delivery pals

I've watched enough live-service and co-op games launch into a Mixed review pile to know exactly what that rating usually means, and with delivery pals sitting at 48% positive from its first wave of players, the signal is worth unpacking before you swipe your card. This is an Early Access first-person co-op survival game where you and up to six friends play as customizable cat couriers scavenging a post-apocalyptic Earth, cooking food orders, and delivering them to alien customers while hostile humans raise your quotas and try to wipe you out. The DNA is unmistakably Lethal Company-adjacent: shared economy, a home base vehicle (here a fast modified train instead of a moon ship), procedurally generated hazard maps, and a quota system designed to feel like it's always one bad run away from breaking you. If you loved that loop in Lethal Company or Among the Sleep, you will recognize the rhythm here immediately. The core gameplay asks your squad to locate customers using a radar on the train, then scatter across one of six maps to scavenge ingredients from trash bags and containers, improvise cooking with a dual-hand item system, and deliver the correct calorie-accurate meal without botching the order. Serve the wrong food and the alien attacks you. Fall too far and the damage is punishing. Enemies have been spotted running in place. Players have reported spawning on the train and dying instantly for no discernible reason. The community bug report thread is active, which is both reassuring (the solo developer is reading it) and telling (it needs to be). The demo launched in June 2025 with mostly negative feedback, and the full release in late July nudged that sentiment upward but not across the threshold. The AI-generated poster art inside the game has also drawn criticism from a portion of the community, which is a legitimate concern for buyers who care about that. What delivery pals does have going for it is a genuinely funny premise executed with enough mechanical depth to make a good group session memorable. The train hub functions as a shared base where you sell junk at the onboard shop, manage money through an ATM that lets teammates send funds to each other, and prep for the next run. That kind of communal economy, where one player's spending decision affects everyone's quota stress, is exactly the kind of social friction that makes co-op games stick. The dual-hand item system adds scrappy flexibility, and the procedural maps mean routes do not become muscle memory overnight. When it clicks with a full crew and clear communication, the chaos is the point. The honest problem right now is content volume and stability. Community players have flagged that the game runs thin after a few sessions, and bug density is still high enough to ruin individual runs through no fault of the player. The developer appears committed and responsive, which matters for Early Access longevity, but I have seen too many games in this exact bracket (fresh launch, solo dev, enthusiastic but overwhelmed support cadence) stall out before the roadmap fills in. Wildcard Studio is not a name anyone says anymore. Neither is Firewatch's multiplayer pitch. Buy in only if you have a reliable crew of three-plus who are explicitly fine with jank, and treat this as an investment in what it might become rather than what it is today.

Yuki · Scout Team

MMOs & live service

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