Mail
Mole

Mail Mole (2021) is a running, jumping and tunnelling game where you play a mole delivering letters through a series of fantasy levels. It's like the Mario platform game, but with a greater focus on movement and flow than jumping on enemies.

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Play involves running through the underground, climbing walls and catapulting yourself through the skies. The jumping is particularly unusual as you have to hold the button down to burrow and then release it to jump, meaning that you need to plan ahead to get your jumps spot on.

Levels range in style from races to non-stop zooming to exploration challenges. You need to reach each area's Mailboxes, navigating pits, giant boulders, steep slopes, bouncing platforms and sharp spikes. At the end of each level, you are awarded points for the carrots, radishes and other items you have collected. This means that going back and replaying earlier levels to perfect them is a lot of fun. As you complete levels you open up more of the central Peaceful Plaza area. Here you meet villagers who have different missions for you. Fixing the power outages, for example, will grant you accessories and useful pieces of kit.

Mail Mole is a really good introduction to platform games. It combines traditional running and jumping with other movements that enable players to flow around levels almost as if they were flying.

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Mail Mole 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 5 months ago.