Leaves'

Blog

Moving

House

s: A Retrospective

is cute.

 I could probably end the blog post here, frankly. It captures my thoughts on the game in a much nicer way than anything I can come up with when I try to write things out. Moving

House

s isn't a critical or commercial hit, it isn't an indie darling, I'm not sure if it's even a cult classic beloved by a small but very dedicated fanbase. I don't think anyone reading this has even heard of it outside of... people who have seen me talk about it. I don't really know if anyone cares about it right now outside of its developer!
And me, I guess.

 I'm prefacing this blog post like that because I feel my thoughts on the game will seem - or, I guess are - mostly negative, but I don't want to just harp on someone's work when it was clearly made to help deal with a traumatic event in their life. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that it is also an artwork that I have thoughts about, and that my experience of it is my own. By talking and thinking of it, I make it mine, in a way.
I've seen that most, if not all, of the negative reviews talking about this game mostly focused on the fact that it's short and it cost so much and I have no interest in doing that. I don't really care for that here.

I didn't really think it was bad. It was cute. It made me chuckle a few times. I'm glad it helped its developer through tough times.

This isn't about what it is. This is about what I wish it were. For me.





 I first played Moving

House

s in late 2024, a little after the game's release. I didn't know much about it outside of the fact that it took place in a and it was inspired by

House

of Leaves (or rather, I had seen a picture on social media posted by the creator which included a sneaky feature of the book's cover), so I was legally obligated to play it.
The gist of it is simple: you're moving s so you gotta pack up everything from your old home into your truck. You go from room to room, putting things in boxes and then putting the boxes in the truck - and sometimes the things are too big to be put in a box so you just have to carry it by itself.

 Which room you go to in what order is dictated by the current objective, alongside... dialogue, I guess? Fourth wall-breaking "witty" narrator? I'll be honest from the get-go, the way things are written in this game isn't my cup of tea.

 It's trying really hard to be a mix of fun, light-hearted and ominous. And the ominous comes through on the second objective which feels a little early. Not that it's trying to hide the fact it's a horror game. In fact, Moving

House

s is really eager to be a horror game. It wants to be a horror game so bad! It's so spooky! It's slow-burn horror is all! I mean, the moment you enter the , some paintings fall to the floor with a small horror sting and you hear a heartbeat sound effect to indicate that this was, in fact, designated scary time, but it's slow-burn horror.

This is perhaps the thing that frustrates me most about this game. It's a cozy game. It's a cozy game that wants to be scary. But it wants to stay a cozy game! Fun for the whole family. It feels like the words 'family-friendly' tried to put on a Halloween costume. It's... cute, in its basic attempts to scare you.

 There's something really funny about it, actually. The first time I played this game, I was on high alert because I was truly expecting some grade-A trickery. Some My

House

.wad type shit. Top of the class mindfucks. I was stressed out.
...So even the game's small scares got to me! I saw the falling objects, I saw the furniture changing slightly, the inside of the gaining a few rooms, and thought "if this is how it's going, I'm scared to see where it'll end up!"

I realized that my expectations were completely different from what the game was attempting when the ghosts started popping up.



 You see these ghosts- actually,
you know what,
maybe it was the baby jumpscare.



...Or the real-estate agent jumpscare? Let's put that on the screen right now, maybe I'm misremembering.



Okay, you know what, nevermind, that is terrifying. The ing market scares me like nothing else.

 Anyways, the ghosts represent to me a turning point in the game's "horror". It's a completely meaningless turning point for anyone that isn't me, but it matters to me and it's my blog post. So.
The horror of the game turns away from the to go into pretty regular supernatural/psychological horror stuff. Which is fine. Grieving, missing someone, represented as a ghost that eternally haunts you, a figure that you only catch glimpses of, a specter that disappears the moment you focus your gaze on it. Always present but never where you're looking. It works.
And then the is your grief. A creation of your own making. Something you eternally come back to because you just can't let go. Right? I get it! It does work.

 No, what's most tragic to me, I think, is the fact that the home you keep trying to leave... is barely characterized. There's an attempt, towards the end, the one time where the does something in front of your eyes, the one thing that got me stressing out on my second playthrough.



 There, it speaks to you directly, asks of you so much, there it begs and cries out and holds out its arms, there it grips you by the hand and tries to make sure you can't leave. You do, of course, you get in your truck and you drive off and you... come back anyways, because you can never truly leave, I suppose. But... no. There's something there, right? I can't be the only who sees it. Misses it. Wants for more.

