In Tom the Postgirl, delivering the mail is mostly an excuse to snoop on the neighbours. ARTE France and independent studio Oopsie Daisies have released the narrative adventure on PC and Mac via Steam and on Nintendo Switch, priced at €9.99, $9.99 or £8.99 or local equivalent. Steam players can also get 10% off for the first two weeks after release.
The game follows Tom, a mischievous postgirl whose delivery rounds always seem to go wrong, partly because she cannot resist peeking into people’s homes. Her village is full of residents with something to hide, and every window, door and crack in the wall is a chance to find out what they get up to once their parcels arrive. Among them are a narcissistic mayor, an orphanage that looks a lot like a dog kennel and a pair of chainsaw-wielding hippies.
The humans are not the only strange locals either. Drug-dealing pigeons hang around the cemetery, cowboy earthworms wander about and squirrels are in a bad mood. Players can stick to the delivery job or cause trouble instead, trampling hedges, crushing flowerbeds, stealing garden gnomes and generally sabotaging the village, all while Tom keeps up the image of a model postgirl.
Visually, the game uses frame-by-frame animation and hand-drawn backgrounds for a retro feel, with plenty of hiding spots from which to watch residents. The game is pitched as a mix of the naive look of children’s picture books and the raw, nonsensical strangeness of Adult Swim cartoons, sitting somewhere between the absurdity of Thank Goodness You’re Here! and the dark humour of Dumb Ways to Die.
Tom the Postgirl is the first game from Oopsie Daisies, a team of five longtime friends: Léa Coquoz (art direction and game design), Lorenz Kleiser (technical direction and game design), Kathleen Bohren and Natascha Dübi (animation) and Floris Demandt (sound direction). The studio says it aims to make games with a punk twist that explore childhood stories and slightly awkward memories, turning “oops” moments into adventures.
