“To the left!” I shout to my partner, gesticulating wildly as we struggle to fit an L-shaped couch through a tight doorway. “No, not my left, your left!”
A well-timed fart sound toots out as our squat little avatars drunkenly wobble their way free of the door and begin heading for the truck, and with a cheer of relief we throw the heavy piece of furniture in the back. The ‘level complete’ screen appears. If only it were so easy in real life.
Unlike actually moving house, Moving Out wont’ destroy your closest friendships. It does the impossible – turning one of life’s most mundane tasks into a ton of fun.
This is Moving Out, the new cooperative, physics-based moving simulator from Australian-based SMG Studio, developers of Super One More Jump and Death Squared. Somewhat of a spiritual cousin to the much-loved Overcooked series, Moving Out sees you and up to three friends working together across more than 50 colourful, inventive levels.
These start off simple enough, tasking you with removing the furniture from a few modest houses and apartments, but quickly grow more ridiculous. An L-shaped house with a pool you must throw items across provides an early shake-up, but before long you’ll be tossing beds and couches down ski slopes, shuffling televisions across a crowded street in a cute homage to Frogger, and even jetting off into outer space. The developers have a wonderful grasp on the pacing here, introducing new wrinkles to levels quickly and consistently to keep players engaged across the game’s 6-10 hour run-time.
The quirky, hilarious writing and ’80s-chic presentation also play a large role in keeping things fresh. As one would expect from an Australian developer, everything is appropriately tongue-in-cheek; your characters are freshly minted F.A.R.T.s (Furniture Arrangement & Relocation Technicians, obviously), working for a blithely carefree robotic boss, with customisable skins including koalas, toasters and potted plants.
The art style is suitably cute and the graphics clean and simple, and the straight-out-of-the-80s soundtrack, created in partnership with Lenny Macaluso (of Transformers: The Movie fame) keeps things bopping happily along without overstaying its welcome or becoming grating over repeated level attempts.
Like other physics-based puzzle games (see: Untitled Goose Game, Human: Fall Flat, Gang Beasts, etc.) controls here are quite loose, more suggestive than precise. But that’s a key part of what makes these kinds of games fun; despite the occasional feeling that you’re fighting the controls rather than the actual challenges the game throws at you, you’re almost always having too much fun to care.
Moving Out is also supremely accessible; even players with no video game experience should be able to pick up the simple control scheme quickly and start playing. As in Overcooked, cooperation and communication are the true keys to success, whether that be working in sync to move heavy items down hallways and through doors, or tossing them from windows so others below can stack them in the truck. Unlockable skins, three tiers of medals, and optional challenges are also sure to keep you and the squad coming back for more.
While some may decry Moving Out for not being as frantic or challenging as other similar titles, I say well done. Where Overcooked proved far too hard to get my distinctly non-gamer partner interested and playing along for more than a few levels, Moving Out has kept them consistently engaged and wanting more.
If you’re looking for something purely fun to play with a friend or partner, or even your children, Moving Out is a fantastic place to start.
Moving Out is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Grab your copy here.
