Review: Mail Time is a special delivery for any cozy gamer’s library

I think it’s well-established by now that if there is a mushroom of any kind involved – even if it’s just a hat – then I’m all in. In fact, Mail Time was on my radar before I got it in one of the latest Humble Bundles. I’d written about how excited I was to get my hands on the game back in early November.

Honestly, I didn’t expect to be able to buy it in a bundle so soon, so I feel like I got Christmas early with this one.

Mail Time Gameplay and Controls

Mail Time is an adorable game where you play as an unofficial Mail Scout. To be a fully-fledged scout, you have to prove your worth to Janet, your boss. She sets you out on your first mission to deliver a letter to Greg.

You’ll meet a host of 20 characters, but oddly, no Greg. The game takes you on a fetch quest adventure helping all the villagers in hopes that they might have clues as to where you can find this mysterious letter receiver.

I won’t spoil where or who Greg is, but needless to say, you won’t be finding him until much later. Instead, you’ll get to deliver smaller letters, find mushroom samples to get new hats, and even help a few villagers find love.

All in all, Mail Time was a fun little game. I played it with a controller and the controls were fine most of the time. But, I did find the camera to be a bit of a learning curve. Also, when it came to anything to do with the menu, it was a lot less hassle to just use the mouse.

I loved being able to name my own character and fiddle with not only what colors she wore, but what kind of backpack or glider she had. And I really appreciated being able to choose which pronouns I’d like to be referred to!

This one had a lot of dialogue and while I appreciate the depth of character, I’ll talk later about how it wasn’t executed in the best way. 

I enjoyed being able to run around and find things, but there were certain items that had nothing to do with the story or the characters involved, such as the bottle caps and gemstones. There are four of each to collect that you can’t deliver to anyone and don’t give you any sort of achievement.

Weirdly, that’s not the only mystery you’ll walk away with. There’s a bit of dialogue that has to do with earthworms that won’t be explained. So, if you give this game a try, don’t prolong finishing the game in a bid to uncover that mystery. 

Art and Sound

When it comes to the art, I’m a sucker for the pastel shades mixed with the deeper colors. To me, it felt very much like looking at a storybook. I really enjoyed that each character was generally a different sort of creature.

There was a certain whimsy to the atmosphere with everything being overly large and being able to climb up to certain vantage points to glide down.

Each little section of the map had its own music and I thought that was a charming little detail, but there was one musical number that made me want to sit down and just listen to it on repeat. 

In the area where you visit Toph and Swomp, there’s something about that arrangement that made me wish I could fiddle with the settings and have that song play all the time.

Coziness and Cons

Visually, the game is 10 out of 10 cozy and the idea of being a little mail scout who runs around delivering things while gliding around and bouncing off of mushrooms is just as cozy. I did have a lot of fun playing the game, but there was one big thing that really knocked the review/cozy scores for me.

There’s a lot of dialogue in this game, which isn’t really the problem. It’s how the dialogue is delivered. Generally, the text is delivered in smaller sentences and sometimes not even sentences at all. 

In talking to one person, I’ve had to hit the button to continue dialogue over 40 times. And that’s not an anomaly. Every person I talked to had me hitting that button upwards of 40 times. And it didn’t really get better the longer you play.

Overall, I just wish more was said at once or dialogue was delivered a bit more succinctly because having to hit the button repeatedly was a thumb killer.

It should also be noted that near the end of the game, I ran into a little glitch. It didn’t break the game and it didn’t happen every time, but about the 4-hour mark, when I talked to someone, I wouldn’t be able to walk after. I could jump and even glide, but I wouldn’t move from the spot. To combat this, I had to talk to the person again and then I could move.

Verdict

Despite my issues with the amount of dialogue, I still really enjoyed my time playing Mail Time and feel like it’s a great game for any cozy gamer to have.

Mail Time is available on a bunch of different platforms for $19.99, so if you’re interested, you can get it over on Steam, Nintendo Switch, or PlayStation (4 and 5.) 

Actually, if you want to get Mail Time sooner rather than later, Steam is running a sale on it right now for 40% off until January 4th making it $11.99.