It’s a very simple game: You start with a shithole, and you turn it into an actually cozy livable space before selling it to someone for a significant profit. Thats it, thats the whole game, and thats why I recommend waiting for it to go on sale.
So I picked up this game yonks ago and it was pretty fun, cleaning up the houses was fun, redesigning the interiors was fun, even though I’m not a particularly creative soul, it was a nice break from reality. It’s nice being able to try different things out using virtual money in a virtual space, instead of having to spend inordinate amounts of money to work on a house in the real world that I have to get right first try.
When you start off, you’ll be doing jobs for clients to earn your first bits of money and to unlock tools. These broadly act as a tutorial for the main gameplay which is designing the houses, but are also good to give you a head start for buying your first house to flip.
That being said, the base game on it’s own starts to feel a little bit limiting after a while, like there feels like a lot of options, but unless you explicitly force yourself to try dumb or crazy shit, it’s going to start getting a little bit dull after several houses. Though the game tries to incentivise different designs by having multiple different clients each with their own needs, likes, and dislikes, which makes trying to sell at least one house to each of them a challenge.
You have a budding young couple looking for a starter house, a big family looking for a place to raise their kids, an old couple looking to settle down, a university student who needs somewhere to study, and so many other fun people. The base game also includes houses from the cyberpunk and doomsday catalogue (most other house catalogues are from DLCs) and at least the doomsday houses have a different set of clientelle. People who want a well stocked shelter.
Speaking of DLCs, this game is quite heavy on them, which is good and bad. Some of the DLCs introduce new core gameplay features, some only expand the catalogue of items. For transparency, at the time of writing, I own the Garden, Luxury and Farm DLCs, and do not have the HGTV or Pets packs. Each DLC pack significantly expands the catalogue of items you can place in the house, as well as introduces new houses to play with. Each house in the property list will come with an icon telling you what DLC added it. A green flower for garden, purple gem for luxury, red barn for farm, etc.
The Garden DLC adds an entire second catalogue of items that are designed to be placed outside, as well as tools for garden maintenance and a garden contest to raise the sell price of your house before you auction it.
The Luxury DLC extends the internal catalogue including adding some new bathroom fixtures that the base game doesn’t have which gives you more options. It also adds a campaign map showing you around all the houses that the DLC adds, and giving you challenges to fix them up for clients.
The Farm DLC again extends the catalogue and the garden catalogue including the ability to create enclosures and greenhouses, as well as adding the grapple hook, drone, and architect tools, and a second campaign map that is sadly far shorter than the Luxury campaign. The architect tool allows you to create new outbuildings or extensions to a house you own. Certain houses don’t allow outbuildings, so check for the “Building available” icon when buying houses.
Personally because the game comes with so much DLC to add both main game mechanics and other stuff, it’s not exactly worth totally ignoring, but I also don’t think it can justify each DLC being as expensive as it is, so my personal recommendation is to wait for a big sale to buy the bundle. In terms of priority, if you want to be able to modify or build your own houses, or rebuild your IRL house to see how you could decorate it, go for the Farm DLC. If you’re more into gardening than house building, get the Garden DLC, and if you’re wanting more campaign levels (which are more in depth than the tutorial levels thankfully), get either the Luxury or the Farm DLCs. I don’t know enough about the other two DLCs to recommend them.
Base Game
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/613100 £20.99
Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/house-flipper £20.99
Garden DLC:
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/942290 £12.79
Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/house-flipper-garden-dlc £12.79
Luxury DLC:
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021110 £12.79
Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/house-flipper-luxury-dlc £12.79
Farm DLC:
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1832960 £12.79
What perfect timing, I’ve scheduled this to go up like literally a few days before the Steam Summer Sale kicks off, nice.
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