Moving Out (2020)

Moving Out mimics the chaotic nature of Overcooked, but is way more forgiving for casuals. I found the par-time to be very generous and I only failed 3 maps with my friend.

Also like Overcooked, this game can either be a fun coop/parsec game or a relationship breaker. Luckily my friend and I are good cohorts so we're honest with each other if one of us screws up like throwing a fragile item or moving in the wrong direction.

I expected this game to be coop oriented and subpar in singleplayer. I also expected it to be rather casual.

But I've found this "Dual Mover Mode", which makes you control both characters at once with each stick (just like that "Brothers" game), and this made the game way more challenging and interesting for me.

Trying to master your hand coordination, while you try to pivot that L-shaped couch with both characters under your control feels interesting. Kida reminds me of how you control your character 's individual hands in "heavenly bodies".

And trying to completely multithread your brain and make both characters carry stuff from different rooms at the same time is even more challenging, yet it doesn't frustrate me. I don't aim for gold medals, but silver/bronze is quite doable this way.

Moving out seems like an interesting idea for a co-op game but it's executed poorly. The game is suspiciously similar to "Overcooked!" but it's made by a different studio. The striking resemblance is increased even by details like wheelchair characters and most importantly the level select lobby where you drive a vehicle around to pick a level. But unlike Overcooked Moving Out is a 100% brainless game. And that's the sole but major problem of this game.

In Overcooked you have to make various meals based on different recipes while being pushed by time and equipment limits whereas in Moving Out you just move all object from a house to the truck and that's it. There's literally no need to think since the game doesn't give you any other challenge nor it penalizes you for damaging properties. To compare the experience with some similar games, it's if Overcooked had just one recipe consisted of only one ingredient throughout the whole game.

This game may have nice artstyle, animations, interesting heavily sarcastic humour or good bootleg music but the game is one huge chore to play and it's repetitive since the very first level.

I’ve been doing an awful lot of work during this pandemic - in games. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Good Job, Landlord's Super, Night of the Consumers, and Moving Out to name a few. Just being able to do in an abstracted form what I currently can't, and perhaps won’t be able to again for a good while once the great(er) depression reality hits in earnest, is the most helpful balm.

Moving on from the morose lines my face is drawing, then, Moving Out is just about the most undiluted spoonful of fun this side of eternity. From its cartoon explosion aesthetic, the inventive levels, the emphasis on physics-based wanton destruction, the narrative that takes an absurd turn, the boppy music, the fun prodding at our reality with a late-capitalist boss and perfect, unflinching workers, being able to play a toaster that shoots toast constantly - what pandemic, I ask you?

Don't let this be an overlooked Overcooked, then. A publisher in common has never made more sense for any two (three) games. Both are fun, arcade abstractions of repetitive work where you have to find organisation in chaos to succeed. It's that experience of mind-melding - having initial shouting give in to silence as you wordlessly solve complex levels. That's the magic. The process of many minds becoming one for a common task. It's the perfect bonding exercise if your relationship can weather the initial discord!

You need a particularly cooperative co-op partner to hand. Mine repeatedly berated me in a roundabout way, referring to me by my in-game character, 'the egg.' He had a hail mary approach whenever timing was critical, constantly tried to solo two player items, and a bad instinct for how to get large items round corners other than shouting 'pivot!' every time. He was perfect!

Where Moving Out differs from Overcooked is in its greater simplicity and focus. There aren't (with a few exceptions) separate jobs to allocate. Just move the objects together efficiently. That's it. The same escalation of creative level design still occurs. Normal houses and kitchens give way to absurd gauntlets wherein barriers of fire and brimstone and acid and dubstep make moving from A to B just that little bit harder once you have the advantage of being mind melded on your side. It's less frustrating here than in the Overcooked games, though. Moving from A to B is always the focus, so placing more barriers feels a more natural evolution than in Overcooked where finding a team dynamic and taking on different roles feels like it's being detracted from.

So yes, of course there's a lot of talk about a lack of matchmaking in favour of remote play. It can be a buggy, inelegant solution and people just don't have (online) friends like they used to. I live with my girlfriend and that's my life. My one seamlessly made Swedish friend on Hunt Showdown unfriended me in a heartbreaking turn of events that deserves TV dramatisation. I much preferred GTFO's approach of Discord-facilitated matchmaking, but if you can put in the work, perhaps resorting to the forums, it's not the worst thing in the world. If you have friends, it's a whole different story. You need only have one copy between four, what I can only imagine as perfect teeth, always-smiling ahem people. Not a bad value proposition for the absolute winners out there. Winning again as they do!

It's short, but mercifully so. It feels just right. Exploring its gameplay limits through added complexities of gaps, conveyor belts, ghosts, fans, turntables, flames and crushers, and satisfyingly capping it off with one final hair-pullingly tricky gauntlet. A sigh of a relief. A hearty handshake in recognition of your now forever augmented friendship and you separate into the night (whilst still remaining indoors if you're in lockdown) whistling a happy tune. What's on Netflix?

Moving Out is the best bonding exercise since Overcooked, whilst being altogether more focused. Pure, brief, undiluted co-op joy if you have a friend to hand and unfortunately more of a bother otherwise. If work were this fun, I'd be moving out and never moving on.