​Tools Up! Review

By Kevin Mitchell  |  Posted: December 21, 2019

As a homeowner, DIY home makeovers come with the territory. Projects can be large, taking weeks to finish, sometimes requiring walls and floors to be demolished; other times, you may want to repaint a room or hang stylized wallpaper. Regardless of the plan, you'll experience stress, anxiety, and more often than not, frustration. Tools Up! has you renovating an apartment building unit by unit, each requiring various improvements.

While Tools Up! can be played solo, like real-life DIY projects, these improvements are best handled by a group of friends. Similar to Overcooked, where you frantically operate in fantastical kitchen environments, Tools Up! tasks everyone to cooperate in tight corridors to complete necessary tasks before time expires. Unlike Overcooked, you must complete all jobs to finish each of the 30 levels. Your overall score and star total depend on tidying up the workplace, ensuring no materials, spills, or trash remain.

The control mechanics are reasonably simple, using face buttons to pick up and apply paint, wallpaper, and other materials through button taps and holds. While you can throw objects to move them swiftly, this mechanic barely functions. Your character often twists their body and head sideways, indicating they can't perform the action. This creates frustration when you can't toss a carpet or bucket into another room with nothing blocking your path. Items can also become stuck on walls, causing them to disappear. Each level has blueprints indicating required work, though yellow and orange paint and carpet look eerily similar on the plans. Unless you're holding the blueprints, the game's camera remains locked.

Preparation often involves ripping down existing wallpaper or placing mortar/cement on walls and preparing floors for tilework. With wallpaper, you can only remove one section at a time, placing materials in a bucket or on the floor. Floor piles slow movement and cause slipping, and can quickly fill entire rooms, hampering progress. Targeting walls and floors becomes tricky when garbage or paint cans are nearby. Supply placement requires careful management as you finish each room, as one careless move can cover your newly finished floor in paint, wasting precious cleanup time.

Supplies arrive through random deliveries that may go to wrong apartment numbers, forcing you to chase them before they leave. Delivery personnel grow impatient and won't wait long for item collection. With overly stylized characters barely fitting through doors (which can be knocked off hinges), maneuvering space is limited, especially with four players. Imagine moving furniture in a room barely larger than four bodies. New flooring requires precise coordination, as squares become temporarily unwalkable. Players can become trapped, and while temporary, the clock keeps ticking.

Simply Put

Tools Up! is a local-only cooperative four-player game that falls short in key mechanics. Throwing feels pointless when your character refuses to comply, and targeting proves problematic in tight spaces. Solo play is frustratingly difficult, making the game recommendable only for group play. The absence of online multiplayer further limits its appeal.