Indie Delights: Rejuvenating with Smushi Come Home and Mail Time

So after about 120 hours or so I finally finished Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It was a fantastic game and there was a lot to love about it, but it was also very intense and afterwards I felt like I needed a change of pace, something that I could sit back and relax while playing. Luckily right around that time there was a Steam sale going on (or maybe it wasn't luck, isn't there pretty much always a big Steam sale going on?) so I grabbed two wholesome games that had been on my wishlist, Smushi Come Home and Mail Time. I believe these were both featured in the Wholesome Games Direct 2023, and charming 3rd person platforming games in a lush forest sounded right up my alley after traipsing around, above, and below Hyrule for so long! And coincidentally, they both featured mushroom protagonists! Okay, one is a mushroom, the other is a small person that wears a mushroom cap, but still!

Smushi Come Home

In Smushi Come Home you play as Smushi, a cute mushroom person that is carried away from his siblings by a bird and must now make his long journey back through the forest. You collect a few items along your way to assist you, such as a leaf glider and a needle you use as a sword to swipe vines away. The game has a gorgeous low poly art style that I adore, and I went into the options and turned the anti-aliasing down a bit to get a bit of a PS1-style jaggy edge look to everything. The forest is divided into several open areas, each with its own unique look to it, so everything keeps feeling fresh and new as you make your way home. Each area is open to explore around, and you'll need to solve minor puzzles, platforming obstacles, and cave exploration in order to progress to the next area. There are no enemies and you can't get hurt, but between the puzzles and platforming the game still feels like it provides a nice challenge. Plus there are a lot of collectibles, some of which improve your abilities, like a longer hang glider time, and some are just for fun but are really cool, like your mycology journal, where you are tasked with trying to discover all the various mushrooms that are growing in the forest. Each time you discover one, you'll gain it's entry in your journal. They are all real world mushrooms, so you'll get to learn a bit about each one from their journal entry, which I really enjoyed. I finished the game missing only one, grrr!

Mail Time

In Mail Time, you play a new mail scout out on their first day on the job. You'll start with one piece of mail to deliver, but this will quickly snowball into several mail delivering tasks as you talk to all of the charming residents of the area. Like Smushi Come Home, Mail Time is a third person low poly platformer. The world of Mail Time is much more condensed however, with one large area to explore. The majority of the game is simply talking to the town's inhabitants and carrying out missions, which most of the time will involve delivering something to someone else, but might also have you colleting certain items around the map. Luckily, all of the people you talk to are pretty delightful, have great designs, and are well written. By the time you come to the end of the game, you'll have gotten to learn a little bit about each person and help them in some way. This game also has a couple of collectibles to find, and you are able to finish the game before completing all of the objectives, though in a later patch they give you the option to go back into the game before the ending so you can complete everything later if you'd like.

Overall these two titles come highly recommended, and felt like just the thing I needed after my long journey of saving Hyrule again. If you're in the need for an indie game with a smaller time commitment but loaded with charm, I'll put links for the games' listings below.

Grab Smushi Come Home:
Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/smushi-come-home-switch/
On Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1740300/Smushi_Come_Home/

Grab Mail Time:
On Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1607240/Mail_Time/