 Maybe the is grief or something, but I want it to be... someone. Can't I talk to it? Can't it talk to me? Can't I stay with it? Isn't it someone? It begs like someone. What if it was someone? What if it was someone you could love. What if it was someone you could make love with. What if you could fuck the .
Would you? Would you, if you truly loved her?
Is that what I'm truly in need of? A work from someone who would fuck the ? A work from a pervert such as myself? Do you think this makes me a pervert? Have you considered it? Are you considering it now? It's always things that aren't the , in the end. It's always a ghost, or a demon, or whatever. It's never her. Why can't it be her? Why can't it be me? Why can't I be the ?

What if I was the ?

 Consider it again. What would it take for you to? For you to love the this much? Can you even love a in that way? But she clearly loves you so. Right? She loves you so much. Look at her beg. Look at her cry out. The hallways getting longer. Ceilings growing taller. Staircases wrapping around themselves. Twisting into knots. So what if she can talk to you, as the game lets her? Maybe it should let you talk back.

What would you say, then?

Thoughts on Moving

House

s

  I recently replayed through . As described by Gord Little, its creator, it's a cozy horror game. Whatever that means.
The game caught my eye because of its obvious

House

of Leaves inspirations. If for some confusing reason you didn't know, first of all, who the hell are you? And second of all, it's my favourite novel. Maybe the most influential work on my life. I named myself after it, so I guess that makes competition tough, but still. I find it a little funny in retrospect that this game leans more on the cozy side than the horror, considering how un-cozy the novel is, but I digress. It takes after those games where you perform very mundane, repetitive tasks in an attempt to bring order in a world full of chaos for a few inconsequential moments. You know, powerwashing, cutting the lawn, chores and busywork.

 I've never really been interested in those games... I don't know, I guess they never feel as satisfying as they should be, and I always have better ways to 'tism out, so I just don't see the point in those. But here, it's different! There's a scary, potentially living in there, so to hell with my preferences, I had to try it.



 The building in question is pretty typical for these kinds of works. Classic USAmerican suburban hold, the type I'd always see on TV growing up but rarely ever got to be in myself. With me not being USAmerican and all. It is funny how this is what comes to mind, now, when I imagine a . Probably because of the novel. This is the modern haunted , following in the footsteps of the classic manor, but a little more personal. Except not actually that much more personal. I've never lived in the suburbs. I couldn't care less for these things.

 Perhaps these have become a classic of the modern living horror media because they feel so... hostile? Disconnected from the world? It's what you see on TV. Maybe for USAmericans, it makes sense to make them literally hostile, because they've got a lot to say about American Suburbia, but to me... it's not real. It's just a thing on the screen. It feels fake, when I see them in real life. Like I'm on a movie set.

I wonder if that's how people see me too.



 Eventually, inevitably, the shifts. A new bedroom, a new floor, a basement, an office, a hospital, a graveyard. The game kind of lost me when it turned into an office. I just wanted to be with the . I think we should go back now. She misses you. Don't you want to be with her again, too?



What? What are you looking at me like that for? Dangerous? She isn't dangerous. She's the nicest building in the world. She could be a friend. She could be a lover. She could be a home.

Maybe not your home. Just a home. A place you can stay in, for just a little longer. Somewhere to rest. Somewhere to feel safe in. Somewhere to be with, with others you care for. Why not stay for a little longer? A little longer. A little longer. A little longer. Please.

Please.



I promise she isn't rotten. Just a little broken. Foundations built a little wrong, maybe. Cracks in the roof. Rats in the walls. Blood in the carpet. Every has a bit of that, right?

Floorboards creaking. Bath, sinks, toilets, overflowing. Crying. Someone else will move in, she thinks. Surely. If not you, someone else.

But you never truly left. Some furniture stayed, forgotten or gifted. New walls built, others torn down. Loving damage marks the paint and the wood and the sofa and the beds. Scratch marks, chipped bits, some more painful, some more pleasant, all proof of past life that occupied those halls.
But it's empty now. Those who did this have packed up and left. Perhaps they were never meaning to stay there for long. Perhaps they thought it would look different. Perhaps they just got tired of living with a that thinks. That loves. That hurts.

Some of it will fade away. Some will become a permanent addition. Perhaps she'll never get over it in cases. Maybe that's for the best. Maybe she doesn't want to forget.

