Unpacking captures the relaxing organization of the move, minus the cardboard clutter

I played the first handful of levels in Unpacking, a game about unpacking a character’s household items after a series of moves throughout his life, while my own life was wrapped in cardboard boxes stacked behind me.

Now, as I write this weeks later, I am unpacked in real life half a continent away. After days and days of wearing out box cutters, pushing furniture, and lugging empty cardboard into a monstrous growing pile in the garage, I’m so thankful that Unpacking the Game does to unpack the activity. Developers Wren Brier and Tim Dawson have managed to filter out the most aggravating, tedious and difficult parts of the Unpacking move, leaving only the relaxing parts where you put the items in exactly the right place, fold the empty box, and move on.

Unpacking is something of an organization simulator, where you visit a series of moments in life and unpack your items, placing each one in a sensible location in a room, apartment, or house, and keep going until all the boxes are ready. You will recognize some elements from one movement to another, such as sentimental childhood toys or favorite decorations that travel with the protagonist from one place to another. And there’s a lot of clever storytelling in Unpacking’s wordless narrative, as you examine the things someone felt important enough to bring from one move to the next, or make tough decisions about what to put and where when two people move together.

Appropriately, Unpacking was inspired by Dawson and Brier’s own experiences in doing exactly that. The two met at a game developer event years ago, got together at a later game developer event, and a year and a half later, Dawson moved in with Brier, which inadvertently triggered the project they would work on together. for the next few years.

“We were unpacking Tim’s things and I realized there was something of a game in this experience,” says Brier. “First of all, you can learn a lot about someone from the things they own. So here you have a storytelling mechanism through a kind of ambient storytelling. Then every time you finish unpacking everything into a box and empty it. , you unlock the box below.

“We were completing games between boxes. Tim and I have a lot of collectibles and things like that, so you take out some toys and then in another box, you will find the rest of the collection. So, you complete a game. I unlock things, complete sets, what they all felt like a game.

“Plus, I enjoy organizing things. I feel like there’s something very satisfying about it, and also something like a game about just creating order out of chaos. I feel like that’s what you do in a lot of games. Except this is taking it very literally. “.

Dawson adds: “I feel like I contributed a crucial role in that. I didn’t really label any of my boxes, so it was all surprising when it came out of the box. It’s like, ‘What’s in this box?’ When I open it, it’s fine. I didn’t guess. “

At the time, Dawson was working with Witch Beam on Assault Android Cactus, and Brier was taking a break from regular gigs to focus on freelance work. They used their first Unpacking prototype to apply to the non-profit game accelerator program Stugan, which helps independent developers work on their games in the Swedish forest for two months alongside others who also work on their games with advice. and the support of more experienced developers. When they finished the show and returned to Brisbane, a quick confluence of local events, funding opportunities, and the relaxing unboxing gifs of their game that went viral on Twitter suddenly gave their game unexpected support, both financially and from an interested audience. . By 2019, they were both working full time on Unpacking with the support of Witch Beam.

What was it about Unpacking that caught people’s attention? Brier suspects that part of this had something to do with eliminating the tedious parts of the act of unpacking boxes. There is no tape to tear, nothing heavy to lift. Each item fits perfectly in its place, and the game offers multiple reasonable and acceptable options for the location of each item. The most satisfying thing for me is that when a box is empty, clicking on it once automatically folds and fades into a nice animation.

“I think packing is really stressful and moving is really stressful,” says Brier. “Unpacking, I think it’s not that bad. Obviously, there are items that are tedious and at some point you just want to finish and you just want to relax and watch TV or something. But the good thing about unpacking is that you get to rediscover all your stuff, everything. what you care about.

“If you did a good job packing, hopefully you get rid of a lot of non-joyous things. A lot of things that you don’t need or that don’t make you feel very good anymore. So whatever comes out of the box is important. and precious and you can recontextualize all these elements in your life now in this new environment, and you can make this new environment your own, and there is something really powerful and really welcoming about that. That’s the kind of feeling we wanted to convey throughout the play “.

Dawson adds that he believes the narrative element of Unpacking helps support this. The items you unpack not only tell a story, but since the items belong to a specific character, there is no way to throw them away. Everything has a place somewhere, it’s just a matter of finding it and putting it there.

“That’s an ideal way to get around, right? Where everything that comes out of the box is an item that you want to keep and you definitely want to save somewhere … I think that automatically makes it more interesting and more enigmatic – like having to try to put everything in a closet. “

Brier and Dawson have earned an appreciation for the unpacking and organizing process through performing Unpacking, an accolade they hope their players will earn as well. Brier adds that she also wants Unpacking to encourage thinking and understanding of the ways a person’s belongings can tell their story.

“My grandmother passed away shortly before we started working on the game,” says Brier. “And a little before that, she and I went through this box of old things that actually belonged to her mother. It was photos, old certificates, and an old gold pocket watch. So, that was a family heirloom. It’s like these things tell me the story of the lives of people that I never knew or that I hardly know anything about, but it is all I have of them. Therefore, I think it is nice to look at the elements that surround us and see them as these memories of yourself. “

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @Patovalentino.