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Easy Delivery Co. has left me blisteringly melancholic. For two days now I have felt an existential pit in my brain and gut that may or may not have affected my service as “your friendly neighborhood bartender.” I concluded my play-through at 5:21 am on a Thursday before I trudged off to work. I had spent the Wednesday morning before plodding and grinding my way through the later mid-game deliveries, making less than minimum wage as a gig-worker. By that point in my Easy Delivery Co. journey, I had taken on a sense of loneliness and sadness I can only imagine was the express intent of creator Sam C. By the time I got to work – my actual job – I was in shambles and had broken down in tears. As I set up the bar and dining room for breakfast service, I blasted the game’s soundtrack over my restaurant’s more than capable speaker system and just… soaked.

The soundtrack, brought to us by Sohaoying and pr0te, has much to do with my malaise. But it’s the setting, story, characters, and game-play loop of this gig-worker delivery simulator that has brought me to these weary and watery depths of introspection. And, I suppose, extrospection. The world in which we deliver our packages in Easy Delivery Co. is weighty and, perhaps, more than a little hostile. If you’ve never driven a mountain road in a blizzard in the middle of the night, you might just write this particular experience off as a semi-challenging in-game mechanic. For me, it transports my mind back to the many nights I drove home to the Colorado Front Range after a winter’s day in the mountains. The white-out conditions in Easy Delivery Co. transport me instantly and viscerally back to one particular late night drive over Wolf Creek Pass in a blizzard. Low on gas, visibility at all of ten feet, I did – eventually – make it, though I still have nightmares about that particular night. Easy Delivery Co. gifts players that exacting and particular brand of unease.

Sam C has foisted upon us an interactive essay, an explorable think-piece examining disappearing community ties, loneliness, our interaction with games as players, and the crushing gray weight of capitalism. With so much to say, you’d think the game would be a verbose experience. You’ll find it, however, to be quite the opposite. The shop-keeps who hand us our packages for delivery have a handful of dialogue lines that advance throughout your time on the mountain, but enough is left vague or opaque in such a way that you find you need to piece together the narrative on your own from snippets and bits which are drip-fed to you by your new community members.

You’ll find out very quickly during your time in Mountaintown – the game’s first area – that it seems you have become an interloper and a replacement figure for the highly beloved delivery driver who came before you. Remarks and apologies for mistaking you for this mysterious “Seb” character abound as you’re asked a few times – point blank – who, then, you are. Your cat shaped stand-in wears a grimace that betrays an unease soon felt in what many are describing as just “a cozy little delivery simulator.” Your guise as a new Seb – a new delivery person – at first seems to throw off the world’s inhabitants. But soon enough they start speaking to you as a welcome member of their community and lives.

We begin to unravel the inner workings of this desolate and hostile mountain community bit by bit. Fortino is hopelessly in love with Ellie who works at the bakery. Ellie is “crazy”. I won’t even begin to plumb the depths the discussion of the use of the word “crazy” could catapult us into. Fives and Sixo, who run the bars, are twins (could there possibly be a third?). The social dynamics start to snap into focus, and these shop-keeps become your actual-honest-to-gosh friends over your five to 10 hour play-through. And, as we make our deliveries, the community actually starts to come together around itself. We hear about community meet ups and the community members start to become more and more positive and optimistic. They talk about how much fun they had with each other. Fortino eventually talks to Ellie and they fall in love, “standing together all night”.

It’s curious, then, that while we grow near and dear to the people who run the businesses and serve the community of the mountain, we never meet the people we’re delivering the packages to. In the age of no-contact Uber Eats, those of us who work these types of jobs grow closer and closer together while those we service simply – and I hate to admit it – become the “other” in our mind. There’s a comradery in working these jobs. We speak a secret language that those on the outside can’t hope to understand. We bake your bread, stock your shelves, pump your gas, tend your bar, and pour your coffee. And deliver your packages. And we do so – most of us – willingly and with an attempt at grace. However, you’re not one of us. Unless you are, that is. We take care of each other. To many, or most, we’re just the NPCs in your life. And we can tell that’s how you think of us. Unless you don’t, that is. And we can tell that, too.

Easy Delivery Co. gives those not in the service or retail industries an opportunity to experience the behind-the-scenes of what makes communities tick on a day-to-day basis. But as soon as this particular community comes together, something happens. Easy Delivery Co. (the ficticious mega-corp, not the game itself) doesn’t seem to like this new found togetherness. There’s danger in community to the powers that be. We scare them. Our sheer number and volume scares the ever-living daylights out of them. They hinder our progress as a unit – often as a union – at every chance they get. They work outside the law, and they keep us in place. They tell us “you don’t need to form a union! We’re already a family!” They’re not one of us. We never forget that. And neither does Easy Delivery Co.

Slowly, one by one, the shop-keeps become “sick” as MK – our local tour guide – divulges instructions, step by step, on our trek to keep this community together. And alive. Therein lies the thesis and question that Easy Deliver Co. posits. To what length will we go to keep our community together? Will we continue to go along as corporations and governments mistreat us? What do we have the power to change? Would we – if our community was under threat of being wiped away – go to the lengths that Easy Delivery Co. asks of us? How much do we value those around us. I’ll tell you my answer. For those of us in service and retail jobs, we, sometimes, are all we have. We’re society’s NPCs. But we have that secret language. If we’re more than a means to an end for you, we make it known how we appreciate you. How we see you seeing us. If you’ve never thought about this… well, I’m at a loss, buddy.

Easy Delivery Co. ruined me. It also bolstered my spirit in ways a game hasn’t in a very long time. It’s message is important. It is equal parts timely and timeless. It asks the general public to spare a thought to the “NPCs” in their lives. It sees those of us who are the NPCs. And I’ll never forget or forgive it.

Easy Delivery Co. is an incredible experience that can be purchased here through Steam and more information can be found here. Give yourself the opportunity to be an NPC. Come see what it’s like.