The first House Flipper is my favourite simulator game. The simple joys of cleaning up and redecorating houses made for an addicting, satisfying gameplay loop. There was no question of if I was going to play the sequel – it was a foregone conclusion the second it was announced. While some of House Flipper 2‘s enhancements are iterative, they don’t only make a sizable difference in terms of user-friendliness and intuitiveness, but there are some new additions that make for a significantly stronger game all-around. This is everything the first game was and more, as it not only allows you to flip houses, but build your own.
House Flipper 2 doesn’t take long to throw you into its loop. You’ve moved to a new town and you want to flip houses, so a friend gets you sorted with some jobs. You’ll mostly be cleaning houses at first, but you’ll soon be selling furniture, buying new furnishings to set down, and redoing the floors and walls. Eventually you’ll tear out walls or build new ones and be able to purchase any of the houses whose missions you’ve cleared and flip them, decorating or redoing them in any way you see fit. All of this was also true of the first game.
While the game is highly similar, the improvements are clear immediately. To name a few, you clean with a scrubber and spray bottle instead of the Swiffer-esque implement from the first game. Vacuuming has been added too. Now, when installing appliances, they function just like everything else instead of the installation minigame from last time. Painting has been completely rejiggered to be smoother and faster, along with demolition and building which have been given upgrades. However, the biggest difference is in how easy it is to precisely place items exactly where you want them. House Flipper 2 is just considerably smoother and more intuitive to play across the board.
Flip or die (but not really)
House Flipper 2 does a terrific job of keeping things interesting during its story mode, which sees you unlock new areas with more jobs. Most of the jobs feel rather unique. One has you redecorate what used to be a coffee shop, complete with removing all of the furniture, equipment, and wiping the coffee adverts off the windows. Another job has you clean up a flooded house and replace all of the furniture. You’ve once more got a house of your own that you can remodel to your heart’s content. With all of the above, the game would simply be a better version of its predecessor, but not much else.
One of the new features is Assembly, seeing you put together objects yourself that you’ll be able to place in houses. These are timed and doing well will reward you with a discount on items of that category. These are somewhat similar to the installation minigames from the first game, albeit clearer and without the awkward camera movement.
The real star of House Flipper 2 is probably the sandbox mode. You pick from one of three plot sizes and then design your house any way you want.
It’s different from the campaign in terms of what you can do and how everything functions, but it’s simple enough that you can figure it out with a little practice. For one, sandbox mode allows you to fly, plus building walls, destroying them, and painting them is instantaneous instead of being held back by perk points as it is in the campaign. As such, there’s no progression or focus on amassing a fortune to keep flipping larger houses as in the main mode.
It gets even better from there. You can place quests in your houses that are just like those in the campaign. Needing to clean up dirt, sell specific items, or buy items can all be added to the job you wish to upload. The reason for that is players can download each other’s houses and play through them themselves. This was a feature that I dreamed about in the first game and I’m honestly quite excited to see how it shakes up once people are given time to figure it out and upload their creations.
Flipping the game on its head
Of course, there are some issues. The biggest is that, in the campaign mode, there’s no way to undo something. If you paint or apply a surface finishing to an area you didn’t intend, the only way to rectify this is to duplicate the correct surface with your flipper tool and paste it over the mistake, which is actually a fairly small quibble. However, this needs to be unlocked. Notably, sandbox mode lets you freely undo whatever you want. Additionally, it can sometimes be difficult to make out precisely where you’re placing items, or where you need to paint or add surface finishings, as objects can obscure them.
On rare occasions, something wouldn’t trigger and I wouldn’t be able to complete an objective. Either it wouldn’t count my surface finishing or a piece of garbage or stain wouldn’t be counted. All jobs are graded out of three stars, but you don’t ever actually need to complete every objective 100% to do this, so even if the progression glitches, you can still get three stars. These are annoyances, to be sure, but they’re not that big of a deal to my eyes, especially considering what we often have to contend with in this genre.
House Flipper 2 doesn’t reinvent the series at all, but the improvements and additions make it a better game with a hell of a lot of potential longevity due to the fact that you can have as many houses as you want (and spend time tinkering on your own.) As such, this is my new favourite sim game, as it takes a great game and makes it even better than before.
House Flipper 2: House Flipper 2 doesn't reinvent the franchise, but instead overhauls the gameplay while adding a feature that absolutely makes the game a much more compelling, creative endeavour for anyone who enjoys decorating or building houses. – Andrew Farrell
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