Moving Out: A Little Undercooked

Being published by the same studio, Team17, and sporting very similar aesthetics to the much beloved Overcooked and its sequel; Moving Out certainly had a lot more to live up too than most indie party games. At least it certainly did for the NoDLC team whose love for those games is well documented throughout this website. Sadly, the ingenious game design of Overcooked that found a way to constantly keep things fresh and really reward organisation amongst the chaos it throws at its players is sorely missing in this spiritual successor.

The buoyant visuals and hilarious character customisation options get things off to a great start as you boot up the game for the first time. A quick tutorial runs you through the basics; moving picking items up and throwing said items, before you're launched into the campaign. The campiagns premise is a simple one; you and up to three friends go from house to house and maniacally pack your truck with any furniture that isn't nailed down in as quick time as possible.

The games real problem is that this premise is entirely too simple and gets stale rather quickly. In each level, the only real decisions that need to be made are whether you do the big items first or last and apart from that the only obstacle to overcome is the purposefully awkward character movement. Overcooked's fun and challenge comes from a desperate attempt to coordinate all the different roles amongst your group in the face of well designed chaos. To make a burger in Overcooked your group had to make patty, fry the patty, cut the vegetables, put it together in the right order, wash a dish, put it on that dish and then serve it; all whilst having to do the same for one or two other dishes at the same time. Moving Out gives everyone one job to do and, as such, the gameplay gets quite dull rather quickly.

There's some fun to be had with the cute visuals and sheer absurdity of the movement but the repetitive nature of the gameplay makes Moving Out a game to be played in much shorter bursts than the hours of fun that Overcooked could provide.