This caused some waves in the indie scene last year, and I finally got around to starting it this weekend.
In Ronseal fashion, the game is about unpacking boxes of possessions and organising them in a variety of living spaces. Stack books on a table, find a desk for your laptop, arrange DVDs neatly on shelves, hide toiletries in cupboards, stash a yoga mat under the bed, pin polaroids on the wall, stick magnets to the fridge, and so on. It's got a lovely pixel art look which captures a pretty broad range of objects brilliantly, and while there's some basic requirements to finishing levels other than just emptying all of your moving boxes (when you have emptied all of the boxes, offending items will glow with a red highlight to tell you that they're not in a suitable spot), you're also given a certain degree of freedom about how you arrange things. This is possibly saying more about myself than the game, but there is definitely something very satisfying about how you can organise various possessions alongside each other into neat patterns, and how certain things snap together effortlessly in place provided they're suitable matches and there's enough space left.
Each level is introduced with nothing more than a year to tell you when this particular move is taking place, and when you finish it you then get a tiny little one-liner from the main character, but other than that you're not given any kind of direct contact or dialogue with them or anyone else. Despite this, the game manages to get its emotional hooks into you via some quite frankly incredible environmental storytelling. You learn about the character through their possessions, and that only deepens as you get familiar with ones that stick with them through multiple moves vs those that get left behind when there's less space. Then there's where they're moving to, which prompts you to ask who they're moving with and why - and though none of it is explicitly communicated, the game does a wonderful job in gently nudging you towards the story underpinning it. There are some really brilliant moments, that would sound so minor to talk about here in a flippant manner, yet I really feel like they should be experienced for yourselves.
Haven't even finished it yet, but do really, really like it.
In Ronseal fashion, the game is about unpacking boxes of possessions and organising them in a variety of living spaces. Stack books on a table, find a desk for your laptop, arrange DVDs neatly on shelves, hide toiletries in cupboards, stash a yoga mat under the bed, pin polaroids on the wall, stick magnets to the fridge, and so on. It's got a lovely pixel art look which captures a pretty broad range of objects brilliantly, and while there's some basic requirements to finishing levels other than just emptying all of your moving boxes (when you have emptied all of the boxes, offending items will glow with a red highlight to tell you that they're not in a suitable spot), you're also given a certain degree of freedom about how you arrange things. This is possibly saying more about myself than the game, but there is definitely something very satisfying about how you can organise various possessions alongside each other into neat patterns, and how certain things snap together effortlessly in place provided they're suitable matches and there's enough space left.
Each level is introduced with nothing more than a year to tell you when this particular move is taking place, and when you finish it you then get a tiny little one-liner from the main character, but other than that you're not given any kind of direct contact or dialogue with them or anyone else. Despite this, the game manages to get its emotional hooks into you via some quite frankly incredible environmental storytelling. You learn about the character through their possessions, and that only deepens as you get familiar with ones that stick with them through multiple moves vs those that get left behind when there's less space. Then there's where they're moving to, which prompts you to ask who they're moving with and why - and though none of it is explicitly communicated, the game does a wonderful job in gently nudging you towards the story underpinning it. There are some really brilliant moments, that would sound so minor to talk about here in a flippant manner, yet I really feel like they should be experienced for yourselves.
Haven't even finished it yet, but do really, really like it.
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