There isn’t really much to say about Catto’s Post Office. It’s a really short game that can be accidentally made shorter by skipping stuff, and just a few sentences can literally spoil the entire game because of the length. The entire experience will take you between 40 and 60 minutes. But it’s a fairly worthwhile experience, especially since the game only costs $5.
You play as Catto, the town’s mailman. The game takes place on his birthday, but it appears everyone’s forgotten about it. Despite being a little sad, Catto isn’t deterred from being the best mailman in the town. The premise is simple. Throughout the day, you’re given a series of packages that need to be delivered to different businesses throughout the town.
The town is small enough that you’ll figure out the layout of everything after only your first delivery. But the town has a lot of charm. It looks really good for a game of this size, and there’s a bunch of side activities for you to partake in. You can kick objects around, and that’s made even more fun with a soccer ball and goal post. There are also vases for you to break, you know, cat stuff.
But the real charm of the game are the towns residents, and you want to make sure you interact with everybody throughout the day. Each NPC will give you some dialogue, and this is one of those games where you’ll want to hear everything before the end of the game. Each delivery only takes a few minutes and there’s only like five or six before the final cutscene. That’s where everything comes together.
I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you’ve been paying attention to all the NPC’s during your exploration and deliveries, the final moments are way more wholesome and charming. It’s a satisfying ending to a story that would barely fit one episode of a TV show. It would have been great if this was just the prologue to a longer story, but it’s pretty good for what it is. Plus its themes of community, family, and friendship get across well in such a short amount of time.
The game also looks and runs very well. You don’t need a bunch of performance and high end visuals for a game of this size. But running around the town felt smooth, and each character had such a cute design. It’s a very cozy and relaxing game, there are worse games you could get for that cheap.
8/10