Totally Reliable Delivery Service
Developed by We’re Five Games and published by TinyBuild, Totally Reliable Delivery Service is what my daughter refers to as "the funny game". An intentionally awkward, hilariously glitchy physics based game about delivering packages. You play as a nameless character, a delivery driver, who you can customise with a variety of different costumes and accessories to give them your own custom flair.
Pulling the lever on package dispensers dotted around the map will generate a package and start the timer for you to get the delivery made. Sometimes a vehicle will spawn as a suggested method of transport for these deliveries, and other times you'll have to find one on your own. From cars and trucks, to helicopters and hot air balloons, there's plenty of choice.
Some vehicles are more frustrating than others, with all being controlled by levers. Cars/trucks/carts seems to be the easiest to handle, with the lever working well for both accelerating and turning. Helicopters are a totally different story. Allan seems to be able to control the helicopters fairly well, but for the life of me I cannot handle them at all. They have two levers, and this dual control is to be able to control height/angle as well as acceleration. The slightest nudge - from me - leads to the helicopter dive-bombing to the ground.
Playable with up to four players in either local or online co-op, you can work together to successfully get all 100 packages delivered. Working alone, the frustrations of packages falling off of helicopters or out of the back of vehicles made us quickly get fed up, but playing alongside friends or family makes it a much more enjoyable experience. You might not succeed in getting everything delivered, heck you might even find yourself just bounding around the world and seeing what's out there - like a mini Rocket League inspired stadium, which is actually playable! - but you'll have a lot of fun here. Pressing B (on Xbox) allows you to utilise some ragdoll physics, and just flop down hills and off cliffs. Holding B whilst close to other players will cause you to fart and knock them out (something that caused Eva a lot of annoyance when we played! "Everybody stop farting!!" she kept yelling, whilst us grown-up children buckled with laughter. Every. Single. Time.
The art style is simple, but works well with the style of the game, and there's plenty to see and do whilst exploring the map. You might even come across some unexpected ways to travel, such as grabbing on to fire extinguishers and blasting off into the sky. The music is also very catchy, and sticks in your head long after you stop playing.
The downside with TRDS is that whilst some of the glitchiness and lagginess is hilarious, it can also be downright infuriating. We clipped through buildings and got stuck in vehicles countless times, and some sound effects seemed to be layered badly, blasting out of the speakers when all other noises were much tamer. These seemed to be a really frequent occurrence, and whilst they didn't put us off of the game entirely, if you're playing this game alone then that combined with the difficulty of trying to complete any objectives would easily turn people away.
In the end, we decided to give Totally Reliable Delivery Service the Collecting Asylum rating of 6.5/10.
Have you played TRDS yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to tinyBuild for the Totally Reliable Delivery Service Xbox One review code!