Moving

House

s and Cozy Games

  I find myself to be repelled by the cozy game genre - or rather, repelled by "cozy game" as a genre. Video game genres are already fickle at best, with some describing mechanics (shooter, platformer, ect.) while others focus only on a setting or 'vibe' (space, fantasy, horror). "Cozy" definitely fits snuggly in that latter definition, the vibiest of all genres.
What makes something cozy? To you, perhaps it is doing a reptitive task in a friendly, "inoffensive" environment, full of bright, warm colours, soft edges and nothing but smiles. But what if I find gore to be cozy? I certainly do, in a lot of cases. Writing gore, or watching something with gore in it - I squirm, yes, but it is a pleasant squirm, for it makes me feel alive.

 And what of resting after a long, awful day? Sure, the resting part is what brings the cozy feeling, but cozy games I find completely miss the mark by making the entire experience focused on that part. It would not be cozy, if I spent the whole day resting, the whole week, the whole month. It would be depressive. I would be depressed. It is cozy because I struggled hard before that moment of warmth. It is cozy because I worked for it. Sweat for it. Bled for it.

 Perhaps that is part of the reason why misses the mark for me. It attempts to be both a cozy game, and a horror game. This is an interesting premise - indeed one can find many a moments in countless horror games that would qualify as "cozy", with stumbling into a comfortable, safe resting area after having faced undescribable horrors being one of the first that comes to mind.



 But Moving

House

s does not do that. It starts off as a cozy game, and slowly (or not so slowly) turns into a horror game. Like a sort of trick, maybe, except I'm fairly certain every person that played this game knew the trick was coming. Because it's all over the marketing of the game. And also all over the game itself. It's not a trick that works now, or that has ever really worked, because to pull players in, these kinds of games have to show off some of the cards to potential customers. Y'know. So they can get money.
Of course, this game also genuinely wants to be a cozy game. Once done with it, it invites you to replay through it again, this time with extra stuff to pack as the one and only premise. More of the cozy mechanics for you to enjoy. To be entirely frank, I haven't done that. As I've said, cozy games just do not interest me enough to do that, and the game hasn't gripped me enough to go through it again But More, "new content" be damned.

 I understand the want to be cozy. To escape from the world, and its pains, and its struggles, and its everything. I really do. I get the want for warmth. The need for it. For something to comfort you and shield you away from the rest of your life. But that's not the only thing I want. That's far from what I want from art. And I feel as though the want to stay cozy, to stay family-friendly despite it all really limits what I can get from Moving

House

s.
It's about something horrible. Terrible. The loss of someone you care for. The loss of people you'll never be able to recover from. How impossible it is to move on from. How no matter what happens, you'll always come back there. To that awful grief-stricken place. Maybe it'll get better every time you do go back, maybe it'll last a little shorter every time. Maybe you'll come out stronger from it, again and again. But still, you'll come back there. Over, and over, and over again.

 So why does the cheery façade never let up? Why didn't it hurt to go through? Why didn't it break me? Is that unfair to ask of it? Of someone else's work, made from someone else's trauma, to ask it to hurt me specifically?
Of course it is.

I just want it to hurt me.

I don't want to get better.

I want it to keep hurting.

I want my whole to collapse.

I want my foundations to rot away.

I want it to never end.


I'll come back here again.

And again.

And again.
And again.
And again.



Again

The Many Faces of Moving

House

s

  She stares outwards at the passing cars. Her faded windows let so little light pass through. So few colours, all of them faded. She's thinking of them again. She wonders if they'll ever come back. It's been so empty since they left. So cold. Maybe that's why they left. Maybe they'll never come back. Especially now that she's like this.

Why do you keep doing this to yourself? Starting over and over and over again. It won't bring them back. You know that. You're just breaking yourself. Tearing new holes in those floorboards that were once loved and polished every day. Letting the termites run wild, your body a perfect snack for them. And yet you just keep going.

 You have to stop. You know this. You have to make yourself better. You have to move on. You can't move on. She can't move on.
She'll always be like this. She knows this.

She keeps hurting herself. She hates this.

She hurts herself so that she doesn't forget.

She'll never forget.

Please don't start again. Please. Just let it go. Let it go. Let it go.


Please.

Moving

House

s is Just Fine

again

I Played Moving

House

s and It Changed My Life

again

Moving

House

s Will Never Let Me Be Normal Again

again

I'll Never Be Normal Again

again

She'll Never Be Normal Again

again

She'll Never Be Normal

again

You Can't Fix Her

again

She Can't Fix Herself

again

Please Come Back

again

Please Come Back

again

Come Back

Moving

House

s: A Dialogue

If she has a heart, does that mean she can love?


Can a die?


Is this heartbreak?


Will it ever stop?