Moving Out is game about the joy of chucking things out the window
Smashing.
It's EGX 2019 weekend! Over the next few days we'll be bringing you quickfire impressions of some of the highlights from the show floor here at London's ExCel centre. You'll find them all here - and if there's anything out there you want to bring to our attention let us know!
Forget about the environment, for a minute - and your wallet - and imagine how fun it would be to just break everything you have and throw it away. Armchair? Out the window. Desk lamp? Yeet! Chaise longue? Chaise gone. Off the roof, out the door, down the stairs, no matter. Just be rid of it. This is Moving Out, a chaotic Overcooked-alike about picking up furniture from a building and hucking it onto a removal van with naught but the clock to worry about.
Moving Out is very silly, but it is also genuinely good. The foundations are there, I think, for that kind of party game, extremely-let's-play-friendly kind of success. One to four of you can play, and as is always the case with these games, the more the merrier. There is a slap function and friendly fire is very much "On", so you will frequently stop a second just to stun your mates, because, well, I don't know - a bit like zapping someone in the back in Magicka, if you ever played it. But it's actually there to add a little bit more flavour to your obstacles: one level we played was a haunted house, complete with a garden ghost that's protecting a cardboard box and blocking a shortcut to a record time, until you distract or stun it out the way.
There's also a piano with teeth, on that level - someone needs to assign themselves the role of "piano bait" if you want to get past it - and several chairs that will gradually nudge themselves towards the edge of the removal van and flee, if you don't keep an eye on them. Another level's set on a farm, where you herd and chuck chickens and get caught up in some kind of slip-and-slide manure area where the pigs are held, making the already skaty controls even trickier (although, with extensive farmyard experience myself - don't ask - I can tell you that is the exact opposite of how manure works. But nevermind). There's a hipster office block with an annoying lift and obnoxiously heavy arcade cabinet, and a house with a turtle that will not stop getting in the way.
It needs a little polish - a little overworld, maybe, plus some tidying up of the physics here and there, and maybe a bit more of an impetus than the simple gold, silver, bronze medal system for the stopwatch - but then, the simplicity's also why it's great. You will be able to play it on Switch, of course, as well as Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, and it's coming some time in 2020.