Published by Team 17 Digital Limited, Moving Out is a game developed by SMG Studio and DEVM Games, an adorable moving simulator tests both your patience and your understanding of physics. You are tasked with helping the people of Packmore move out of their homes.

You are the newest member of the team, working for Smooth Moves Furniture Removalists. Your character is customisable, with new recruits joining the crew as the game progresses, allowing you to switch them out whenever you feel like it. Moving Out starts you off with a tutorial, teaching you all you need to successfully move someone out of their home. This is fairly basic, and quickly shows you how to pick things up and throw them aside, while also teaching you to jump and slap. Once you have completed the tutorial, you may now call yourself a Furniture Arrangement & Relocation Technician (Or F.A.R.T for short)

The character designs are remarkably like the style used in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, featuring that cute, cartoonish pixel art. Each character is unique: Cat Face, Toaster Head and Chicken Head to name a few. You can either walk on two legs or use a wheelchair, with the wheelchair offering an extra level of difficulty as you roll past the items you’re hired to move. Characters will also have extra-long arms, assumedly because they’re stretched from all the heavy lifting, and while this looks a little ridiculous, the whole game is, so it just adds to the insanity.

Moving Out has you driving your moving truck to different locations on the map, desperately avoiding other cars that are just asking to be run into. There isn’t a story, but after you complete your mission a new location opens up, and you can only proceed to the next house if you pack a home in the allotted time. Once a job is completed, you’ll unlock extra challenges, so you’ll find yourself jumping back to a previous location to see if you can beat your previous best score. Completing a house within the gold star mark unlocks an extra story via the VHS store, kind of like training videos, and if you complete the bonus objectives, you get tokens to use at the arcade.

This game was so much fun, but I dare say it’d be better to play with other people, featuring up to four-person multiplayer. The furniture you move is realistic to how it would be to move yourself; you can’t just lift a couch or bed. If you are on your own, you’d have to drag it, and this follows into the game as a single player. I had to drag all the heavy items myself, leaving all sorts of drag marks on the floor, but luckily, the Smooth Moves boss believes “that’s what insurance is for” and also “it was like that when we started.”

There are no ramifications for breaking things, in fact, sometimes the bonus challenges directly relate to breaking particular things. For example, one objective I had was to break all the windows of the house, which allowed me to then lob smaller items through the window, saving myself from going through the door every time.

The game offers a bird’s eye view of the house, with everything detailed in vibrant colours. Only certain items need to be put on the truck, and the game makes it incredibly easy to work this out by flashing an exclamation mark over the objects when you hit X. Other appliances have been left plugged in, so you need to yank them off the wall which was a lot of fun. The music is super upbeat and poppy, though I feel it is on a five-minute repeat as it gets repetitive very quickly.

As the game progresses the houses get a little bigger and more challenging, sometimes featuring ghosts that walk the halls. These creepers will chase you if they see you, and knock you out if they catch you. Don’t worry too much though, that’s what your slap is for. When you hear the music change to something a little more haunting, prepare your slapping hand, and then run the opposite direction once you’ve stunned them.

Moving Out is a game that anyone can enjoy. I would have loved to play with someone else, as it would make the game next level fun! I cannot recommend it enough. If, like me, you play alone, there is an assist mode where you can change some settings like enabling longer time limits, or having objects disappear once put on the truck. Without doing this, you’ll really need to plan what goes on the truck first, as not everything fits easily. Changing these settings helped me enjoy the game a lot more, but I feel multiplayer is definitely the way to go.

Written by: Jordy Lowe