There is a theme to the BBC comedy that sounds like it is desperately trying to be sung by a faux Frank Sinatra. A whole one of you know I’m talking about the Lee Mack middle-of-the-road comedy, which is held up by his quick wit and impeccable timing. It is called Not Going Out (which is the name of the theme too). Every time I play Moving Out, I think of that theme song, and I’ve been playing quite a bit of Moving Out over the last two or so weeks.

I don’t think I should have to explain this, but it is a co-op-focused game about moving all the useless toot people want to take to their new house in the back of a van. It has to be done quickly, without breaking things, and without murder. The latter isn’t a game rule, it is just the one the police told me after I did it that one-time last Tuesday. Look, Kevin, if I tell you to take the TV and put it in the corner of the van, there is a good reason I don’t mean on the open corner of the van, and you knew full well that was the case.

It is also the only game where it makes sense to make reference to that one line you can easily quote from Friends. However, if you do that, I’ll probably smack you in the back of the head. “So it is all the stress of moving without actually doing that?” as I was asked when trying to get people to play with. Yes, kind of. That’s the first problem with it. Not that it is about moving, that’s actually quite fun and I’ll get to that in a second. However, the multiplayer aspect is very much based around couch co-op.

You can play online; However, that is its own mess to sort out when you don’t have a mountain of work you don’t want to ignore right now. Personally, I prefer the couch co-op thing over online play. I’m that vintage kind of old (and angry, huh Kevin?). However, as I speak, we’re currently in the midst of a pandemic. One of which some of us are experiencing the third lockdown, and others (the sane ones) are still pretending the first never lifted. I don’t want to play something that badly that I am willing to catch a deadly virus. I’m not stupid.

“Right, can you talk about the game now?” Yes, it is about moving TVs, beds, boxes, and other nonsense out of a house in a cartoon world. A world that is colorful and charming, but filled with several threats to your sanity. Rakes to smack you in the face, ghosts to chase you, and chickens that won’t stay still are just a few examples. A little “whacky,” as it were, and a little too much fun in brief moments. The latter of what seems like it thing I need to qualify greatly to make perfect sense.

A majority of my time playing Moving Out, I’ve ended up playing the “single-player” experience, which can have those brief moments of a fun experience. However, you can hear the literal lack of what makes a make like this fun: Shouting at other people to pick up the toaster and jump through the window. The frantic nature of two or more people shouting about a coffee table not fitting through the door, or a bed that is being pulled at the wrong angle through a door. That concept, no matter how much fun you might have alone, will always be missing.

Does that make it a bad game? Well, no, but it was a poorly timed release last April for some. It is the type of game that desperately requires that party or family feeling. Unless you already live with people, you’re kind of out of luck for that proper couch co-op thing. By that, I of course mean, teaching the younger ones to say the very strong language, as you call a table a very creative version of a male appendage.

Normally, a game like Moving Out won’t be (in any way) a fun single-player experience, but SMG Studio and Devm Games do something important with it. The overall conversation on accessibility in games is at an all-time high, something I and many others are very pleased about (even if Souls “fans” aren’t). Now, I’ve recently spoken for several rambling minutes about dyslexia-friendly fonts in games and how they are lovely and should be standard. I could go on about that, the UI scale, the subtitle background and scaling, and several other little bits of accessibility that make the game more inclusive, however, I won’t.

Instead, I want to talk about the ability to alter the game to your own experience as a player, so much so that you can remove things that might hinder parents or grandparents who might not play all too much. You can dramatically alter the allotted time, making it to the point where as a single person on several levels, I’d been able to get gold and platinum medals for my quickness. How? Well along with being able to alter the time, you can turn off the heavy objects requiring two people to lift them. It is such a tiny change, but as a single-player in Moving Out it makes the world of difference.

It doesn’t eliminate the weight entirely. You’ll still have trouble chucking a bed out of a window like you can a box, but it is movable. However, accessibility doesn’t stop there, as those with limited motion might not be able to hold down or press buttons. To counter that, you can toggle whether or not you are holding or toggling the throw button and/or grab buttons. Again, it is a single little change that someone like myself might not think of ever using. However, for a party game, something for a larger amount of people of different skill sets and understandings of games, it is a brilliant little feature.

Speaking of fantastic little features in Moving Out: characters are everything. When you are playing as yet another dull bloke with a jaw chiseled out of granite, games can get a bit boring. When is the last time you played as a character in a wheelchair? The Surge (1), Overcooked, and… That’s about it, isn’t it? There’s plenty of NPCs like Joker, Sir Hammerlock, Huey Emmerich, and Lester, but very few that you play as in games. Between cups of noodles, eggs, and disabled characters, the colorful cast is bound to make everyone happy at a party.

Moving Out is a fantastic little off-shoot off the Overcooked-style of game in the furniture-removing vein, with a ‘moving in’ mode that is just as hectic. Trying to pull a bed out the front door is hard enough. Pushing it back in is loud, shouty, and very very sweary, as you knock over the couch that someone put in before you got the bed in. All that said, the game is fun when you’re with people and can be moderately fun alone, if you’re into that. I’ve called too many ghosts creative phrases: Calling them some form of racist or misogynistic as I play as women and people of color.

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Moving Out

$24.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Marvellous accessibility in several ways.
• Fantastic colorful and accessible art direction.
• All the frustration of moving a bed out a house with out actually moving.

Cons

• A lack of native online play.
• You might teacher young children strong swear words.