Whenever I need a break from playing a 120-hour JRPG or a 40-hour Western RPG, I like to load up a simple game which I can mindlessly play to keep myself active, whilst not distracting me from the immersive story I’m mid-way through. I was kindly sent Beep! Beep! Deliveries last week to take a look at, a game which initially took the role of a simple ‘time-filler’ yet soon became a frustrating obsession of mine!

I’m a sucker for simple, yet addictive games, with Into the Dead 2 recently taking up a lot of my time due to its addictive progression mechanics and “just one more go” attitude. Beep! Beep! Deliveries is no different, I found myself literally playing the game until I fell asleep, only to awaken and find I was driving in circles or simply a dead(?) body being pushed around by other vehicles.

So, just what is this game and why should you give it a go despite possibly never having heard of it before today? Let’s find out…

The story in Beep! Beep! Deliveries is nice and simple, Pook, our protagonist, has visited his uncle Bub who owns a delivery company over on Dawn Island. He does this every summer so that he can help out and deliver the various parcels to the happy customers in exchange for money and ‘love’. However, as the customers get what they want, the Greedy King decides that he wants to make life hard for the citizens by placing obstructions and hazards in your way each time you try and deliver the next parcel.

That’s basically it, the more you deliver, the more difficult the next run gets as you try and deliver the physics-based precariously-stacked parcels upon your vehicle. It’s a simple game on paper yet it quickly turns into a frustrating and addictive game which you just can’t stop playing. Initially, the game is a walk in the park, off you go on your peddle bike as you deliver things to the near-by neighbours, getting a few coins or ‘love’ in exchange, as well as a smile on their face and the next order already lined up back at the depot.

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However, soon you’ll find yourself dodging traffic, avoiding explosive TNT barrels, ensuring the physics of your vehicle doesn’t cause the five-high stack of parcels to plummet to the ground, and swapping between unlocked vehicles in hopes of finding one you feel most comfortable with. Yeah, Beep! Beep! Deliveries is a simple game but it’s also strategic, almost a rogue-like, overly adorable and cute, and extremely fun and addictive to play!

Gameplay

I can sum up the entire game in one sentence, “deliver parcels without knocking into things and dropping them on the ground”. However, that doesn’t really emphasis the amount of pain you’ll go through in order to achieve your simple goal. As stated previously, you’ll get one of two rewards for successfully getting a package to its new owner; money or ‘love’. Money can be used to either unlock more parts of the city so that you can access new customers and ‘quests’, or you can buy new vehicles.

Each new vehicle allows you to carry more parcels, which sounds great. Who would stick with a two-parcel Forklift truck when you can have a seven-parcel truck? Me! Why? It’s much easier to balance two items on top of each other, and avoid getting hit in a smaller vehicle, than balancing two stacks of four and three and driving a bigger target! However, the more items you have, the longer your time is (oh yeah, you have a set time to deliver the items), so I often took more just to increase the time I had.

‘Love’ isn’t what you’re thinking. You don’t get a ‘cheeky’ reward for delivering the parcel, I imagine the love heart symbolises friendship or reputation. Once you reach whatever rep-level the game wants you to aim for, you unlock a new customer which could be on any of the town’s islands. This is why you’ll soon find you have to unlock all the various locations so you can travel between them all. In total there are 24 customers, each with multiple parcel requests – like six or seven (maybe more) each!

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Physics!

Physics play a major part in Beep! Beep! Deliveries – the whole point is you have to balance the parcels and deliver them without dropping any. However, the game gives you a rather big advantage over the way realistic physics work. Basically, despite how precariously things are stacked, nothing shall fall off your stack unless you either hit something, go up a hill too steep for your vehicle, drive too fast, or perform a handbrake too viciously. So, it’s a little bit easier than simply trying to obey the laws of physical 100% of the time.

That’s not to say it’s easy though – far from it! One tiny tap off another vehicle or a wandering ‘person’ and physics kick in as everything wobbles and collapses. Sure, if you’re in a van or a big vehicle, you may still have the chance to deliver a few items as they’ll remain on your back (only now they slide around). But, if you’re in a smaller vehicle, you may as well return and reset your deliveries. In a way, this makes the game a little unfair as a single hit on anything could render your entire delivery run useless, but on the flip side, if it was realistic physics all the time, you’d never get off the driveway!

