The words “I’m moving” can be stressful for parents, kids and pets but each move makes us reevaluate the meaning of attachments. What do you leave behind and what remains — that old picture frame, table lamp, basketball, box of marbles or those books. Moving in a way has to do about what’s holding you back. It also gives an opportunity to downsize, the Marie Kondo way, like in her best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which involves cutting down one’s possessions to the most cherished items.
Now imagine playing around this concept through a video game, which is what happens on Unpacking where you try to build up a story by going through someone’s stuff. In the game you are asking to take a person’s possessions out of the storage and place them onto shelves and inside wardrobes. The title’s a zen puzzler with a charming plot. It tells the story of a life over time through items bought between moves as the unseen main character grows up — moving from a childhood room to a university flat to shared spaces.
Available for PC, Switch and Xbox One, the title from Witch Beam has won game of the year at this year’s Australian Game Developers’ Awards. Behind the gaming company are Tim Dawson, Sanatana “Nat” Mishra and composer Jeff van Dyck.
The beauty of the game is that it tells the story of a life without a single word. In the first level — May 1997 — you are kid with your own room and twin bed, and then you move to January 2004... to what appears to be a college dormitory. The challenge is to find space to unpack things and place them in the right spaces. The years keep rolling by and along the way what you discover is a relatable story. You have limited spaces to unpack your things in and since there is no inventory list, what you discover in the boxes can be surprising. You can tell a person by the things that come in these boxes. You simply click on items and place them where you think it’s suitable in the room. As impressive as the plot and visuals are the sounds heard in the game — there are 14,000 different foley audio files to capture every possible combination.
Over a few hours the player rediscovers what it means to grow up. It’s the kind of game we can imagine Marie Kondo and millions around the globe could be playing to understand what we could have left behind.