House Flipper
House Flipper has plenty of room for improvement.
The cockroaches have been hoovered up, the bathroom is covered in hot pink paint and teal-colored tiles, and the brown-stained couch has been evicted in favor of a corner sofa. This House Flipper house is now perfect for resale. Well, I assume it is. My understanding of the property market is entirely based on old episodes of Changing Rooms and Location, Location, Location, and not, e.g. owning property. House Flipper tasks you with renovating houses. There’s contract work for other people—cleaning up after messy students or putting up a wall to convert a big bedroom into a small bedroom and a bathroom. But the game is named for the fact you can use the money you earn to buy property, do it up, and then sell it for a profit.
It’s one of those games where a review feels like an irrelevance. That’s partly because digital tidying-up and home decor fans are underserved on PC outside casual browser game sites. We have Viscera Cleanup Detail for post-disaster multiplayer scrubbing, we have Home Improvization for hellish furniture assembly, and we have The Sims’ build mode for home design. Thus House Flipper has no real competition.
The other part is that House Flipper has the novelty value that comes with being an oddity making it attractive to streamers. There are also decor options which hint at bidders with a doomsday prepper storyline and others with names like Dolan Trusk. These touches make House Flipper feel really focused on courting a streaming audience and offering them obvious gags.
But for those of you who are genuinely curious for a review, it’s one of those releases which still feels like it’s in early access. Here is a short list off the top of my head to illustrate:
There’s a lack of furniture, and what’s there is often dated and ugly. Crucial information feels hidden (why can’t I view a request email while doing the request?). Rooms look dingy even after renovation. Client emails need an edit pass. Repetitive actions irritate rather than soothe. You can’t improve the garden. Some spots of dirt bugged and were impossible to clean. Fitting appliances is just boring clicking.
Hard sell
The way the game clues you into how your potential buyers feel about the house is also clunky. You have to watch for their reactions on the side of the screen while you work. They also give some baffling critiques. For example, two bidders complained a house had two bedrooms and they only wanted one, but there was only one room with a bed in it. The other small room was furnished as a study.
It’s not a bad game, it’s just utterly average and coasts on its appeal as a quirky project. As someone who loves a bit of digital tidying, I hope either its developers continue to work on the game or its success brings other devs into the space to create more interesting or aesthetically pleasing options.
It’s a middling game which seems more geared to streamers seeking novelty than digital cleaning fans.
It’s one of those releases which still feels like it’s in early access
verdict 50