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How Moving Out is bringing Overcooked-style fun to packing
Moving Out takes co-op mechanics from games like Overcooked to make operating a moving company as fun as messing around with your friends. We talk with the devs at SMG Studios to find out more.
Packing up your home and making a move is one of the most stressful parts of life. Making sure everything gets from one place to the other, undamaged, is a challenge that most moving companies, let alone regular people, can't handle.
That's the inspiration behind Moving Out, an Overcooked-style co-op adventure where you play the role of a new Furniture Arrangement and Relocation Technician (or F.A.R.T. for short) in a growing moving company. You'll need to move furniture, boxes, giraffes and other types of objects from one place to another to help people get on with their lives.
"I got this idea after helping a friend move," said game designer Jan Rigerl who partnered with SMG Studio to make Moving Out. "I was intrigued by some of the strategies used when you have to move. Like moving a couch around a hallway choke point or fitting multiple things into the elevator.".
From there, Rigerl prototyped what a game like this would look like and combined it with the idea that moving companies have poor reputations in most countries. The co-op prototype and moving frustrations came together to form the fun vibe of Moving Out.
"It's fun to make fun of something that can be a bad experience," Rigerl said. "It's really relatable, a lot of people have had bad experiences with moving companies. A moving company that I used broke half of my stuff and then disappeared with the truck for two hours."
Moving Out doesn't have a confirmed release date or list of platforms yet, although SMG Studio's last game, Death Squared, came to Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PS4, PC and mobile. The team are looking at a similar launch plan here
Making space in outer space
While Rigerl and SMG Studios don't have a solid narrative in place just yet, they do know the story will revolve around new moving company employees watching training tapes to get up to speed. "We wanted to create a scenario where anything was possible, like going into space or going in a creepy mansion," says SMG Studio founder Ashley Ringrose, who has around 10 additional people working on Moving Out. "We're trying to build a story with a framework that lets us do anything we want."
"It's about training for every scenario," he added. "Like moving stuff in an evil villain's lair, that may come up so you need to be prepared."
That sort of freedom, which was featured in the zany scenes of Moving Out's first trailer, gives Rigerl and the development team the ability to do whatever they want. "We start out in suburbia and we've got an Area-51-type level," Ringrose said. "There's a trajectory that fits all of the ideas we had. It lets us unlock new mechanics over time and it keeps the environments fresh."
That approach to narrative is similar to Rigerl's approach to game making. The Stockholm-based developer focuses on gameplay first, prototyping all sorts of mechanics and then testing them out to see what works and what doesn't. "I put a drivable forklift in the game," he said, "but we don't have any levels for that."
"We started with a kitchen sink build where we're adding as many mechanics as possible," Ringrose added. "Our mantra is to do more with less so we had to narrow things down."
Close to Overcooked, but not the same
© SMG Studios/Devm Games
More than an Overcooked clone
When Moving Out was first announced in the Kinda Funny Games Showcase in December, comparisons to Ghost Town Games were a dime a dozen. The top-down camera angle, similar character models and wacky co-op mechanics felt uncanny when compared to the arcade cooking madness of Overcooked.
"We definitely embrace the comparison, it's a shorthand reference for our game," Ringrose said. "We've taken inspiration from that and gone forward instead of just being a palette swap with what they have."
Rigerl says that he hadn't played Overcooked until after he built the prototype for Moving Out, but thought that it was a fantastic way to get people to communicate. He's happy that an audience exists for the type of wacky experience he's making.
Despite the similarities, there’s one major difference that makes each game feel completely different. Overcooked has plenty of moments filled with madness, but if you wanted to progress through the story you'd need to get your team together and coordinate. In Moving Out, mayhem is encouraged.
"Instead of losing points for breaking windows and furniture, you want people to embrace that type of gameplay, Ringrose said. "It's almost like a fantasy to throw things and do them as fast as you can. The main core is moving furniture from A to B, either the most efficient way or the most disastrous way."
Smashing windows and breaking other items in the house, or wherever you're moving from, is part of the story. Different levels have different types of goals, but the speediness needed in getting items loaded onto the truck is almost always there. "It was a gradual change, it's more fun to be reckless," Rigerl said. "One of the turning points was when everyone laughed when you threw something through the glass."
When Moving Out was first announced the internet loved the premise, thousands of people viewed and shared silly gifs and videos all over Twitter and Reddit. "It's an odd theme to have as a game, moving furniture," Rigerl said. "I've never really seen it before. It's an unusual premise that people gravitated toward because everyone has moved."
Moving Out’s release date and platforms are still TBC.
