To start off my review of Totally Reliable Delivery Service (TRDS), I’ll tell you that I played 2 different types of extended sessions. One was half cut with my wife (after 2 weeks of quarantine) and the other was after on my own, sober, to see if I had the same experience!
So, with Totally Reliable Delivery Service effectively being a ragdoll, physics-based puzzle game, the first time I sat down to play this game, I played co-op with my wife. We don’t get much time to play video games TOGETHER these days, but I fully expected us (Note: We had been locked up in isolation for 2 weeks at this point, with a 7-year-old and a 1-year-old) to be butting heads playing this. I almost wrote up a contract to state that if things got out of hand nobody was to blame!
As it turned out, there were almost deaths, caused by the hilarious nature of Totally Reliable Delivery Service. Every little thing made us laugh, be that chasing a bunch of balloons tied to a rock and being unable to grab hold of them as they float off into the distance, or trying to fly a helicopter, with the other half hanging off the back of it, loaded with an explosive barrel and flying straight into the ocean! We weren’t a very reliable delivery service but we had a hell of a lot of fun.
So, given that our experience after a couple of drinks playing together was a positive one, I went back in to try Totally Reliable Delivery Service on my own without being under the influence the next day… This game really is fun, it’s challenging, it’s hilarious, it’s bright, it’s cute.
To expand on these points, it controls similarly to Gang Beasts. So, while even though it is totally funny, it can be quite finicky to get hold of the items you want. Loading them into vehicles is hilariously rough at times (refer back to the part about loading an explosive barrel into the back of a helicopter) and some of the delivery locations are in super challenging spots, which supplies varying difficulty levels to satiate the appetite of every gamer.
There are so many different delivery methods in Totally Reliable Delivery Service, the world truly is your oyster. You can control everything from forklifts to helicopters, dune buggies to small aeroplanes. Each one is beautifully awkward and I had so much fun with them all. Given how awkward it is to control all the aspects of this game, it makes it so incredibly satisfying when you can nail a delivery for a gold medal, whether that’s because you delivered the item quick enough or simply… Not… smashing the parcel to pieces.
I feel like it’s exactly what I’d expect graphically, colourful and cartoony. There are lots of varied environments, each as quirky as the last, from beachfront resorts where I fell in love with an adorable crab (until it started beating me up repeatedly) to mountain villages. You never feel like you’re just running around staring at the same thing constantly, the ever-changing surroundings will keep you coming back to be part of the “Questionably Reliable Delivery Service”.
Given the fact that everything I mentioned above is positive I feel it’s only fair that I mention a negative point. In the hours that I played across my sessions, I did have the game crash to my switch home screen a few times. Now, this did only release on 1st April 2020 for Switch, so I expect patches and stuff to come over the next few months, but just bear in mind that your mileage may vary and you may be lucky and not face any crashes.
All that being said, Totally Reliable Delivery Service (at the time of writing April 6th 2020) is FREE on the Epic Store (Until April 8th 2020) and on the Nintendo Switch, which is the version I played, it is only £13.49. There are a few DLC packs which I think are reasonably priced, some just cosmetics for your courier if you’re into that sort of stuff and a couple of extra packs with new environments/deliveries to make.
Currently, Totally Reliable Delivery Service is an Epic Store exclusive for PC, with Steam saying it isn’t releasing until 2021 which may be a bit of an annoyance for some people, but even so, this game to me comes across as really good value. I and my wife haven’t laughed like this playing a video game in a long time. I think I could comfortably recommend this title, whether you intend to blast through it on your own or enjoy it entirely as a party game.
Totally (Questionably) Reliable Delivery Service is a fun and hilarious, cute and challenging, ragdoll, physics-based, “puzzle” game which at a price of £13.49 I would have absolutely no qualms recommending and given everything I’ve mentioned above, I’d easily score it well but honestly, I can only see that rating getting better over time, providing the support is there from the devs.
Totally Reliable Delivery Service TL;DR:
- Totally Reliable Delivery Service is fun and hilarious, cute and challenging;
- A bit buggy with the game crashing a few times, but early days, so patches may fix this;
- Reasonably priced, with a variety of DLC content;
- If supported well by devs, only going to get better over time.
85%
Totally Reliable Delivery Service is developed by We’re Five Games and published by tinyBuild. It is available to buy on PC via the Epic Games Store, on PS4, the Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android devices, and the Xbox One. In the meantime, if you purchase the game, whilst you wait for it to download you can check out more of our game reviews HERE.
