Moving Out interview: Blending real moving experiences with games

Everyone has had a bad or memorable moving experience and SMG Studio talks to Shacknews about how those experiences helped lead to the creation of Moving Out.

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Moving day can be hell in many different ways, but it wasn't until SMG Studio came along that a gaming developer thought to turn this idea into a video game. Sprinkling in elements of Overcooked and setting it into a different environment, SMG Studio joined forces with DevM Games to put together Moving Out. One of the game's latest major showcases was the recent PAX West show and the developers took some time out of their schedule to talk to Shacknews about what Moving Out is about.

"That's the thing about moving, everyone's mood is very relatable," studio founder Ashley Ringrose told Shacknews. "It's also universal. Everyone has a story or a moment, like 'I remember you're really bad at that.' So even just getting a bed through a door in the game, it was like, 'This happened to us!' That's what kind of attracted us to the game in itself, that theme of moving and putting a wholesome, fun, wacky spin on it just opens up a lot of interesting game mechanics, but also just interesting stories people play through."

Ringrose also discusses what it means to work with Unity, some stories of the game's development, unexpected glitches and bugs over the game's early days, and the importance of user testing. And of course, it wouldn't be a Shacknews interview if we didn't ask about Moving Out on Nintendo Switch. Ringrose talks about what it's meant to test on Nintendo's handheld hybrid console and how it's helped in developing the game's local multiplayer element.

Moving Out is set to release in 2020 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. For more interviews like this one, be sure to follow Shacknews and GamerHub.TV on YouTube. And if you want to learn more about Moving Out and what to expect from a gameplay perspective, be sure to check out our full hands-on preview from PAX West.

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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