Cat Mail Co. was provided by Maracas Studio & Gamersky Games for review. Thank You!
The "Cozy" genre of games seems to be working its way into all aspects of life, and Cat Mail Co. adds another notch to that belt, putting you as the cat in charge of a mail warehouse. You'll be responsible for accepting delivery parcels and ensuring they're labeled correctly for the right destinations, handing over delivered parcels to customers, and exploring the mail center's history as you work through piles of undelivered parcels.
Cat Mail Co. starts you off nice and slow; the tutorial does a good job of easing you into the gameplay loop of accepting parcels, labeling them correctly with stamps, placing them on the boat to be shipped off, and handing over parcels that people come to pick up.
But I got an interesting feeling while playing. There's no time limit, no rush to get anything done, yet I still felt overwhelmed. As you progress through the game, the number of parcels/letters you have in your warehouse continues to grow, requiring you to be ever more organized if you wish to play the game at a good flow. It's not unusual to have parcels numbering in the hundreds waiting to be delivered or handed over, and that can be a logistical nightmare to manage.
That leads to another slight issue with Cat Mail Co. When customers arrive to collect their parcels, they often give vague statements about which parcel they are looking for. Unfortunately, that can mean several parcels fit that description, which can add to the frustration when you think you've found the correct parcel, only for the customer to reject it and say you need to find another.
While I wouldn't necessarily mind these "issues" in a normal game, they kind of subverted my expectations for a cozy, casual game to have these roadblocks. Mind you, these roadblocks can be mitigated if you are particularly careful about your organization. The game does provide you with plenty of shelving and a fairly sizable warehouse, so you can organize your parcels effectively, although the snapping system was occasionally annoying and sometimes doesn't let you place parcels, even if they physically would fit on the shelf.
I did enjoy the form that progression took in Cat Mail Co., however. As you ship off and deliver parcels, you'll gradually whittle down massive piles of undelivered mail that the previous owner left behind. As you do so, you'll uncover more rooms and new gameplay mechanics. The excitement when the pile of mail diminishes, revealing another room in the mail center, definitely gives that shot of serotonin. As the game progresses, you'll have to make sure that parcels are delivered to the right places, kept in cold/hot rooms depending on their requirements, and even placed correctly depending on whether they are heavy parcels or fragile ones.
There are also photos detailing the history of the mail center, which make up the game's "story" and are revealed as you clear out the mail center. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to work out what the photos mean or the order they're meant to be viewed in, as the date at the bottom didn't make much sense to me. It would have really added something if there were a voice-over narration of what the photo depicts, or at least some text to go along with it.
The game employs a very basic visual style, which thankfully also keeps it fairly easy to run, and features some very pleasant, relaxing music to work to. It reminded me of an upbeat Animal Crossing selection of music. It certainly helped keep me calm when sifting through endless piles of letters!
There is also co-op play for up to 4 players, although I'm unsure if that would be a help or a hindrance unless you can trust all your friends to be as organized as each other. You can label shelves by type of parcel, which can be a great help in communicating to others (and yourself) where each needs to be stored.
I did have to force the game to use Proton 10 for it to boot on the Steam Deck with the review build.
Cat Mail Co. runs pretty well on the Steam Deck. It supports 1280x800 resolution, and while the game doesn't support controllers right now, the default Keyboard (WASD) + Mouse controller template works well as long as you map the Q key to handle stamps. We have been assured that controller support will be added soon after launch.
Performance-wise, you can get Cat Mail Co. to run at 60 FPS by lowering the graphical settings, but I recommend keeping the "Downscale Resolution" box unticked and turning MSAA off; it just makes the edges of parcels look a little jagged. I then lock the game to 40 FPS in SteamOS. It runs quite stably with these settings, although you may experience slight drops when stamping your parcels.
As for power draw, the 40 FPS cap we set for the game helps us save a good amount of battery life compared to 60 FPS, so expect around 9W-11W, giving us around 5 hours of battery life on a Steam Deck OLED and around 3.5 hours on a Steam Deck LCD. Temperatures were around 60C but could rise to 65C, depending on the time of day.
Cat Mail Co. lets you rebind controls, adjust sensitivity, and change the Field of View, but otherwise there are no accessibility options. I generally found the text easy to read on the Steam Deck's display.
Cat Mail Co. is a cozy/casual game that places a strong emphasis on organization. If you lack organization, prepare to feel overwhelmed and stressed, but those with good planning and patience will find a relaxing, take-it-at-your-own-pace gameplay loop.
Performance on the Steam Deck is perfectly fine. It's a shame we can't reliably hit 60 FPS, but 40 is perfectly fine for a slow-paced game like Cat Mail Co., and the battery life is solid. Gamepad controls are promised for post-launch, but the keyboard layout makes the game fully playable regardless.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Cat Mail Co. can be as relaxing or frustrating as you want it to be, depending on your playstyle. But the game does run well on the Steam Deck, even without official controller support, allowing a smooth 40 FPS experience.
