Moving Houses: A Game About Grief.

I can't stay here anymore.

Developer/Publisher: Gord Games

Platforms: Steam, Itch.io

Socials: Twitter | Bluesky

Price: $12.99

Spoilers

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This is riddle with spoilers and a reveal to the twist. If you’d like to read a review instead, click this rink right here:

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Spoilers

A Pain Hard To Move On From

Grief is a strong emotion that everyone will feel at least once in their life. Even if you don’t want to think about it, it lurks in the back of your mind as you see those you love grow older, go out for a drive or a party, or sometimes, whenever you think about how much you love someone. Death is inevitable, though the true tragedy is when it happens too early.

Two works’ where the central theme is grief I haven’t been able to forget are:

The first one is Handling The Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It’s a story about how one day in Stockholm, the deceased comes to life, and they only repeat certain actions they did when alive as they are only husks of their former selves. It follows a comedian who lost his wife the night before that event, a detective who lost his grandchild years ago, and a senior lady and her granddaughter who have a unique ability.

The other one is Spiritfarer by Thunder Lotus Games. While I didn’t personally beat this, as I watched my wife beat the game and only saw some parts, it’s the part that I saw that I haven’t been able to forget. In this game, Stella, who’s the Charon, helps spirits cross over to the other side. It’s during their onboarding process when they are first introduced, it’s when you’re first attached to them and before you know it, you come to understand their regrets in life and help them fill the void so they can cross in peace, and in some cases, they didn’t have a regret, just unsatisfied or worse, didn’t have a chance to commit those mistakes.

Death is inevitable, and so grief is natural. While many other great pieces explore grief, Moving Houses takes an abstract and deceiving approach by masking the theme with happy colors, comical tasks and physics, and a catchy outro song.

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Behind The Facade

As you play the game, there are a lot of comments made about being there before, having done these tasks already, family comments, and suspicious comments that make it seem like it isn’t the first time you’ve done this. There’s always a lurking feeling of sadness, of missing something that had once filled the whole household to the point that it’s hard to look at it that way again. This brings me to the theory of what Moving Houses is truly about.

Maternal Death

This interpretation is formed because of the emphasis created around the baby, your job, the hospital sequence, and the cemetery sequence. The game does a complete tone shift after doing the upstairs nursery and after entering the house, the player hears a baby crying. After going to the nursery, the lights shut off, and the veil is removed slightly.

“Is the nursery for a baby on the way? Or a baby on the way out?”

When the player goes into the basement, they end up in a corporate building’s workspace. While there’s no one in the area, the player can hear the phone ringing, an elevator beeping, and people talking and moving around. It’s a busy place, even if no one’s in it.

“Maybe you’re making more tasks because you can’t face the truth.”

After the office sequence comes the hospital sequence, where the player can hear a monitor beeping, people talking, and people moving around. In this desolate and dark hospital, there are a lot of loops the player can get lost in. There are two loops in this section, an unsolvable one which is by hospital rooms where you follow shining blood to no end.

And the hallway loop, where if progressed right, will have you walking into a hospital room that may have been an operating room, which I make this assumption because of the operating lamp to the side. The operating bed is covered in blood, and the trail of blood that is seen in the unending loop leads to the operating bed.

As this sequence comes after the office sequence, mixed with the loops by hospital rooms, it gives the impression of a person who was called from work because their wife had some complications, and the trail of blood and the bed being covered with blood, means that the following scene of the cemetery might mean the loss of both their partner and their child.

“You ever lie awake in the dark just there with your thoughts?”

In the cemetery, where you get to see images of a funeral as you enter it, the player is tasked to roam through ghost infested area and retrieve four items: A vase with flowers, a rocking chair, a picture of a happy couple, and a crib turned over.

The flowers, being one of the first things you pack, I believe represent the love that the you felt for both your partner and your child, and it is also a flower used for funerals.

The picture of the couple together represents the happy memories they shared.

The rocking chair represents the time they wished they could’ve shared, as its usually seen being used by older people.

And the knocked crib represents the lost of their baby.

After collecting all, you open a door to a mausoleum that has an urn in it, and as you reach it, you fall, and you end up back at the house. This whole sequence not only represents the events that took place before the game, but it also represents how you horrifyingly relive this event, over and over again. This is from the task following this sequence,

“I can’t believe you’re leaving. After all the things we’ve been through together.”

Your last task is to take the urn and leave the home, in the task you can read,

“You want to leave this? This is your home! You can’t leave here. Your memories are here. You are here. This place is you.”

And as you pick up the urn, your final task is to move on,

“GET OUT! YOU NEED ME. GET OUT! I NEED YOU!”

In which you finally move on from the grief you deeply feel that has locked you into an unending loop of depression and suffering. Losing your loved one, and your child, is a horrible thing and can create unimaginable pain in someone, but it comes to a point where you need to move on.

Someone who goes through this can be locked in a battle for years and years, not being able to move on, or in this case, move houses. The ending song has many lines regarding this theory, such as,

And,

But, you end up in the same place, continuing your battle with depression,

Moving Houses is about the unending suffering and depression of someone that lost those they loved the most, and as hard as they try to move on, they can’t.

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What Do You Think?

What did you think of my theory? Possible? Impossible? Thinking about picking up the game? And what do you think of Moving Houses’ approach at storytelling, where it doesn’t really tell you much unless you think about it? There’s also the theory that this is limbo, is that more valid?

Side Note

I did my best writing down the song, take a look. That took me a while, so I decided to post this jingle in here.

I’m all packed

It’s time to move away

This is never a place I could stay

The walls are clean

The carpet is so bear

I’m ready to go anywhere

I’m moving up

I’m moving on

I’m moving houses

And it is going great

I’m packing up

I’m packing in

There are more boxes

For me to pack away

Moving on

It’s great to leave this place

Never thought I could change my fate

The box is full

So neatly tucked away

All sticked up in the driveway

Moving houses

I’m moving houses

There are more boxes

There are more boxes

To pack away

Moving House (moving houses)

I’m moving houses (moving houses)

Moving houses (moving houses)

I’m moving houses (moving houses)

Gotta get away

Everything is put into its place

Things have always seem to go that way

This house has seen all that I have been through

Its walls and rooms seem to shift and move

I’m moving up

I’m moving on

I’m moving houses (the house is moving)

And I am feeling good

I’m packing up

I’m packing in

There are more boxes (there are more boxes)

For me to pack away

It’s not sad to finally leave this place

Scarred from the things I had to face

I’m done again, I can move on from here

Can’t escape these sinking fears because I’m

Moving houses (moving houses)

I’m moving houses (the house is moving)

That’s what the clock says (what the clock says)

I guess it’s my time

Moving houses (the house is moving)

I’m moving houses (the house is moving)

I didn’t want this (I didn’t want this)

But I don’t have a choice

The lights are off

It’s not my home

There’s no one else here (no one else here)

I just can’t seem to leave

I’m always here (I’m scared)

I’ve always been (always been)

There is no escape (no escape)

Always been here (always been)

Always been here