I’ve helped 100 cats mail parcels in Cat Mail Co. which is why I can safely say it’s one of the best management sims I’ve played in a very long time

Mail delivery is a thankless job. No one notices all the hard effort that goes into sorting through mountains of boxes, parcels, and letters to get deliveries ready on time. Oh, but I drop a couple of dozen boxes in the sea and suddenly I’m bad at my job? Everyone’s a critic.

But someone’s gotta do it, and that’s the fate which befalls you and your friends if you decide to play the new cozy management sim Cat Mail Co. Residents of Cat Island will turn up to your post office with mail to collect or send and it’s your job to ensure everything gets to where it needs to go on time, and doesn’t end up lost among a pile of old packages.

(Image credit: Maracas Studio)

Cats will turn up to collect their mail, they’ll describe said package, some in great detail and some in what feels more like a riddle than a description. Parcels will have first names and the initial of a last name on them alongside stamps that signify if they’re heavy, fragile, or frozen, as well as some other visual signifiers like ribbons, stickers, or what I have deduced are scratch marks from alligators—I try not to ask too many questions.

Because I’m very much Type A, I created a thorough sorting system in which I separated boxes by weight, type, and crocodile scratches, making it pretty easy to locate mail and race through customer orders each day. But that’s not to say I didn’t have any trouble.

I did find myself rejecting customer requests a couple of times—when they gave me absolutely nothing to work with. One cat asked for a box, no name, no weight, no visual signifier, just a box. If I’d actually been on the other side of that counter I would’ve probably thrown a box at them. But I wasn’t, and after giving them almost every box I had in stock only for them to reject each one, I gave up and told them to shove off. My customer service isn’t great either, I suppose. But it’s also not dreadful, because after the first couple of hours I managed to complete orders for 100 cats, an achievement I’m quite proud of.

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But it’s not all about handing off parcels. You also collect them from customers and sort them so they’re ready to be handed off to the cheery Captain, who arrives at your post office by boat each morning and evening and then sets sail to deliver them to the surrounding towns.

So far I’ve unlocked Sunny Shores, Port Windy, and Crescent Bay. The Captain’s delivery schedule will change each day, however, meaning certain areas may be missed out on, depending on which route he’s taking. So you’ll have to manage your stock quite closely, otherwise you can have packages sticking around the office too long, and before long you’ll be flooded with piles of boxes strewn across the floor.

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The Captain will also have a random amount of space on his boat, meaning you have to stack boxes like a jenga tower, with the heavy cargo on the bottom and the fragile stuff on the top. But there are other variations, like lovers boxes that have to be shipped together, or frozen items that need to be kept in the cool room until the very last second, making for a different kind of puzzle for you to tackle each dawn and dusk.

I’ve only been playing Cat Mail Co. for a few hours now, but there’s clearly so much more to experience, with locked rooms, broken gadgets, and new places all being out of reach right now. And if you get tired of playing on your own and want to throw a live grenade into the mix, you can invite friends to play with you—warning, this will severely decrease the cosy and significantly increase the stress, but it’s still a ton of fun and means you’re essentially getting two games for the price of one.

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