This article is sponsored by Frozen District.
It’s been about 5 years since the world at giant fell in love with House Flipper. It was 2018, and every thing appeared a lot easier, again then. Even the event crew at Empyrean didn’t anticipate the unique recreation to search out such a devoted, loyal following because it was giving every thing a lick of paint and sanding down the coving within the days main as much as launch.
But House Flipper – a small indie challenge about renovating homes and flipping them for a little bit wedge of money – caught on. Media curiosity whipped up across the recreation close to launch, and an enormous group was quickly magnetised to the busywork of creating humble abodes into luxurious pads for the wealthy and well-known. Console ports in 2020 adopted the meteoric success of the 2018 Steam launch, and for 2 years, House Flippers throughout the globe have been content material with beavering away on their initiatives on PC or console.
But now, a brand new age has dawned. Bigger, higher homes are right here – with extra supplies and choices than ever for keen householders seeking to go away their very own indelible mark on the property ladder. Everything from the visuals to the gameplay has been overhauled, and even the trivia like quality-of-life particulars have been rethought, refitted, and reinstalled. House Flipper 2, in each significant method, is an enchancment of the unique House Flipper.
As it was 5 years in the past, the intention in House Flipper 2 is to buy homes, renovate them, and promote them on, pocketing a beneficiant quantity of internet revenue within the course of. But inside that system, you may let your creativeness run wild; do you wish to make a scandinavian-inspired coastal getaway? Convert your semi-detached suburban home into a well-liked native caff? Slap an annex onto your bungalow so granny has someplace to dwell close by? The world is your proverbial oyster in House Flipper 2 – and also you don’t have to remain hooked up to only domiciles.
If you’re extra narratively-inclined, you may take pleasure in a peculiar story set between the mountain tops and the limitless sea, within the sleepy little city of Pinnacove. Here, per the sport itself, is a spot “the place time slows down, and the pleasant residents are able to entrust you with their properties”. Getting every thing fitted up-to-scratch right here will enable you uncover peculiar tales and watch slice-of-life anecdotes unfold, offering a surprisingly charming backdrop to all of your hammering and spannering.
Fixing up homes isn’t all demolition and spirit ranges, although; there’s a wealth of different odd jobs you’re going to want to do with a purpose to get these habitations inhabitable. Whether you attain in your paint curler, your vacuum cleaner, your refuse bag, your sledgehammer, or your cleansing instruments, you’ll by no means be in need of one thing to do when working in your challenge.
Each of those instruments works (and feels) higher than they did within the earlier recreation, supplying you with extra exact management over their capabilities and permitting you extra utility when every is supplied. Painting, specifically, is much less of a chore, because of the flexibility to slap down tape markers so that you simply don’t by chance ‘paint over the traces’ and smash hours of earlier, diligent work.
It helps that every thing appears to be like the half in House Flipper 2. It retains you within the recreation, helps safe your thoughts inside the home you’ve been tasked with bringing as much as code. The builders at Empyrean had extra growth expertise beneath their belts with this recreation, and have selected a extra distinct artwork model with a purpose to make every thing really feel extra unified if you’re taking part in. The outcome? A extra cohesive in-game asset library, and a greater basis for the huge group to provide extra objects to the sport as time goes on.
Enter Sandbox Mode; a free-for-all mode added into the sport to placate the inventive followers that need free reign to play how they need – for so long as they wish to play. Here, gamers can use the identical instruments because the builders themselves when making and flipping their homes – it’s deep, it’s granular, and it’s extremely liberating. If you see any home in any trailer for the sport, you can also make it (in case you apply lengthy sufficient). Just strive to not lose observe of the time.
House Flipper 2 launches December 14 on Steam.
