This dreary low-poly delivery game pairs Animal Crossing villagers with soul-crushing gig work and I can't wait to play it
I spent six years as a delivery guy in a profoundly depressed area, so I'm receptive when a game like Easy Delivery Co. appeals to the universal human yearning to drive packages around in a place that sucks. It's a driving game with PS1-esque graphics, a soundtrack of laidback beats, and a bleak mountainside setting populated by eerie Animal Crossing villagers—and after an hour with the demo, it's easily one of my most anticipated games of 2025.
You play as a new hire for easyCo, a gig work delivery company that welcomes you when the game starts up with an email informing that "you are now responsible for delivering important EasyCo merchandise to and from the local businesses in [insert Profit Sector]." Not exactly reassuring, but at least they gave me a sick kei truck to do the job.
EasyCo might not be particular about what the town's actual name is, but it's delightfully dreary. Its clusters of shabby businesses and apartment blocks are separated by winding, snowdrift-strewn mountain roads. The most interesting things in town are the train that occasionally rattles by and the way the occasional snowfall looks under the streetlamp glow.
We as a society have learned that ennui looks beautiful when it's portrayed with only a handful of polygons and a throwback pixelation filter. Rolling through Easy Delivery Co.'s foggy, grayscale winterscape, parcels sliding around my kei truck's flatbed as I swing around hillside hairpins, makes for a vibe situated so perfectly between "lonely" and "meditative" that I barely mind how awful my little cat man's wages are.
That said, I can't help but wonder if there's a little bit of Silent Hill happening here. The first few acquaintances I made among the town's cat-and-dog-folk offered friendly greetings, but the more I talked with customers as I picked up their deliveries, the more they seemed to confuse me for others, or struggle to remember that we'd met, or wonder aloud what ever had happened to the last delivery guy.
Helpfully, however, the Steam page says the town's residents are "not-at-all mysterious" and that there's "nothing strange going on, no lore, nothing at all, we promise," so I'm sure it's fine.
Easy Delivery Co. doesn't have a full release date, but it's set to launch sometime this year.