When a video game’s biggest selling point is that it’s perfect for zoning out to, it could sound like faint praise. Yet the fact that I still wanted to deliver stuff and poke around for secrets in Sam C.’s Easy Delivery Co. — a low-poly delivery simulator that’s equal parts cosy and dreary — after the credits rolled speaks volumes about its absorbingly simple gameplay loop.
You play as a cat-like creature tasked with ferrying cargo of all sorts around an uncanny winter landscape while driving a Japanese-style kei pickup truck. While the NPC critters who hire you look straight out of GameCube-era Animal Crossing, the desolate world you inhabit evokes the technical limitations of the original PlayStation era and bleak visuals of Silent Hill.
Easy Delivery Co. is neither mechanically rich nor especially polished. This is a game that runs on vibes, and in its best moments, those vibes are immaculate. The simple routine of taking short delivery jobs and cruising down windswept highways, with lo-fi drum and bass tracks playing on the radio, lends the experience an oddly comforting sense of isolation.
While the game offers little challenge and baked-in repetition, it remains engaging throughout its five-hour runtime thanks to an understated sense of mystery involving the fate of your predecessor, Seb, whom various shopkeepers initially mistake you for. Without getting into spoiler territory, the climax hinges on a player choice that alters the world in an unsettling way.
But satisfying vehicle controls and inspired aesthetics — not story — are the game’s core strengths. As you progress, light crafting and survival mechanics are introduced, and money earned from deliveries is used to acquire key items needed to progress.
You’ll need to keep one eye on your character’s energy levels and another on your truck’s fuel gauge. Much like the real world, petrol is expensive, and you’ll need lots of caffeine to push through long shifts and freezing nights. You can also go ice fishing and cook your catch into a soup to ward off the relentless cold.
While it absolutely nails the feel of driving, movement on foot can be rather cumbersome by design. Your character trudges through the cold at a sluggish pace when their energy gauge is low, leaving you vulnerable to freezing to death, which adds a layer of resource management to even short walks.
There are also a few rough technical edges. Transitioning between map areas can feel abrupt, with the screen cutting to black for a few seconds before popping you into the next zone. Reloading after a death feels similarly janky. These interruptions never seriously disrupt play, but they do reinforce the sense that this is a small, somewhat scrappy production from a solo dev.
Easy Delivery Co. won’t be for everyone, but if solitary drives and chill vibes are your idea of a good time, it might be for you. Though its rough edges are visible, its repetition is strangely grounding and can be hard to put down. Ironically, it manages to make the drudgery of gig-economy deliveries feel like a meditative respite.
