The mail still needs to be sent, make no mistake, but your steadfast courier, Bartleby, brings all of his costumed cassowary friends to the office to trick or treat, and you’d best make time to bring them candy. The game’s Wickertide event, much like Halloween in the real world, gives many of the quiet coworkers that toil alongside you a chance to shine. When the game then connects these obstacles to seasonal narratives, KeyWe really soars. It doesn’t hurt that the world of the game is filled with wonderful absurdities, such as mayflies that are so addicted to the scent of glue that they’ll pull apart your carefully assembled telegrams, peeling off each carefully affixed word and flying away with it. But it speaks to the creativity and quality of the game design that even without much of a narrative to link them, these scenarios are enticing enough to urge players onward. One week, a sudden infestation of kudzu vines may have to be pecked away so that you can freely slide your boxes across the office, and in another you may have to first unbury the packages that you’re shipping out, on account of local sandstorms. This, though, isn’t readily apparent in KeyWe’s first act, Summer, which serves as a lengthy introduction to the game’s four main stations and the types of obstacles or environmental hazards that you may face in the semi-open-air post office. Always there’s a new challenge to overcome, but unlike the similarly absurd jobs that you take up in other chaotic co-op games like Overcooked, Moving Out, or Shakes on a Plane, the challenges here coalesce into a narrative whole that provides a satisfying return on the player’s investment. And for players, there isn’t a single week (level) or overtime shift (minigame) that doesn’t come with a tutorial. There’s never a dull moment at the office for Jeff and Debra. KeyWe could have easily coasted on its sheen of ultra-cuteness, but the developers at Stonewheat & Sons go out of their way to thrillingly depict the kiwis’ hard work. At the very least, you can’t help but root for the two plucky birds that you-or you and a partner, if you’re playing the game in co-op mode-will send literally hunting and pecking across a massive typewriter whose keys are scattered all over a few levels, or butt-slamming stamps onto letters, or routing the mail that flows into the Bungalow Basin Telepost Office through increasingly elaborate filing systems. It’s hard to not love such humble, hardworking, weather-braving postal kiwis as Jeff and Debra.
There has never been a better homage to the much maligned mail carrier than the co-op game KeyWe.