Get Packed Developer Interview Talks Cats, Cardboard boxes, and Packing Chaos

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Get ready citizens of Ditchlington, it’s time to relocate and we got a chance to talk to the team behind co-op title Get Packed as the delivery van arrives later this year.on Stadia today.

Getting packed might sound like something of a chore, but this new slice of online co-op action from developer Moonshine Studios and publisher Coatsink looks set to make moving fun. Playing as a small family business, Get Packed plunges players into the shoes of the Last Ditch Removals team. An agency based in the town of Ditchlington, these cartoon spaghetti armed characters are all set to take on a series of physics-based removal jobs that might be as likely to break down your friendship as the flat-pack furniture squirreled away in your van.

Early Inspiration

Developer Moonshine Studios came up with the concept for Get Packed in 2017, the initial prototype had several influences and Moonshine Studios isn’t shy about this inspiration.

“One of the key influences was Overcooked, where it has this mad rush towards the end and everyone is trying to a cook and deliver as much food as possible in a particular time period. We were also drawn to games like Gang Beasts with their physics mayhem,” confirmed Dr. Marcus Gardner.

That’s not the entire story either. Early ideas for Get Packed revolved around a Tetris like packing mechanics that certainly still holds true here. Early indications and our first glimpse of Get Packed take clear visual cues from the likes of the Overcooked franchise, from the top-down camera to the bright cartoon vibe of Ditchlington town. The manic dash to complete a task and keep a group of people working together as a cohesive unit is all clear, and you’ll need to cram all the game’s residential goods into the limited space of your own removal van. However, don’t make the mistake of assuming Get Packed is Overcooked by another name.

 

Online Competition

While it’s easy to assume that Coatsink’s latest is instead a competitor to the upcoming Team 17, Moving Out, the two titles are each a different approach to household logistics. Get Packed tells its own tale. With a distinct narrative campaign, Get Packed starts our cardboard box heroes out in small-town jobs, shifting couches, lamps, and the assorted haberdashery that homeowners acquire when left to hoard.

“The game has an overarching plotline, where you start off as a budding small-time removal company. The idea is you start off doing these kind of normal jobs such as houses. Then, you start getting doing some bigger moves such as hauling out equipment and boxes from a warehouse, and odd jobs like a haunted house,” advises Marcus. “There’s even a game development studio and there as well.”

There’s more than just a narrative campaign in place too.

“There are also some other potential things in the works, and we also have a destruction mode. In this competitive option, you have to try and destroy as much stuff as possible and get as big as negative score as possible. As you level you can progress onto the next challenge and unlock different cosmetics for your characters. You can customize the characters a little bit, depending on the different challenges, scores, and grading you get on each job.”

 

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A Complicated Job

Of course, moving all that gear isn’t quite as simple as just clicking on a chandelier and chucking it in the moving van parked outside. Get packed is primarily a physics-based game that adds an extra element of problem-solving to the entire encounter. Across a total of four campaign stages, with more to come, and competitive modes the physics system expands well beyond three dimensions. Check out the trailers and you’ll find players contorting large objects through the front door or chucking boxes out a window but gravity is also on hand to keep you in check. Succeed and get called into a later level and forklift trucks are pretty much a necessity. It doesn’t end there. Some items appear to be more volatile than others and while you hurriedly load up the loot into a limited space there are extra tools at your disposal.

Marcus explained one of them that sound particularly helpful, or might just induce some sort of IKEA related flashbacks. “While there are some large objects that are more difficult to get out of the rooms, we also introduced a flat packing feature where you can fold down some larger objects. Just to add to the pressure, however, you’ll still have to try to get those items in the van before they spring back out their boxes.”

It’s the depth and detail of ideas around the gameplay that impresses when we chatted Get Packed with Moonshine. This is more than a fancy game of Tetris, from picking up and pushing around lampshades right down to the fuel that you need in a van. Despite a cartoon facade, the physics engine can require some serious grunt to get moving, one of many reasons Marcus told us this particular job is moving onto Stadia.

“Google’s Stadia has a number of different options that make it very good for our game. First of all, the game is mostly physics-based. Especially with the amount of physics that we have, it can require a lot of processing power. Not everyone has access to the kind of hardware available in high-end PCs. With Stadia, you can take advance of the processing power of Google’s platform and just stream it as long as players have a recommended minimum of 10Mbps or greater for 1080p or 35Mbps or greater To play in 4K resolution.”

That support for high-end processing in the cloud should, in theory, open up the availability of this game to a wide audience. Moonshine and Coatsink are particularly enamored by Stadia’s sharing features. Google’s Crowd Play, which will be added to Get Packed post-launch, should provide access to friends and fans of players in the game to simply hop in and pick up a job without having to ring around discord. While we’re not going to get too deep into the technicalities behind the Stadia community-focused tech, suffice to say it seems like an excellent fit.

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“With this being a relatively new platform, Stadia have been great helping both Coatsink and Moonshine,” states Jack Sanderson, PR Manager at publisher Coatsink. “We’re grateful to have that help as it’s such a new platform too. We have had support from google to make sure Get Packed runs as smooth as possible. ”

While we’re still waiting on the delivery van, we will let you know when we get hands-on with Get Packed. For now, check out the official Get Packed website and decide who is going to take the cat. Yes, you have to pack the cat. Prepare for the chaos that will ensue when you Get Packed on Google Stadia right now.

 

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