One Move Away Review

One Move Away is a first-person packing simulator game developed by Ramage Games and published by Playstack. As someone who is… well, rather disorganised when it comes to both videogames and life, what better way to clean up my act than by shoving everything I don’t need into a box? Let's hope all those years of playing Tetris help in putting away all this junk.

In One Move Away, you’ll be experiencing snippets of the lives of three people as they pack up their stuff and move on with their lives. Nothing is ever told to you outright, but the key to figuring out what they’re going through right then is by the level and the types of items you need to put away. Maybe it's as simple as moving to a new place, bringing as many keepsakes as you can. Or maybe it's a little more of a sad affair. It’s basically Unpacking but with 3D models… and you are putting away stuff instead of taking it out of boxes. Yeah, that comparison ran away from me a little.

Though, speaking of 3D, I have to admit that the game has some rather pretty environments and objects. You're often not given much room to explore around the places you visit, but they’re all lovingly detailed. It almost looks like paintings at times, whether you’re in the countryside or in the middle of the city.

But enough about that; let’s start getting your entire life put away! The controls are fairly simple to grasp: You can pick up and drop, rotate, push or pull away, and even poke objects in order to pack away even the largest of things. Some items can even be manipulated to make them fit a little nicer. However, I would’ve loved to have a jump, even a small hop, to get some height. I found it pretty funny that your tutorial is played from the perspective of a baby, which actually makes sense.

It is physics-based, so be careful when putting stuff down. You never know when all your hard work will start flying around. Luckily, there is an Undo button to reset your things back in their previous positions, so your precarious stack of random objects will remain… until you start driving.

The game doesn’t care about how you pack everything in; as long as the door/flap/whatever closes, it’s considered good enough. Though, there are some levels that require a little more to be considered done, like making sure your stuff doesn’t fall off during transport. There are also bonus objectives challenging you to be a little more thoughtful with your packing, like adding extra items or making sure certain objects are placed in a particular way. If you want all three stars that are available, you’ll need to become a master of packing.

It's pretty fun trying to fulfil all these objectives, as it really makes you think about how each item should be placed (though, with the way I pack, everything would be crushed). However, in one level the game didn’t give me the credit for completing a bonus objective despite clearly doing so.

And that’s pretty much it about One Move Away. I have nothing to say about the framerate as it ran perfectly at 60 FPS, and the only glitches I ran into were just a few flickering textures and the usual physics foibles. If you’re looking to pack stuff away but don’t want to touch your own things IRL, this might be the game for you. It’s a peaceful, cosy game that will make you think outside the box… to put more stuff in it.