Deadline Delivery and Deep Snow Delivery are the past and present of videogames

I initially dismissed Deadline Delivery as a mere trifle. It is a time attack driving game in which you, a monkey, must deliver three parcels before a timer runs out. You must therefore make those deliveries without slowing down, throwing the parcels from your vehicle within designated glowing circles. If the timer does run out, your truck explodes, and the monkey goes spinning through the air. You'll need to repeat and refine each short track to earn the medals that unlock future tracks, but this is no chore. Restarts are instant and it feels great to experimentally boost and power-slides until you discover the perfect racing line to take you over ramps and around oncoming traffic and shave seconds off your time.

Crazy Taxi is an obvious reference point, but Deadline Delivery also reminds me of an earlier period in PC gaming, when these kinds of light and (whisper it) casual games seemed like an integral part of the nascent indie game scene. Flashbang Studios were the masters of this stuff, I think, with games like Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, Jetpack Brontosaurus, Minotaur China Shop and Time Donkey. (I swear I'm not making these up.) There was always an animal, always a physics simulation, and normally some sort of score to chase. Those games and games like them largely disappeared with the demise of the Unity browser plugin, and as slight arcade experiences transformed into free-to-play mobile games, but Deadline Delivery recreates their moreish appeal. The demo was enough to remind me that trifle is not to be dismissed.

If Deadline Delivery is Super Monkey Ball, Deep Snow Delivery is Death Stranding - albeit Death Stranding if Norman Reedus was a tank. Your deliveries here must be made by zig-zagging your rust bucket across dangerous terrain in a post-apocalyptic winter, while the packages visibly slide around and threaten to tumble free from your storage bucket at any moment.

The snow is littered with detritus that can be collected and brought to any of several available depots to sell, but the real money is made by taking specific delivery jobs between each of the stations. You can choose from several available jobs, or accept more than one as long as you can safely carry everything. Or, perhaps like me, you'll take too many jobs and have to carry one of the packages in the claw arm afixed to the front of your tank in lieu of a cannon.

I've taken on several jobs because I want to repair my tank, which had damaged treads and suspension from the moment I was given it. I've also already spent some money on upgrades, unlocking the ability to ping the world and briefly highlight packages and destinations on the HUD and marginally higher walls on my storage bucket.

I soon realise that I have made a series of terrible decisions. Deep Snow Delivery has a day-night cycle, but this is no ordinary videogame night. Here is what I see when the sun sets:

Nothing. I can see nothing.

I can ping to briefly locate the depot I'm trying to get to, and use that to discern whether I'm getting closer to it or further away, but I can't see any obstacles that might lie in my path. Earlier I drove over a single small box and even this minor collision was enough to send every parcel flying out of my trunk and damage several of them. With zero visibility, I'm likely to crash into the steel remnants of some long-ago collapsed bridge, or to tumble over a cliff and into a lake.

I inch forward a few treads at a time, and do collide with who-knows-what a couple of times, but I travel slowly enough that I never spill any of my packages. Eventually, I crest a hill (I assume) and find a little light. I've found my destination.

I deliver my cargo and make a better decision in how to spend my money this time by buying a torch for the front of the tank. When I leave the depot with new deliveries to make, it's still night time, but now the clouds have cleared.

Deep Snow Delivery is sometimes about making careful progress an inch at a time, but I still found it exciting in the way it drew out the tension and gratification of each delivery. It helps that I immediately love my little tank and I want to make it stronger. It helps more that, for however cold its world is, there seems to be real warmth to the characters you meet when making each delivery. If Girls' Last Tour is your idea of cosy, then this is for you.

Where Deadline Delivery feels in many ways like a game out of time (boom), Deep Snow Delivery and its slow grind are definitely an integral part of today's gaming landscape. Easy Delivery Co. was one of last year's biggest hits and it has a similar deliver-and-upgrade loop and snowbound aesthetic. Deep Snow Delivery is no copycat - it has been in development for a long while, and has an entirely different weight and tone - but there's clearly a trend here for experiences that mimic the rhythms of survival games without so much of the stress. You venture outwards, pushing into a lonely world, and then return home to tend and befriend. Then you do it again, and never need to to worry about sleep, food meters, or monsters.

The demo for Deadline Delivery remains live at the time of writing and the full game is out March 16th; the demo for Deep Snow Delivery also remains available, with a longer legacy of development builds available via Itch. The walls of my storage bucket are tall enough to contain love for both games - or so I tell myself. You'll have to make your own decision before you venture outwards into that lonely world once again.