Bike delivery sim Parcel Corps is delayed, but at least it’s funny

We’ve been remiss in our duty as guardians of extreme sports games. Parcel Corps is a light-hearted bike messenger sim set in a colorfully totalitarian regime where the police don’t want things delivered on time, or at all. Perhaps that’s why the game, which was supposed to launch on Steam tomorrow, has been delayed to an unspecified date. That’s okay, half the news stories we write seem to be about launch setbacks. At least the developers announced the delay in a humorous and thematically appropriate way.

The announcement of the delay includes the amusing use of a pamphlet reading “Sorry we missed you”, with the added text that the delay is due to developers “needing additional time to fine-tune everything for the best possible launch”.

I enjoy using the familiar flyer, even though in real life it drives me nuts when I see these things. (I was here, Evri no Hermes, you didn’t even knock!) It suits the style of the game, in which you ride around on a bike for one of three profit-hungry courier companies, earning a “modest wage” and performing tricks to outsmart the police and shorten your delivery times. There’s a demo on the Steam page, if that sounds like Jet-Set-Radio to you.

Developers Billy Goat Entertainment are based in Northern Ireland and previously made the satirical sci-fi adventure Her Majesty’s Spiffing. I have to admit to a slight tinge of bias here, as I too am a battered survivor of the Northern Irish wastes, and I feel nice and warm when professional game studios rise from the twisted bricks of Belfast. And even more so when things from our – ahem – idiosyncratic history in games. The police vehicles in Parcel Corps, for example, bear a strong resemblance to the militarized Tangi Land Rovers that officers here sometimes drive. Ah, home sweet home.