As I stated previously though, the more you deliver, the more frantic the game gets. Initially, there’s like one person walking around and maybe two or three cars which rarely bump into you (as you can hit Triangle to honk your horn and freeze them for a second or two – it also honks out of your DS4 controller). However, before you know it you’ll have about 20+ cars driving around, giant metal soldiers waving hammers about, moving TNT barrels which blow up upon impact, a tonne of people on the sidewalks, and even giant snowballs hurling towards you.

At times, it felt like Frogger when I was dodging the cars just to deliver a Burger or Arcade Cabinet to a customer.

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Quests

Aside from performing your duties as the best deliveryman in the universe, you also take the time to help out the locals with their requests in order to keep them happy (and get some ‘love’ in exchange). These are unlocked gradually and include finding and returning three ghost kittens, returning a lost balloon, smashing a bunch of billboards, and collecting musical fungi. There’s a bunch more as well which aren’t too difficult but give you something else to do.

Thankfully, you don’t have to be delivering a parcel to complete these and the timer for the deliveries doesn’t automatically return you to the depot upon failure. So, you can freely drive around and complete these without worrying about someone bumping into you – other than the TNT barrels, they will literally blow up your vehicle.

For the trophy hunters out there, the quests all link to trophies you can earn, some of which are missable – so you’ll want to read through them first and try to meet the criteria. I know for a fact that I’ve missed out on a few trophies as I can no longer gain the X amount of deliveries in 10 days as I’m on day 138 in my current play – yeah, I’ve spent many, many hours in the game!

Technical

Visually, and even in terms of its music, Beep! Beep! Deliveries reminded me a lot of de Blob and de Blob 2. Everything is low-detailed and very colourful, yet it all looks very sharp and vibrant on the PS4. The music is almost jazz-like at times, bass and percussion-based at others, then spooky when the ghosts come in to steal your parcels at midnight (as there is a day-night cycle). It’s all very cartoony and cute, despite the frustrating gameplay aspect which will have you raging fairly often.

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I never encountered any bugs or glitches with the actual gameplay but I think some trophies haven’t popped for me when they should have, but I can’t be 100% sure on that as the trophies aren’t yet live so I can’t see if others have achieved what I can’t. Either way, I have to restart the game at some point for the trophy I mentioned above, so I’ll do a second run-through once I’ve done everything I can on this save.

The only other observation with the game is the simplicity in the animations. For example, cars don’t ‘turn’ the corner, they come to a corner and instantly face the other direction and continue driving – each NPC car is on a set path so you know when they’ll turn and not get caught by random movements. Which is another point I guess? Maybe the developer could introduce a new hardcore mode as DLC or something – make the NPC vehicles randomly decide which direction they’ll go when they reach a crossroads? It would certainly make the game a lot more difficult (even though I’m technically stuck at the moment as I’m finding the part I’m up to incredibly hard!).

My one ‘want’ for the game is for new towns/locations to deliver parcels in. Dawn Island is great and I love its citizens, but one or two new maps would greatly increase the replayability of the game (despite already spending about 10-15 hours or so on this one!

Official Trailer:



Final Conclusion:

Beep! Beep! Deliveries is a very addictive game which will entertain whilst simultaneously frustrate you immensely! Delivering parcels has never been so difficult, someone seriously needs to buy this boy a roofed van or some rope to tie the parcels down with! The more parcels you deliver, the harder the game gets, but you can’t win unless you deliver all the parcels – it’s a never-ending circle of frustration and satisfaction. Sure, the game can feel repetitive at times, but as it introduces new hazards and night-time events, it keeps the game fresh and very challenging.

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Don’t let the cute visuals deceive you, Beep! Beep! Deliveries is a brutal and frustrating physics-based game which will keep you occupied for hours if going for all the trophies.

A copy of the game was kindly provided for review purposes

Beep! Beep! Deliveries £9.99 8 Final Score 8.0/10

















The Good: - Very addictive

- Colourful and simplistic visuals wihich helps create a lot of charm and cuteness

- A good progression system in that the game scales its difficulty the more you deliver

- Good for short-burst gaming or longer sessions (if you don't mind getting frustrated)

- Uses the DS4 speaker! The Bad: - Only one island to drive around (although it does expand as you buy new areas)

- It can get very frustrating towards the later stages when the road is full of terrible drivers!

- Some people may see it as being repetitive as you're doing the same thing throughout, but I thought the extra hazards and obstacles changed the gameplay as you progressed PSN

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