Flying Neko Delivery Review (Switch)

Delivery!

Flying Neko Delivery has you play as a cute feline witch named Onigiri. Onigiri is taking their final exam, and by final the school means last chance, which acts as the tutorial. After learning how to fly and deliver packages, Onigiri gets confirmation that they finally passed the exam, which unsurprisingly was for a delivery service. Onigiri is then given a last minute mentor for their apprenticeship and a house to stay in for the duration. The mentor, Taida, though doesn’t at all care about his apprentice and it shows as Taida won’t send you any letters until the very end. There is at least a silver lining as you will be able to keep this house once your apprenticeship is done.

And from there, you’ll be set free to deliver packages and to travel around on your handy dandy broom. Controlling Onigiri is simple, but is a hassle early on. You can accelerate Onigiri, which is needed to really fly, decelerate when you’re coming up on a location you want or need to be, you can jump if you need to climb up, but don’t exactly want to angle yourself to fly upward. All these aspects will consume your stamina and all you need to do to replenish it is to hang out by land for a couple seconds before zooming again. You can also go into hover mode while close to the ground to easily interact with buildings or gather forageables.

When I first started playing, I was having trouble controlling Onigiri. I just couldn’t get a hold of flying around and not crazily bumping into stuff or turning way sharper than I meant to or swinging the camera around wildly. And part of it is probably due to me not understanding how to go into hover mode (basically press the deceleration button while close to ground when you’re stopped). I personally toggled the option to reduce motion and that worked out for me.

There’s also other options to toggle, with some making the game easier like making stamina infinite or eliminating the need for money. I personally don’t recommend toggling infinite stamina or money-less mode until the end, but if you just want a chill game with no need for managing the few things you’re able to, then sure. I just felt it was a good way to have a goal and a reason to deliver packages to afford what you want. And a little challenge with having to manage stamina.

Anyway, onto the actual delivering packages. Once you fly over to a mail pickup spot, you can choose which package you want to deliver out of a couple. Some will be to specific people or just to a town, with the distance you need to travel and how much you’ll be paid right there as well. Usually, the more distance equals more money. Luckily, there isn’t any penalties for banging their packages against the ground or mountains or buildings and you’ll get paid once it gets dropped off. If it’s with a specific character, you’ll get to meet them and hear a line or two about their lives or interests (along with a heart to your friendship with them being added). Just don’t have any high expectations for these guys or you’ll get disappointed.

As you continue to go to other worlds, these packages will start to have timers and will weigh extra (which I feel makes you fly slower and tweak how Onigiri controls to simulate it being heavy). Delivering packages is pretty chill here, so if you’re looking for more of a challenge you might get disappointed.

Other than delivering packages there are a couple other things. For one, each world has their own set of forageables located in certain areas. Gathering these up will let you make them into various food or drinks that you can take along with you. You can also buy some drinks through vending machines that’s scattered around as well. What do these do? They alter how fast you can go for a certain amount of time, which can be helpful. There are also races within each area you can do and getting into the target time will give you money. The first one is pretty easy, but after that they do get harder.

What about all of the money you get? Well, for one, you can buy stuff from the shops. You can buy furniture to decorate your house in, more paints to customize the color of your new furniture, clothing (which is basically just different colors), and different broomsticks to ride on. You won’t have much variety early on, but as you venture into the different worlds you’ll have more variety as each world has their own item pool that they draw from. The other way you’ll be spending money is when you want to study something. As long as you have enough money, you can study subjects to help you out along the way. You’ll be able to study recipes for new forageables you’ll encounter, charms that will give effects like increasing your stamina, two spells, upgrades, and more importantly portal keys to unlock more worlds.

There are five total worlds and all look different and pretty. There was only one world I didn’t like and it was the second to last one where you’re high in the sky and only the tops of mountains are visible. This was mainly my least favorite as there is barely any ground to replenish stamina, with only some mountain top tips here and there enough to make a path between the major mountain tops. And well, this girl likes to take the quickest route and that mainly meant away from the paths.

While Flying Neko Delivery doesn’t necessarily have an ending, you will eventually get to the main goal of the game (apart from just doing all the achievements). That is, inching closer to owning that house and completing your apprenticeship. Your progress to owning your house is actually tied to evaluation achievements and as you complete them, your witch level increases. Evaluations basically are just a list of things you’ll do as you play, like delivering packages or picking up forageable resources. You don’t have to complete them all if you don’t want to, you actually just have to get to level 77, and you most likely will reach it as you’re in the last world.

Performance on the Switch is mainly good. Traveling through the overworld is good for the most part, only noticing stutters every now and then. Strangely enough, the main area I noticed lagging was when looking on and moving around the map.

Verdict

Flying Neko Delivery is definitely a game that is better playing yourself than watching someone play it. Actually, I didn’t know I would like it based on the gameplay, but I’m glad I took the chance. This game actually came at the perfect time, when I had to wait for appointments and travel so it was perfect to pass the time. As well as perfect to play just to chill and listen to podcasts or watching shows.

I’m still in the mindset that $15 is the price sweet spot, but if you want a chill game where you’re delivering mail, Flying Neko Delivery can scratch that itch. I just wouldn’t have too high of expectations going in as I can see some being disappointed with the character interactions (which I was a bit disappointed on myself) for example. Just expect a chill delivery game with some cute graphics.