple, cute, and deceptively addictive. This is the game that you can spend hours on due to a satisfying gameplay loop, as proven by my 14 hours of play at review. The loop is simple: scan and stamp packages, sort them in appropriate locations, and identify incoming packages for customers. There is no time limit, there is no massive penalties. Just you and a bunch of packages that need to find their homes. It is the game you play while talking with friends. I can wholeheartedly endorse it, even with the cons it presents ☾ ˖°˖ PROS - Cute art style - Addictive Gameplay Loop - Stress Free - Co-op - Endless Game ☾ ˖°˖ CONS - No native controller support at current, though I know this is something they plan to add. - Sunny Shores & Tropical Dunes stamps too similar. I found myself very often confusing the two and think there needs to be better differentiation - Some grammatical errors within the pre-existing generation of the package requests. This is a nitpick. i.e. "This package is for my mom. My package is cube-shaped." - No cat customization within co-op - Corrupt packages are hard to notice, as they are a tiny purple swirl that fades in and out. - Similarity between heat and bright identifiers, another issue that caused me to mix up several times due to both using the sun symbol, as well as being next to one another. GRAPHICS ★★★★★ (5/5) ☾ ˖°˖☆ ˖°˖☽ There is a cohesive art style in the game that makes it fit well into the genre of cozy. It's not strenuous on the system or one's eyes. AUDIO ★★★★☆ (4/5) ☾ ˖°˖☆ ˖°˖☽ The audio cues at current are extremely cute and satisfying. The shadowy noises upon placing a package in the shadow room, the sizzle of placing a package in the heated room. The Revealuna sound is a bit obnoxious when you walk by if you forget to turn it off, and I wish there were more ambient tracks or variety in the day and night music. DIFFICULTY ★★☆☆☆ (2/5) ☾ ˖°˖☆ ˖°˖☽ On a basis, the game is insanely easy. I played much of it between bouts of consciousness on new medicine, so I would hardly say I was performing at top notch. However, there are some similarities in visuals used for sorting packages that up the difficulty, as mistakes seem prone to happening due to it. There is also the aspect of space management, and just juggling all the different rooms and locations by the time you have everything unlocked. All in all, though, it is an easy and relaxed game. STORY ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5) ☾ ˖°˖☆ ˖°˖☽ There is pretty much no true story. The game consists of sorting packages, and then going through piles to unearth new rooms, which culminates with you unearthing the final room, then the loop continues. There is room for a story, but that is not the point of this game and would require restructuring of some of the systems, so it is not something I would expect any time soon. GAME TIME ★★★★★ (5/5) ☾ ˖°˖☆ ˖°˖☽ This game is one of those endless games. The loop keeps you playing, and even when you finish the "story", you can continue playing as packages will always keep coming. This is a good mindless game, whether for relaxing, visual stimulation while listening to a podcast or audio book, keeping busy while talking with friends, or winding down for bed. PRICE ★★★★★ (5/5) ☾ ˖°˖☆ ˖°˖☽ This game is $15, and I finished the main story solo in about 10 hours. Another 4 was invested into a run with a friend, and I have plenty more to play. I always deem at most $1/hr a worthwhile price point, and the content of the game matches that for the endless play. BUGS ★★★★☆ (4/5) ☾ ˖°˖☆ ˖°˖☽ There aren't too many bugs. The only one I have personally faced is packages getting stuck in the package pile in multiplayer, which halts progression. Inspecting the pile closely will allow you to pull out the package, though, and progression resumes as intended.

I am really loving this adorable game. I love the order fulfillment, I love the organization and sorting. The overall aesthetic is very cute and fun. Highly addictive, honestly! I can play for hours! I hope there will be content updates because I'm going to be very sad when it's all over.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ I really love the game idea! It has fun aspects and you can add your own hint of creativity. Placing your own deco stamps and organizing everything in your own way. ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ A few cons of the game were glitching packages. If you place them in a rack, the next shift they lay on the ground. The captain picks up the packages for the destinations but there is no variation with the captain. Repeatedly having to pick parcels for the same 2 destinations, while my other packages pile up. ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ Nevertheless, the gameplay way fun and easy, great for a chill game

So first off, let me say that the gameplay loop is relatively easy to learn and satisfying in its own ways. There was obviously a lot of heart put into this game, and the graphics are charming and the setting is very cute. Now, with that out of the way: this game is not cozy. It is stressful. There is not enough room to put your packages, to sort them efficiently, and you learn that very quickly. As soon as you start getting different weights, soulbond, dark, light, freezer, all these different criteria, ON TOP of having these boxes going to about seven different locations, you realize just how little room your mail shop ACTUALLY has. There's also the matter of the piles. In the freezer and the sunroom both, there are piles of boxes between rooms that you need to clear out before you can actually reach the next room over. The boxes supposedly only spawn with the passing of time, although I've watched more boxes manifest simply by standing there, so evidently that's not the case. There's also the BIG PILE down the hallway, that you are introduced to on your second day on the job. It is a pile that takes even longer than the ones in the special rooms to go down, and it adds to your total pile of "boxes that you need to put on a boat to make room for new boxes". And then there's also the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tetris you have to play on the boat, which gives you a small square of space to put packages, despite having an entire DECK to work with. The boatman doesn't always go to locations equally either - you might wind up with him going to Windy City or whatever three times in a row, meanwhile your Sunny Shores and Moonlight Valley boxes are growing out of the rooms and into the hallways because of how many there are. This game seems to have marketed itself as 'cozy' because there's no time limit. Which is very nice, but when you have a lack of space and an eternally spawning pile of boxes that you can't really ignore (because clearing out the boxes opens up rooms you NEED), then it's not cozy, it's stressful. The idea sounds good on paper, but in execution it's a hot mess. I highly recommend playing it.

This game features cats with a lot of boxes.

I think you will know if this game is for you pretty fast. If it is, you'll really like it. If it isn't, you'll probably think it's a little bare bones. It's for me, so I loved it. Almost no notes? The lack of time pressure is a feature, not a bug, and so is the chill atmosphere. My favorite part of the game is stamping things to make it look as pretty as possible. Figuring out a way to organize the boxes/letters in a satisfying way is another part of the game that is a big draw. If I did have a note that isn't a major spoiler, it would probably just be that I wish there was a way to favorite stamps for quicker selection, as well as a way to move/buy/upgrade shelves so that you could optimize even more. That said, this game is pretty much what I look for when I just want to load something up and relax.

While the game is cute and enjoyable at first, the lacking upgrades (more decorative stamps? why not a bigger boat to ship packages?) and repetitive speech by characters make it really boring after a while. That, and the controller support for this game is rather iffy, if not par-baked. Additionally, the naming system is confusing ("I'm here to pick up a package for my mom, my first name is William and it's cold" and then the game wants to to pick between three 'Samuel S' labelled packages in the fridge.) Overall, it's an ok game, but it's far from complete, and honestly needs a few quality of life patches to make it worth folk's while. I don't recommend it, however, as it become monotonous and annoyingly confusing after a while.