KeyWe’s final act, Winter, expands on that camaraderie, and not just within the office. Zoey, whom you may only have acknowledged as a cephalopodic multitasking pro, dresses up for her shift wearing a witches’ hat and in a food-colored cauldron, having turned the entire filing department into a haunted house in which you must first adequately scare the letters before delivery. The mail still needs to be sent, make no mistake, but your steadfast courier, Bartleby, brings all of his costumed cassowary friends to the office to trick or treat, and you’d best make time to bring them candy.
The game’s Wickertide event, much like Halloween in the real world, gives many of the quiet coworkers that toil alongside you a chance to shine. When the game then connects these obstacles to seasonal narratives, KeyWe really soars. It doesn’t hurt that the world of the game is filled with wonderful absurdities, such as mayflies that are so addicted to the scent of glue that they’ll pull apart your carefully assembled telegrams, peeling off each carefully affixed word and flying away with it. But it speaks to the creativity and quality of the game design that even without much of a narrative to link them, these scenarios are enticing enough to urge players onward. One week, a sudden infestation of kudzu vines may have to be pecked away so that you can freely slide your boxes across the office, and in another you may have to first unbury the packages that you’re shipping out, on account of local sandstorms. This, though, isn’t readily apparent in KeyWe’s first act, Summer, which serves as a lengthy introduction to the game’s four main stations and the types of obstacles or environmental hazards that you may face in the semi-open-air post office. Always there’s a new challenge to overcome, but unlike the similarly absurd jobs that you take up in other chaotic co-op games like Overcooked, Moving Out, or Shakes on a Plane, the challenges here coalesce into a narrative whole that provides a satisfying return on the player’s investment. And for players, there isn’t a single week (level) or overtime shift (minigame) that doesn’t come with a tutorial. There’s never a dull moment at the office for Jeff and Debra. KeyWe could have easily coasted on its sheen of ultra-cuteness, but the developers at Stonewheat & Sons go out of their way to thrillingly depict the kiwis’ hard work. At the very least, you can’t help but root for the two plucky birds that you-or you and a partner, if you’re playing the game in co-op mode-will send literally hunting and pecking across a massive typewriter whose keys are scattered all over a few levels, or butt-slamming stamps onto letters, or routing the mail that flows into the Bungalow Basin Telepost Office through increasingly elaborate filing systems. It’s hard to not love such humble, hardworking, weather-braving postal kiwis as Jeff and Debra. Characters also tend to get stuck on level geometry pretty frequently, leading to lots of annoyance.There has never been a better homage to the much maligned mail carrier than the co-op game KeyWe. But it causes a lot of confusion here, especially when trying to navigate quickly. I’m usually fine enough with character clipping (I’ve played enough old 3D games to get used to it). The Kiwi’s models also tend to clip into objects rather frequently. There’s nothing here that I’d think the Switch couldn’t handle, yet it runs rather choppy. While the graphics and sound are good enough here, the performance feels subpar. Some levels have fun twists, and others just feel annoying. I’m not a huge fan of this kind of thing, as I find it typically yields mixed results, and in KeyWe’s case, it is mixed. While it works mostly normally (as the first level of its kind), later ones have keys swap positions occasionally. For instance, one type involves typing out messages. The main levels get divided into four different types, whose concepts repeat with twists and difficulty increases as you progress. Throughout your game, you’ll gain cosmetic items (a good variety to choose from) that you can use to dress up your kiwis. You’ll be working together to do tasks in 36 different levels, along with nine other ‘overtime’ levels that aren’t mandatory for level progression and feel more like minigames. KeyWe has you (and perhaps a friend) playing as Jeff and Debra: two Kiwi postal workers.
KeyWe feels somewhere in the middle to me, trying a few things out while not straying too far from the formula. Ever since Overcooked, I’ve noticed a ton more co-op games on the market some blatant Overcooked clones with a change of setting, and others trying something a bit different.
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