GameWatcher went to Guadalindie 2026 in Málaga, Spain, and played Drunken Duck’s Underpacked! In this co-op game, two players take control of space cats tasked with delivering parcels in time, but what happens when alien menaces show up?
I didn’t know what to expect from Underpacked! when I sat down to play through a few levels with programmer Daniel Pascual Lopez, who guided me through the basics but left out the small specifics that only arise once things go wrong. Co-op “time management” games haven’t completely blown up like first-person “friendslop” titles, yet it’s hard to downplay the success of series like Overcooked. Bite-sized co-op fun that’s easy to grasp and quickly spirals out of control is an easy sell, and Drunken Duck is perfectly capturing that spirit.
The basic hook is simple: Two cats (wearing astronaut suits) are tasked with delivering packages to ships passing by and space houses floating in the void. Inside their ship, a number of contraptions allow them to paint the boxes with the right colours before shooting them with a comically large cannon. It all looks, sounds, and feels adequately goofy for the genre.
This, however, is the only the beginning. You can screw up the paint jobs or the timing of shots, as the ship doesn’t stop as more and more targets appear, but that’s the easiest the game will be. Soon enough, space invaders and creatures begin attacking the ship, so the workload doubles. Who’s on package-painting duties? Who’s reloading the same cannon with lethal ammo and shooting at the monsters in between deliveries? The controls and gameplay loop are simple, but remaining calm and consistently hitting your objectives isn’t.
Things get even wilder as new ship layouts are introduced. Transportation of parcels can be made easier with tubes, but maybe you’re separated from your shipmate and only have access to certain machines, or maybe you have to swap roles as the mean aliens are blasting the ship to pieces. It’s rough out there, even if the vibes always remain chirpy and zany with its cartoony (and uncluttered) audiovisual presentation. Needless to say, I began to struggle before the demo ended. It’s hard to combine the right paint colours while being shot at!
I was quite charmed by Underpacked! and kind of sad when my hands-on time ended as things were picking up. There’s a solid sense of progression through basic mechanics already in place, and even if I was left wondering how much variety the game can actually deliver, it was surprising to see so many neat ideas pop up over a short amount of time. The focus on two-player co-op is also an interesting decision, but one that allows for a tighter, more relentless loop.
Underpacked! doesn’t have a release date yet, but we know it’s coming to PC via Steam. Fortunately, there’s a little demo available right now, and you can find it here.
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