UNPACKING

Format PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series

Developer Witch Beam

Publisher Humble Games

Origin Australia

Release 2021

When we invite Wren Brier and Tim Dawson to talk us through the origins of Witch Beam’s narrative tidy-’em-up, they tell us how it all started in the kitchen. You might know that already – this, after all, was how their game went viral. In 2018, fresh from accelerator program Stugan, the pair posted a GIF of the one level they’d built so far: a short time-lapse replay of various items (mugs, plates, glasses, tea towels, a kettle, a microwave, a cookie jar) being taken from cardboard boxes and placed neatly on marble worktops and wooden shelves. The response was enough to convince them that their apparently niche project could “appeal to a ton of people,” Brier says. Just as importantly, it brought publishers knocking at their door – “or rather my Twitter DMs,” she laughs – one of them being Humble, which ended up publishing the game.

Yet the tale of Unpacking begins earlier than that, when the burgeoning relationship between these two developers saw them move in together. As Dawson began to unbox his belongings, Brier noticed the process was oddly game-like. “We’re both game developers, so we just started riffing off that,” he explains. “Items come out, you match them together, you finish one box and start on the next – you’re kind of unlocking it. We were seeing things that felt like, ‘Yeah, there’s a structure to this’, like the way you can use a box temporarily to put an item on, but then have to take it off later to open it.”

It was Dawson who first began to take the idea more seriously, asking questions and “prodding at it”, in his words, until Brier understood that this wasn’t merely a joke. Having always wanted to pitch for Stugan, the pair realised they wouldn’t likely get a better opportunity. “Wren didn’t think we had much chance,” Dawson says.

“No, no!”