Maaaaail. Everyone loves getting mail. Or not, depending on how many enemies you have with a copious supply of ricin. Either way, something surprising is coming through that letterbox and what is life without the occasional shock to the system, central nervous or otherwise? We're talking about postal terrorism on this occasion because this week's Indie Game that is of this week is none other than Mail Time: a delightful 3D platformer from last year that has something of an adventure game sensibility and a self-described "cottagecore" aesthetic, which I guess can also include the garden you'd find outside of said cottage. As a mail delivery forest sprite—the name, appearance, and pronouns of which are provided by the player (oh no! Pronouns! Better class this as a horror game, am I right all the ragebait grifter weirdos that have flooded my YouTube algorithm of late despite my best efforts to stem the tide? Why can't game developers focus on important things like sacking half their workers close to the holidays or sending salacious texts to minors? Sorry, election season's got me rattled. What are we talking about? Oh right, video games)—the goal is to deliver a letter to one "Greg". Trouble is, barely anyone in the neighborhood seems to know this Greg guy and they have deliveries of their own that need some sucker to carry back and forth.

Most of the game involves talking to animal NPCs, procuring a new letter to be given to some other animal NPC (definite shades of Animal Crossing's constant runarounds already), and the occasional jumping around collecting knick-knacks that may or may not relate to one of the side-quests these creatures will dump on you. The platforming is simple but mechanically sound, including a handy glider tool that I'm sure will be in most 3D platformers from here on out thanks to Zelda: BotW and any number of miHoYo imitators, and the game has this gentle watercolor cel-shaded look that I'm not sure why more Indie devs don't go for since it's the only proven way to make lo-poly 3D assets look timeless instead of "I made it look like a PS1 game on purpose; it's all kitsch and shit".

The game's highlight, depending on your tolerance for Zoomer-speak, is the dialogue between the motivated if not particularly bright protagonist and the big personalities of these harmless-looking forest fauna: a rabbit mother that dotes on her kids despite all three of them being giant nerds she finds hard to relate to; a group of disgruntled ferrets and crows are looking to rip-off the only animal with any wealth through some sort of mail check fraud (which you become a party to, through surprisingly little cajoling); a champion racer caterpillar who talks in sentence fragments and is very disagreeable; a squirrel and a woodpecker where the former is making official noise complaints about the latter; and many others, including at least one same-sex love story between a snail and a goose (the classic) and an annoying SQ where at one point you feed a hamster a crayon caked in dirt because it asked a jerk for gourmet tips.

Speaking of annoying, the game is set up in a way where it's just one fairly large environment to explore with about twenty occupants: the issue is that the higher plateaus require a single circuitous route to reach and there's no way of dropping a shortcut to make it easier to return that I could find, meaning you'll be running the same "course" many times trying to deliver all the mail there is to hand over. There's also no map, and I imagine those of about the right age for this game—let's say around 8-12 years old—might struggle unless they have a precocious sense of direction. The game also has its fair share of technical faults, including an exasperating bug where I couldn't move after acquiring one of the game's many "merit badges" (that also double as the achievement set) and either had to re-talk to the nearby NPC that triggered the achievement or else drop in and out of the inventory menu. One time the achievement alert was the thing that bugged out, and I had no other recourse than to save and quit and load back in. Minor quibbles that are easily fixed but a stark reminder that if making 3D games was easy we'd be seeing a whole lot more of them flooding the Indie market.

Mail Time is a cute, relaxing game about doing your best and helping make dreams come true through the magical art of written correspondence. It's not a long game, barring the amount of repetitive walking and gliding you'll be doing, and it has as many irritations as it does charms. However, it's visually appealing and the piano music, when it doesn't glitch out and start playing multiple tracks simultaneously, is every bit as inviting as the rest of the game's wholesome vibes. I'd put it in a similar boat as something like A Short Hike, where all the goal-oriented loops and conflict endemic to video games become largely secondary to just hanging out with some animal buds and enjoying the breeze as you glide around a tranquil spot of natural beauty. Even if there's not a whole lot more to Mail Time beyond the above I will at least say that, as far as delivery games go, you won't ever get chased around by the grim reaper in this one. (I'm just trying to deliver newspapers, why the hell is the specter of death breathing down my neck everywhere I go? This isn't worth $5 an hour.)

: 3 out of 5.