KeyWe is a very cute puzzle game starring mail birds out this August

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"KeyWe is a game about two kiwi birds who work at the post office." What more do you need?

I don't feel like I need to work very hard to explain the appeal of KeyWe, a game where you control kiwi birds at a remote post office. As I've established, if your game stars a bird I'm already interested, and mail birds? Double-sold.

In KeyWe, the kiwi birds are named Jeff and Debra (adorable!) and they've got a pretty tough job, running an entire post office by themselves. That job makes KeyWe a bit of a puzzle game, if you'd call Overcooked! a puzzle game—controlling the birds you have to hop around the post office, assembling word scraps into letters to mail out. This seems to escalate quickly, with complex word conveyor belts, storms, mosquito attacks, and a haunting. New Zealand seems weird.

"Our little heroes are going to face new challenges every level, and in every room of the post office, whether they're typing telegrams, or packaging shipping crates, or helping an octopus sort the mail—it's all in a day's work for Jeff and Debra," says developer Joel in KeyWe's segment during the E3 Future Games Show.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of a post office that employs both kiwis and an octopus, but it looks like a joyous place. And Joel ends with a strong closer: "You can dress up your kiwis." I will, Joel. I will.

As you may have gathered, KeyWe is a co-op game, so you'll want to find a Jeff to your Debra before the game comes out on August 31. You can learn more about it on Steam.

Wes Fenlon
Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).