Strap in for a whistlestop review of a very short, kind of cute game: Catto’s Post Office.
You play Catto, who lives in a little box room attached to the local post office. I’m not sure if that’s standard procedure in this town or he just loves his job, but that’s where he lives. He wakes up on the morning of his birthday, ready to celebrate with his friends but his assistant is more focused on it being National Belly Rubbing Day and nobody else seems to remember it’s his birthday either. The poor sod decides to put on a brave face and get to work, delivering packages to the feline inhabitants of this little town.
In practice, this simply means collecting a package from your assistant, helpfully named Assistant Cat, and walking it over to the business that ordered it. You’ll be making deliveries to the florist, the cafe, the supermarket and a nursing home. There’s really not much more to it than that. You’ll have a little chat with the recipient who will sometimes need you to complete additional tasks before they’ll accept the package, like looking for some lost scissors for the florist, but these diversions take seconds to resolve.
Wandering around town opens up a few more opportunities. It’s not a big place, consisting of a single street running from the pier up to the cafe at the top of the hill, with a small seafront area to stroll along too. There are locals who have errands that need running, like finding their misplaced parcels or getting someone a coin to throw in the fountain. Much like the main objectives, these are very basic find-and-return affairs, and there’s really not much more to say about them than that. There’s a nice level of interactivity to the town too, there are cans dotted round that you can kick, as you can with footballs or plant pots. My favourite little detail was the open boxes lying around: interact with them and you’ll do an “if I fits, I sits” and hop in and look pleased with yourself.
As mentioned, it’s a short game. When I checked online I saw estimates being around an hour, but I don’t think my playthrough took more than half of that, likely because I mainly stuck to the main deliveries which take place over the course of the day. My issue with Catto’s Post Office is that, despite it clearly going for cute and cosy, it didn’t really strike that chord with me and I found it sadly lacking in charm. The town itself feels quite sparse and the inhabitants I did speak to were so non-descript that the only reason I remember any of them is because they’re named after the stores they work in, i.e. Florist Cat. If a cosy game doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy then all I’m left with are the mechanics, which here just amounts to walking from point A to B, then back to A again.
Again, it’s not for want of trying to be cosy. Visually the game is quite nice with vibrant colours and clear signposting to every point of interest in town. It’s complemented with some jaunty music, which I think is possibly my favourite part of the whole package. It sets the tone nicely, and I just wish the rest of the game matched that. Performance is acceptable, and while the framerate isn’t great, it’s also a very slow-paced game so a slightly framey 30fps is fine for what it is.
Catto’s Post Office isn’t a bad game, but in a sea of cosy games (including many that centre on mail delivery) it simply doesn’t do anything particularly interesting or charming. If you’re looking for half an hour to kill then you could play this, but there are better choices out there that will leave a more lasting impression.
