KeyWe review: extremely cute, but this is no way to run a post office

KeyWe review: extremely cute, but this is no fashion to run a post role

Birds of a feather

The title screen of KeyWe, showing the telepost office in the background and two kiwi birds standing on a desk in the foreground

Gun to your head, if yous were forced to staff a mail office with flightless birds, which kind would yous choice? Personally I'd go with ostriches, considering they are both tiny of brain and ambitious of temperament (plus their long necks would achieve high shelves and they would be very fast at delivery). Merely the good people at Stonewheat & Sons are clearly cowards, considering they picked kiwis, the picayune avocado-shaped birds of New Zealand. Although, bonus points for featuring cassowaries as mail carriers, a species whose offset Google autocomplete suggestion is "cassowary assail".

KeyWe feels like a name that was generated pun offset and enquire questions later, which is a design method I have immense respect for. In this case, your 2 little kiwi pals must run a modest regional Telepost part that has almost terminal levels of whimsy. The telegram machine is carve up into dissever groups of keys that spin, swap places, and, worst of all, do non follow the standard QWERTY layout. Packages are labelled co-ordinate to the personal notes enclosed with them: prepare this scarecrow every bit soon every bit possible, but remember his stick body is very fragile. The postal service room is also run past an octopus.

Your job, then, is to play the four core 3D mini-games, involving both platforming around the room at speed and spotting the keys/stickers/letters you need. Some are more puzzle-y than others, with the last - where you transcribe a voice memo onto a physical note by combining stickers with the right words on - existence a favourite of mine. And as you get through the three seasons of the calender, the games become more difficult or have seasonal twists. One calendar week in autumn the octopus turns the mailroom into a halloween ride where deliveries must be appropriately frightened earlier being sent out. Summer brings sandstorms that slow you downwardly or obscure what you need, as well as very aggressive plants. In that location'south a secret gild who demand their letters on telegrams must be encoded and decoded.

The two kiwi post workers in KeyWe, standing in the area of the game for adding and changing cosmetic items. One kiwi is trying on a skin that makes their fur look like a skeleton — **Dressed to impress**
One of my favourite $.25 is that y'all are paid in stamps, depending on how fast you exercise your task, and can buy some amazing skins and items with them. I dressed my kiwi as Miss Marple by using a majestic glaze, big magnifying old lady spectacles, and a cloche hat. Absolute joy. Some items can only be unlocked past finding secret items or completing overtime.

Making this more than difficult is the fact that kiwis are quite small and besides do non accept easily. You tin grab letters with your bill, and push and pull parcels around on apartment surfaces, but yous will generally be interfacing with things using your arse. It is your nearly versatile tool. It is how yous press buttons or collect labels. And interacting with the world this way is mostly very fun. The fixed camera can sometimes make judging your jumps a chip bad-mannered, just in general KeyWe feels tactile and light-headed, and the scale of everything when you're a little bird is merely inherently enjoyable.

Then are some of the seasonal changes to your challenges, including the aforementioned Halloween-themed package sorting that had u.s.a. deciphering and sending ghostly packages that could only be seen in the light of a magic lantern. It'south at times similar this that KeyWe actually takes reward of its co-op elements, and makes you experience like a smart multitasker. You grab the Fragile characterization later on you lot've done the postmark, and I'll grab a match to relight the lantern on the mode to getting the Heavy characterization on the other side.

The package sorting room in KeyWe, currently full of sand after a summer sandstorm — Sending out parcels is my favourite task, for sure. In this one we are in disarray because of a sandstorm.

It is, however, very much a co-op game and nigh impossible to play in single player. If yous don't take another kiwi bud to paw, your options are either to hotswap between the two kiwis yourself, or pilot them both at the same time, neither of which is at all practical. That'due south fine; it is primarily a co-op game after all, much similar Information technology Takes Two or A Way Out. Less fine is that information technology doesn't appear to have in-game voice chat if y'all're playing online. Talking isn't necessary in all co-op games (await at Journey, for case) just some kind of straight communication is definitely necessary for KeyWe. You'll often accept to do things like jump on unlike keys at the same time, and experiments with timed squawks were unhelpful. Couch co-op is definfitely the optimum style to play.

Fifty-fifty if you are playing this adjacent to your bestie on the sofa, though, KeyWe tips into existence frustrating a fleck too oft to exist properly joyous. In that location'll exist at to the lowest degree one mini-game that you lot just dread coming round to on the Telepost's calendar, and dollars to donuts I'll bet y'all it's the telegram messages, which is basically typing, merely typing very, very slowly, like yous're someone's gran on a Nokia 3310. The seasonal remixes of this item mini-game don't assistance to gee information technology up, either, and if anything just fabricated it even more irritating. At one point, later finishing a especially gruelling telegram, my co-op partner turned to me and said, "This makes me sad". Which is not ideal. And to play the campaign yous have to practise a few of these a month. My eye sank every time they came up.

The telegram machine in postal puzzle game KeyWe. The keyboard is split into lots of small, random sections of keys. The screen showing the words to send has several letters blacked out, and the players must decode this — AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH

The telegram messages weren't the just thing I came to dread either. Even KeyWe's more than enjoyable core games volition reliably get a wacky improver at least one time per season that renders them more agonising than agreeable. Similar the time the mailroom was replaced with a flooded basement and we had to sokoban the parcels out past moving floating debris. In fact, the most fun mini-games are to be found in the game'southward Overtime section, a collection of non-standard extra games you can play to earn more stamps. These include feeding the enervating cassowary staff, or patching up leaks from the octopus tank, or getting in a snowball fight, and they're oftentimes races to stack upward as many points possible in the allotted time. They're also more directly co-operative co-op puzzles, and experience more lighthearted in the process. Ideally overtime should never be the most enjoyable part of your task, merely and so it goes with KeyWe.

Ultimately, KeyWe is one of those games that I have to add qualifications to if someone asks if I enjoy it. It'southward a "fun, simply-" kind of game. I wish it wasn't, because underneath the annoyances are some really lovely, imaginative details. The Telepost gets different decorations for unlike times of twelvemonth. In that location are mysterious collectibles to find and store in your fiddling kiwi nest hole. The cassowaries habiliment halloween costumes. The notes that come with packages to send out are often funny. The kiwis are really beautiful! But...