ALL PACKED UP for Stadia Chris Wallace finds out how Stadia’s cloud-based development is helping to deliver Get Packed to market
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o one can move house at the moment, and the property market is in freefall, so it’s a little ironic that there are not one but two moving games coming out this year. One of those is Coatsink’s Get Packed, which is handily using Google’s cloud-based development kits to help elude some of the impact of coronavirus. Get Packed is a couch co-op title, developed by the Cornwall-based Moonshine Studios. The physics-based title in which players compete to load a removal van (while avoiding destroying everything in the process) is the developer’s first title, with the studio being founded by four Master’s students. The game began life as a Tetris-based packing removal game, inspired by the experiences of a team member who was currently moving house. However, as development progressed, more and more physics elements were introduced, ultimately resulting in the madcap destruction seen in the final product – The game could perhaps be best compared to Overcooked, with players attempting to work towards a common goal but ultimately undermined by ludicrous level design and their own communication failures. For a group of young graduates building up a game company, it can be difficult to attract the attention of the public, press and influencers – especially given that, unfortunately, the game is in direct competition with the similar-looking Moving Out from Team17. Thankfully, the Moonshine team has some backup – the marketing clout of a giant like Google. The game is one of Stadia’s ‘first on Stadia’ titles, a six-month exclusivity partnership that came about early in the platform’s life, as Coatsink PR manager Jack Sanderson explains.
48 | MCV/DEVELOP May 2020
