KeyWe is a cute, co-operative postal puzzler which is developed by Stonewheat & Sons and published by Sold Out. You play as Jeff and Debra, two small kiwi birds working in a whimsical post office. With no hands to help them, they must jump, flap, peck and butt-slam their way across an interactive landscape of levers, bells and buttons to get those messages delivered on time.
Sitting down to play KeyWe, I first started playing solo and instantly I was thrown off. The controls felt confusing and awkward and I immediately summoned my missus to come and play with me. This is clearly a couch co-op game and boy does it excel at it. It’s all about working fast, but efficiently. As soon as the first level was completed together, we were hooked. We played it pretty much every night until we finished it.
Spread out across three seasons, beginning in the hot glorious summer months and ending in the cold snowy months of winter (here’s to a DLC of Spring levels, please, please!). The tasks quickly ramp up in difficulty, but also uniqueness. There are 4 different types of levels for you to tackle, but each time they come around there’s a completely different style and concept you are presented with – floods, powercuts, storms and bug infestations to name a few! Let’s talk about each type of level.
For the first one you will be typing messages on a telegraph machine. You are presented with words which you need to type out by doing a buttslam on the letter. As you progress this gets more tricky with teleporting keys and coded messages.
The second game is labelling and sending off crates. Each location is associated with a unique 4 digit “postcode” that you need to print, along with labelling whether the package is heavy, fragile, perishable or urgent. The packages labels get more cryptic and demanding as you go.
The third is putting together sentences with stickers in a ransom note fashion before sending them off by emu courier. Sometimes you will need to cut up a word sticker to make the word you need, such using the first half of BANG and second half of POKE to make BAKE (and vice versa for PONG). Expect to have to cut a lot of words in the harder levels!
The last type of level, which was my favourite, was the sorting office. Here you will have to move parcels as well as incoming and outgoing mail to the right mailboxes, located around the room. The parcel sorting may start simple, but it soon requires teamwork and wrapping skills to succeed.
Your performance is often based on how quickly you can finish the level. You receive a different amount of stamps awarded for bronze, silver and gold times. You won’t be getting gold the first time around, and will need to learn the layout of the level and best techniques to improve your time.
The stamps can then be used for cosmetics which help make your Kiwi more unique. You can give them a hat or a backpack – hey, you can even change your feather colours and cut. I am currently rocking the rainbow!
You also have levels called “Overtime Shifts” which are a different style of game-modes. For example, you have to beat a drum on time or throw snowballs at emus. They are as random as they sound, but fun as they’re completely different game modes to the traditional season levels.
One thing I think is great is that it has online play as well. So if you are stuck without a co-op buddy you can head online. So many great couch co-op games don’t have online play so it’s nice to see. However the missus had so much fun with it I never needed to go online!
Graphically it looks great and they really captured the world that you are in. There are animations as you go between seasons with cute cut scenes which really help the mood.
Conclusion
KeyWe has plenty to offer you with so many different styles of levels. It’s a brilliant co-op adventure and I enjoyed every level. It’s a challenge to get gold, but not to the point where it starts fights – we still had so much fun trying for it. If you’re looking for a new game to play co-op, look no further.
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This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
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