Follow the rules or be an agent of chaos in Tom the Postgirl.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Tom the Postgirl. On the surface it looks a lot like a simple delivery game in which Tom drops parcels off with their recipients, but by allowing you to mess with so many things in the environment you can actually cause as much trouble as you want. Whilst the game is very short, it’s also utterly charming in its own bizarre way.
You play as the titular Tom, who gets up one morning and gets a job delivering parcels. In each act you’ll be given a handful of packages and a map of where to take them, and so you set off to complete your task. If you want, you can complete your job as described, but you can also cause trouble for all the townspeople should you wish. Spy on people, mess with their homes and jobs, and just be an all around nuisance. Or do things by the book. I’m not going to judge you. The game might.
Each act has around five deliveries to make to a number of different areas within the environment. You head to each one on the map and can simply drop the package off. It’s often much more fun to watch what people are doing in their homes when they think no one’s looking. Tom the Postgirl is a really rather quirky game, so expect to see all sorts of oddities, from church raves to corpse-driven plant growth rituals. Sometimes you’re able to open people’s packages and see what they’re getting, which can have some entertaining consequences. If you just mainline it through the game, you’ll miss out on all the fun, so I’d encourage you to take the time to smell the flowers. Or step on them if you want.
If I had to liken this to something, it has the same zany energy as Thank Goodness You’re Here with its absurd caricatures of people and you being able to mess around with them just to see what happens.
It’s difficult to discuss Tom the Postgirl too much without spoiling things, simply because it’s a rather short game, clocking in at around ninety minutes for a single playthrough. There are multiple endings depending on how chaotic you are though, and it’s worth having a second playthrough to see what happens should you make different choices. The plot does get pretty bonkers towards the end though, so it’s worth reaching it just to see how off the rails things get.
The downside is of course the short length, which will put some people off. There’s also the slight issue of this being a very simplistic game. Once you’ve seen the silliest moments, you’ve kind of seen all it has to offer. I feel it’s worth another run through for all the alternative routes you can take, but I realise that won’t be for everyone.
With that said, the graphics are absolutely lovely, and opens the door to all kinds of wacky moments thanks to its absurdist art style. The art team have been very creative with how characters and their associated abodes are designed, and the limited colour palette makes those splashes of red stand out when your attention is demanded somewhere specific. Whilst there’s no voice acting — or dialogue at all in fact — the music and sound effects are great, with the former really standing out throughout.
Tom the Postgirl is a bizarre walking simulator with an almost Monty Python-esque sense of humour at times. Whilst the limited run time and repetitive nature of some of the gameplay elements may put off some, those who don’t mind a short game to play through in an evening will be in for more than few few belly laughs and moments of disbelief as this absurd world shows you all the ridiculous things the devs could think of. Deliver this one to your hard drive!
Tom the Postgirl is available now on PC.
