At a Glance: A simulation game that puts you in the position of a one person construction crew (without all of the real life complications), and allows you to clean, renovate and sell houses.
Story: House Flipper features a series of structured jobs, depicted through emails to the player, in which they have to fufill criteria and provide clients with the house or garden of their dreams. There's also the ability to buy and renovate houses freelance, and while this might sound mundane, it's incredibly relaxing. If you've always liked the house-building aspect of the Sims more than the life simulator than this might be the game for you! Story takes a backseat to personal creativity and mechanics, but there's humorous moments hidden throughout the game's emails, including a troublesome ex-boyfriend who's stolen all the radiators in his former partner's house, the ability to take a flamethrower to pesky weeds, and references to well-known houses.
Style: House flipper while not the prettiest game, more than makes up for style with quantity, and concept. The older items look comparatively dated, but this hasn't stopped fans from making some truly incredible houses, and seven years after it's release, there's still a huge following (and some very active reddit forums). House Flipper features a great deal of freedom, whether you want to make luxury apartments or fast, budget accomodations, and it's slated for a remaster in Winter 2025, which will include all of the previously unrelased on console DLCs, a fresh graphical remaster, full voice acting, over 800 new items, and plenty of quality of life updates. Despite the creation of a sequel, many users still prefer the style of House Flipper 1, and although I find the mechanics frustrating (and a bit jerky), there's still plenty to enjoy.
Characters: Characters are not the focal point of House Flipper. The most you can see of your player character is their arms, and the cilents are only heard from through emails or in the comments they make as you renovate houses. House Flipper 2 expands on this, and adds the ability to have conversations with clients, and branching dialogue. Despite the lack of deep characterization, it does little to detract from the overall gameplay experience, and relaxing, sandbox-style atmosphere. There are also buyers you can interact with, but they're more annoying hurdles than anything, else, and trying to sell to all of the buyers at least once is a much more complex task than it first seems.
Music: Well, it has music. There isn't anything terrible about House Flipper's music but it isn't going to break any new ground, and it's main draw is that it's subtle enough to be easily ignored after spending hours designing a house. I usually don't like listening to different music when I'm gaming, prefering to listen to in-game tracks, and dialogue. HF1 (and 2) are some of the rare exceptions to this rule, and I usually listen to gaming youtube channels instead (or multi-task, and listen to documentaries in the background.) It's not a huge detractor from my overall opinion of the game, but there's a bit of missed opportunity too, and something like the original Sims music would feel right at home in HF, and further enhance the experience.
The Good:
-Great replayability, and open-ended building/reselling modes encourage creativity
-Very relaxing, and easy to lose time in--if you're like me, set a timer!
-Friendly, supportive community makes asking for advice feel much less daunting, and can help a lot with some of the mechanical intricacies
-Art style, while a little simple, is also not unappealing, and allows for a lot of really stunning builds
-Very inspiring in terms of real life decorating as well, I've found both House Flipper Games to be excellent for planning spaces.
The Bad:
-Mechanics can be downright fussy, especially on the Switch. I haven't played the PC port, but the PS5 fares a little better
-Longggggg load times-DLCs can be buggy, play at your own risk. I had the pet DLC corrupt itself and ended up having to restart my file. They're fun but not worth the chance of your hard work disappearing
-Game engine tends to putter, aside from longer load times, movement and mechanics are sluggish. While not unplayable by any stretch, it's more noticable in House Flipper 1, than in 2
Final Consensus and Rating: Overall, House Flipper is both relaxing and creative, all the best parts of interior design, with none of the downsides, and with a supportive, friendly community, there's plenty of fans to share it with. 9 out of 10.
