This review will be spoilerific, because I just finished the game and I've got to talk to someone about it and my wife hasn't played it yet (though I loved it so much I bought a copy for them as soon as I'd finished it myself).
Unpacking has been on my radar for a while; when I first read reviews and watched the trailers, it seemed like my kind of game. I've moved house seven times in ten years, and my favourite part of the (otherwise exhausting) experience is holding each item in my hand, looking around, and finding a place for it in its new home. Unpacking seemed to be all the joy of moving without any of the heavy lifting.
What I didn't expect was that I'd cry so much. There are only a few "levels" in the game, but each one slowly unravels the story in such a brilliant way, and I’m going to talk about them individually here.
The game starts with the protagonist setting up her own bedroom for the first time. (Pronouns are never explicitly stated, but in my headcanon I use she/her.) Having shared a room with her sister for so long, it was so wonderful to have space that was entirely hers. I felt such a sense of pride as I carefully displayed every toy on the shelves, and pondered over the kinds of hobbies she appeared to be into.
Her next move was a big one: leaving her parents’ home and starting fresh before uni. Suddenly she had the challenge of managing her own space across several different rooms, and it was a joy to spread out her stuff. I filled her kitchen with the mismatched crockery and budget appliances she’d acquired. I picked drawers and shelves for where she might want to keep her makeup and tampons. I decorated the cracked walls with posters and art from her childhood. It was a beautiful time of life, and I was happy to see her finding herself.
Things changed pretty significantly with the next move: apparently she wanted to live with her tabletop RPG group and join their crowded sharehouse. It was full of big personalities and people with a wide variety of passions, and it was a challenge figuring out how to fit her into their pre-established space. Even though they’d made room for her by clearing out drawers and emptying shelves, I still didn't quite know where the boundaries were between them. For example, when I was pulling out her toothbrush I automatically put it in the cup with Housemate #1's, but then I noticed that Housemate #2 had left theirs' on the counter with a separate tube of toothpaste, so I awkwardly took mine back out and left it on the other side of the basin because I figured there must have been an unspoken rule about keeping bathroom stuff separate. It was masterful storytelling from an awkward time of life when space was merging and people were trying to figure out if and how they could cohabitate.
The next apartment the protagonist moved into was positively dripping with masculinity, and what’s worse is that the guy had made absolutely zero effort to accommodate her. At first I felt really uncomfortable having to move his underwear to a different drawer just so I had room for hers, but as I played on my discomfort turned to irritation as I had to keep making her smaller and smaller so she didn't take up too much of his space. It felt like the whole building was a shrine to his hobbies and interests, and I had to hide all of hers in the cupboards and under the bed (where I stashed her uni degree because there was literally no space to hang it).
And then I went to the next level and my heart sank: she was back in her childhood bedroom. Her parents had apparently turned it into a sewing room and I had to move a bunch of their stuff aside so I could move her meagre belongings back in after the breakup. It was a nostalgic mix of childhood and adulthood, a kind of anachronistic merging of past and present. I was sad that the relationship had broken down and that the protagonist must have been hurting (as indicated by hiding the photo of her and her previous partner in the cupboard), but mostly I felt the heaviness of her having to return to the home of her parents, once again squeezing into a room that no longer felt like hers.
It was such a profound joy to move to the next house: she had her own space again! A home entirely hers! I was struck by just how much room I had, and even though I spread out her belongings as much as I could, it still felt a little empty. I noted that she had a walking stick now, and it made me wonder if she had any disabilities or mobility issues (what glorious representation!). At one point my wife (my actual, real life wife) glanced at the screen while I was playing and asked if I was going to put those textas away. I told them quite tearfully that I had spent too much time hiding my passions, and I was finally free to express my creativity again and I wasn’t going to hide that for anybody. They patted me fondly as I kept playing, building my art studio with tears practically rolling down my face.
The next home surprised me: it was the same house, but there were piles of new boxes and a bunch of the stuff I had carefully placed had been moved aside to make extra room. Was someone moving in? Did the protagonist have a new partner??
As I began going through their boxes I realised that they were a girl and I was so excited. Could this be queer rep in this unexpectedly delightful indie game? I calmed myself: maybe they were just roommates. Yeah, sure, roommates. Roommates-who-shared-the-same-bed-and-merged-plush-toy-collections-omg. I lost my shit and sobbed openly for a long time before I could continue playing.
I loved that the new partner was addicted to houseplants. I loved that she bought bulk-packs of the same style of underwear. I loved how all the space was filled as they intertwined their lives (in a much healthier way than with the previous dropkick of a boyfriend). And most of all I loved that she hadn't moved a single box into the art space – that she had no intention of sharing that space because apparently she respected boundaries!! I wanted them to get married right away.
The next and final home got me absolutely bawling. From the very first room I noticed there were stairs leading out of the entrance hall. Wait, did they live in a two-storey house? As I cycled through the rooms, my jaw basically dropped open. TWO bathrooms? A WALK-IN WARDROBE? Was that... was that a nursery? Did they have a BABY? Again, I absolutely lost it crying. My guard had been so low, and I did not expect to be hit so hard with such beautiful queer representation. It took me a long time to recover from that one.
But how could they afford such an incredible house? The answer came when I was unpacking the art studio and I pulled out a massive drawing tablet. I burst into tears again as the realisation hit me - apparently the protagonist now had professional-grade equipment and had absolutely made it as an artist. As I unpacked the bookshelf, I realised that she was apparently an award-winning author of a children's book series based on the now-ragged plushie I'd carefully moved from house to house. I could not believe how blessed they were, and how the protagonist got such a perfect happy ending (at least in this snapshot of her life).
And all of this was drip-fed, one item, one box at a time. Every time I pulled something out it was another piece of the delightful puzzle that was taking shape. And there was so much charm in what went into each box! Little things like pulling out mismatched shoes, or finding appliances that had been packed in with the bathroom stuff was a delightful glimpse into the disorganised packing process of throwing the boxes together. It was such a joy to move the same precious books and souvenirs from house to house, and to find places of honour for each of them. And I built lots of treasured secrets into the homes, too. For instance, when the new roommate moved in, she brought a pair of walkie talkies with her in her "bedroom" box, and I smiled as I put one in each of their drawers so they'd be able to call each other as they lay in bed together at night. I handled each item with so much love and care, I’m sure that Marie Kondo would have been proud.
Throughout this review, I have done my best to write in the third person and past tense, and this was a real challenge for me. Due to the perspective of the game, you never catch a glimpse of the protagonist (apart from a few photos on the fridge), and so it felt like I was moving house, and all of those items belonged to me. More than that, it felt like I was going through the same life stages that she was – that I was just starting uni, settling into my first sharehouse, that I lived with a guy for several years before realising that he had never truly cared for me… I celebrated feeling that I was finally making it big as an artist, and that I had a beautiful baby on the way. And it touched me deeply.
I loved this game with all my heart, and I can't speak highly enough of it. The credits hit me with an absolutely heartwrenching song, and I cannot stop thinking about this experience and how it has shaped me. 5 stars.
