Move or Die is a fast-paced party game by Those Awesome Guys, released on January 21, 2016 on Steam, with PlayStation 4 version coming out on March 5, 2019.
The game started it's life as a flash game called "Concerned Joe
", which instead was a singleplayer puzzle platformer. The original idea was to port it on Steam with additional competetive mode for 4 players, which was scrapped in favour of making the latter mode a standalone game.
The main gimmic of the game is the player's lifebar, which decreases when character stands still or is in mid-air, but regenerates whenever they move, hence the title of the game. The goal is to compete with 1 to 3 other players in variety of mini-games, known as "Game Modes". Later updates have introduced more Game Modes, Characters and Mutators, which change the way game can be played.
This game provides examples of:
- Achievement Mockery: "So, that happened" is an achievement for losing to an AI in a round.
- Anti-Rage Quitting: Leaving too many matches online prevents you from gaining xp.
- Brain Monster: One of the default characters has an exposed brain.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Defied by the developers. They even made a video explaining this. This is why the currency is called "Not-coins" and the place you use them is "Not-a-Store." They themselves hate micro-transactions.
:"Now that the game is released, we will keep working on new - free - content updates adding more characters, game modes, levels and new ways to play! Because f*** paid DLC!"- Brick Joke: One of the random "facts" is that pushing the other players in Falling Blocks makes you "that guy". Proceed to actually do that and you get an achievement titled "That guy".
- The Cameo: Quite a bunch as a playable characters:
- Rick and Morty characters including the titular characters, Bird Person, Mr. Meeseeks and Krombopulos Michael. Though only Rick and Morty are both unlocked at the start.
- The Discord logo and Wumpus.
- Twitch has its logo.
- The titular character of Shovel Knight.
- Newgrounds's Tankman. Doubles as a Casting Gag, as JohnnyUtah voiced the announcer in Concerned Joe.
- Catnip.
- The Monster Prom characters.
- Cephalothorax: Every single character.
- Collision Damage: There's a mutator that lets dead players potentially kill living players from just touching them.
- Deadly Walls: The red tiles with an X on them kill you instantly.
- Double Jump: Titular Mutator.
- Fingerless Hands: No one has fingers, not even thumbs.
- Game Mod: The game supports custom characters, levels and even game modes through Steam Workshop. Most of them don't work in online though (but custom audio clips do).
- Goomba Stomp: "Stomp" minigame involves doing this to other players. It was later reworked into "Crowd Stomp", which is basically a competitive version of this trope.
- Jump Scare: Ghost Scare involves doing this, which literally scares them to death.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Except they are customizable and aren't necessarily organs and body parts (though they were seen specifically around X-mas 2019).
- Made of Explodium: Everyone when they die.
- Palette Swap: The 4 main Joes are all this to each other.
- Shout-Out:
- The mutators VVVVVV and What the Golf? are included.
- Heavy Bullets and Super Hot gamemodes.
