Totally Reliable Delivery (Service)
Today I am reviewing the free mobile version of Totally Reliable Delivery on IOS by Tiny Build LLC and We’re Five Games, which released April 1st, 2020. The game is officially posted as Totally Reliable Delivery but I’ve seen it with service attached hence that title of this review. I only played the mobile version, but the game is also available on PC and consoles.
Gameplay: I’ll be honest, it’s fairly straightforward. The game is what I’d call a “whacky physics delivery game” You play a character who works for a delivery service. You can control your character’s movement, ability to grab with left/right hand, ability to lift left/right arms, jump, and dive. In order to load packages into vehicles, you have to lift the package up after grabbing it, hence movement of arms. Occasionally you have to move a lever and grab it with a hand as well. There are delivery package machines that drop/spawn a package for you to deliver and a location to take the package to. Some delivery missions spawn vehicles but you can also find some on the street and you can load your package onto it. Examples of vehicles are pickup trucks, boats, and fork trucks. As you haul the package however you haul it, you may encounter obstacles or physics that delay your delivery or even damage the package. As I was driving down a road, a manhole cover flew up and blew my truck onto its side which also tossed the package down the street. I also rolled the vehicle often by turning, which definitely didn’t help my deliveries. There are also some other tools for fun, like I hit a red barrel and it tossed me into the air from an explosion. I also grabbed a fire extinguisher and flew up the side of a mountain of trash as it emptied its contents. As you complete deliveries you earn currency which you can buy different things in game.
Paywall: There isn’t much free here, so the paywall is mostly buying the game ($4.99) and the DLC (3 DLCS each $1.99). The free area is a small town and ten missions. You can buy the deluxe edition for $9.99 that has base game and the DLC packaged together. I didn’t purchase it, so I couldn’t confirm if there is much to pay for after if any.
Replayability: For free to play players, there’s very limited replayability here. If you buy the game and DLC, I imagine there would be a lot keeping players coming back. There’s also multiplayer if you have friends playing the game or you could join random games I believe. I didn’t test it though; free players are locked to either hosting games or joining friends. Can’t join a random player sadly.
Judgement: I have heard this game is very fun on consoles and I can imagine how it would be. On mobile however, I’m not a fan. I’m usually not a fan of whacky physics games in general, but I can understand their appeal. The controls on here however are awful. You have a left stick in the bottom left of the screen and limb control on bottom right. They aren’t responsive and usually as I was driving, the camera would start swinging around randomly and my joystick in the bottom left wouldn’t quite respond correctly. This made turning a vehicle that much harder and it was frustrating. Besides the controls, I also physically got stuck in package delivery slot a few times which was annoying. At least the game offers a respawn function, so you could break free, but it would spawn you a ways away, and also as free goes, this isn’t free. I would like to give it my seal, considering how graphically it looked good, it was relatively polished for an inexpensive game, but it just doesn’t meet the criteria in my book for approval. It doesn’t get my seal, however if you like physics games and have friends to play with, check this out on console or pc. A free to demo is still worth checking if it’s your type of game, but skip the mobile version.
Reviewed by Nomic on 4/9/2020. Thank you for reading my review. Disclaimer: My opinions are my own, I’m an unpaid third-party reviewer so I’m not bias in any way.