Tools Up looks like the Overcooked of house renovation
Couch-moving co-op
Put that putty knife down, you storming degenerate. You’re a terrible decorator, we all know that. But listen, that doesn’t mean you can’t follow your dream in the fantastical realm of the videogame. Tools Up will let you to indulge in that wallpaper-stripping you love so much. It’s a “couch co-op game about renovating apartments in a mysterious skyscraper.” Four players, a new sofa, some carpets, and plenty of paint. Surely you will fare better at this pretend decorating than you do with all that spackling paste in your bathroom. Surely. Let’s look at the footage and see.
Oh. Oh, I see. Tools Up is one of those games. Less the utilitarian list of small tasks, like the pleasurable tidying-up of House Flipper, and more the disastrous co-op contention of Overcooked. You’ll be moving couches with Chuckle Brothers efficiency and tiling floors against the clock. To make things easier (dumber?) you can also throw your tools, mortar and paint buckets between the rooms over the tops of the walls. Don’t ask me how this works in a single-floor apartment. I'm taking no questions at this time.
It has some other fun ideas. Only the person holding the blueprints can change the camera angle, for example, so if you need to wallpaper the south wall, you will probably end up screaming at your mate Gaz to turn the camera round the right way, no not that way, the other way, stop, go back, no, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE GAZ. Levels will also have obstacles, weather and challenges. “Expecting ice, fire or puppies?” asks the blurb on the Steam page. “Well, you should!”
Sounds like some decent mayhem. It’s coming out some time in “Q3” this year, which I am obliged to translate as “vague autumn”.