Deadly Delivery is great fun experienced with friends or online with others. Frantic, darkly funny, and bursting with exquisitely timed scares, it has many of the best elements that make VR so compelling.
You are a lowly goblin. But don’t worry. As the game’s eponymous Deadly Delivery Corp office morale poster loudly proclaims from its place on the wall of the virtual breakroom/multiplayer lobby, you can still be useful!
In your new role as “Delivery Goblin” you’ll spend your life (and many, many deaths) delivering parcels to ominous doorsteps buried in labyrinthine caves and dungeons. In return, you’ll earn gold for the company, fill your three-day quota, and survive to deliver again. It’s a dirty job, but you know the rest.
What is it?: An online co-op comedy horror game about delivering parcels into haunted mines.
Platforms: Meta Quest, Steam (reviewed on Quest 3S)
Release Date: Out now
Developer: Flat Head Studio
Publisher: Flat Head Studio, Creature Label
Price: $9.99
Gameplay Loop and Mechanics
We begin each session of Deadly Delivery in a sort of prep area where we can hang with our teammates, change outfits, gamble with the team’s communal pool of cash, buy items and cosmetics and tools, and choose a biome/dungeon to explore. From here we grab packages of various shapes, sizes and weights, and head out to make our deliveries.
The challenges and laughs come from the silly tools, physics-based mechanics, and absolute horrors that dwell in the dungeons. These range from environmental obstacles, perils, and traps, to the bloodthirsty living terrors that patrol the maze-like corridors. There are monstrous worms, haunted totems, spike pits, exploding skulls, a terrifying Krampus… It’s all quite scary, but retains a special comic softness that horror games are often lacking.
You’ll carry your chosen parcel to a doorstep, drop it on the mat, and ring the doorbell to complete the delivery. Sometimes this goes smoothly, and sometimes it doesn’t, but each successful delivery awards gold. Earn enough gold to fill the quota within three days, and you’ll proceed to the next biome/dungeon. But fail, and the corporation has no use for you. You know what that means.
It’s a brilliant premise that will feel familiar to those who have played games like Lethal Company, and like that silly/scary game, Deadly Delivery delivers both constant tension and foolish slapstick.
Controls and Polish
Deadly Delivery is a mechanically solid game. Grabbing, throwing, and manipulating objects feels direct and precise, and everything in-game is weighted and balanced with a logical physics engine. The tactility of toggling a flashlight or walkie-talkie, or fending off a monster, or climbing hand over hand up the rungs of a ladder, all feels great. Movement is tight and responsive, walk/run speeds are well-modulated, and plenty of options exist for comfort, view, and control.
The gameplay loop feels balanced and intelligently implemented. The learning curve is gradual and progression feels linear. All told, it’s a thoughtfully designed game.
Style and Atmosphere
Deadly Delivery’s visuals are similarly polished. The cel-shaded, comic-book graphics give the fantasy world a cartoony yet rich personality. Environments, characters, and objects look great at any distance, but up close they really shine with delightful detail.
Our home base and the biomes’ dungeons are all lovingly crafted. While the pre-game meeting rooms feel warm and safe, with comically sarcastic corporate messaging plastered on every wall, the dungeons and caves feel claustrophobic and frightful by contrast. Visibility in these spaces is limited, unless we’re carrying a flashlight or huddled by a fire, which helps to ground us in the experience and hone our attention. This makes the waiting terrors even more startling.
But you won’t need to have your cardiologist on standby. The game is certainly scary and startling, as mentioned, but we need to remember context. This isn’t a horror game in the hardcore sense. Its main objective is to make you laugh while you scream, and players expecting the blood-chilling experience of something like Resident Evil or The Exorcist may come away disappointed.
Deadly Delivery features plenty of comfort customization including:
Smooth turning and snap turning options with adjustable turn speed and vignetting, plus a sitting and standing option with adjustable height offset.
Social Dynamics
Deadly Delivery is absolutely best as a co-op experience, which is both a blessing and a curse. For those gamers with a solid roster of friends able and willing to plumb the mines, nothing but joy awaits. For those who find it tough to get friends together for a round of VR, and who may not want to join strangers in a public lobby (a viable option here), Deadly Delivery will be dead on arrival.
For those with a squad on call, however, we’re more golden than the game’s Fortnite-riffing unlockable banana suit. Teamwork makes the dream work, and Deadly Delivery does a fabulous job encouraging multiplayer antics. Anyone can do anything anytime, which is funny and chaotic, but there’s also enough intelligent design here to ensure that strategy actually matters. The most successful teams will work together to bring the most useful tools, carry the most expensive packages, and deliver the goods in the safest way. There’s light combat, and teams who fight together will do better, too.
If the game has a problem, it’s that the single-player experience is never going to be as fun as multiplayer. If you don’t have friends who play the game and you’re averse to gaming with strangers, Deadly Delivery will lose a lot of its charm.
Deadly Delivery – Final Verdict
Deadly Delivery is a clever, effective, and genuinely funny VR co-op that nails the feel of physical play in a spooky, comic world. Its controls and polish make the mechanical side of things feel just right, while its blend of fearful atmosphere and inherent silliness leads to sessions equally packed with legitimate screams and belly laughs.
Deadly Delivery is not designed for solo sessions played alone, and those looking for a pure horror experience may be let down by the game’s silliness. But for co-op gamers and those who enjoy their jump-scares served with a side of slapstick, Deadly Delivery delivers.
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