You can see why the original House Flipper was such a hit. Its cosy fantasy of home ownership and fulfilling work was a soothing balm after a miserable day at the office, and that fantasy is only strengthened in this sequel. The basics remain the same: jobs appear in your email, from cleaning tasks to full-on home renovation, and you can use the profits to buy properties from the auction house, ready to be glowed up and flipped for a profit.
Accept a job and you’ll appear outside the house with your bag of tools. Bin bags to collect the rubbish, one measly cloth to wipe down the surfaces, a roller for painting, and so on. I haven’t played the previous game, but the interface for managing these tools seems neater and easier to grasp here. It’s no longer mimicking an in-game tablet, so menu icons are free to be a little more gamey: larger and more colourful, easier to identify at a glance.
Straddling simulation and more casual play – which is really the whole ethos behind House Flipper – these actions mimic real life, to an extent. When building a brick wall, you watch a lovely animation play, but all you’re doing is holding the mouse button down, as your character plucks bricks and mortar from thin air. Mostly, I’m happy with this middle ground – smashing walls down with the sledgehammer feels particularly satisfying – but I’d feel more connected to the work if I also had to clean up the rubble.
Generally, the acts of cleaning and tidying, building and buying are slick and easy to pick up, but the game does struggle with its 3D space sometimes. Occasionally I had to balance on furniture and agonisingly adjust the mouse cursor to position ornaments on high shelves. There’s no real way to delete things either, so you either have to sell or replace errant items. Having to find and buy the original flooring in the online shop, when all you’ve done is put one floorboard in the wrong place, is extremely annoying. But, overall, the graft is rewarding. It’s not so detailed a renovation sim that it feels exhausting or overwhelming, nor so casual that you barely need to be there. Renovating feels cosy, an element expanded for House Flipper 2.
One of the most satisfying things I’ve done in agame all year
NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT? A casual building sim about restoring houses and selling them for profit
EXPECT TO PAY £32.50
DEVELOPER Frozen District, Empyrean
PUBLISHER Frozen District, PlayWay SA
REVIEWED ON Intel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
MULTIPLAYER No
LINK
houseflipper2.com