The fact that I could never manicure the overgrown lawns was a big letdown and equally struck me as a bizarre omission. In that sense, I felt a strong desire to try a second round to make a better attempt and really create something special. It seems obvious, but in my eagerness to renovate, I forgot to really decide what I wanted the place to look like so that I could maximize my time and money. One thing I learned from my debut home was the importance of planning. They must then be properly attached with pipes connected by hand, things screwed in etc. For example, buy a radiator or sink and stick them to the wall. There’s a lot of detailed assembly, as well. Painting entire walls can take time, and I found it boring after a while: use the roller, run out of paint, refill the roller. These improvements do help, making certain parts that can be tedious and repetitive a little less so. Upgrades became available as I went: the ability to clean wider areas more easily, to plaster walls faster, to make my demolition hammer stronger, to negotiate better payment for a job, paint walls more efficiently. Then I put the final product up for auction and pocketed a nice little extra few bucks to set me up to try again. It took a couple hours to get the house looking how I wanted it to, inside and out. I scrubbed windows, knocked a wall, painted the interior royal blue, placed wooden paneling on the floors, bought a dining table, a living room set and the like. I went inside and there was garbage everywhere the walls were filthy, strewn furniture needed disposing. The first few jobs are a tidy (ahem) introduction to the mechanics and systems of the game (they’re not complicated) while also giving me the opportunity to raise money to buy a building to kickstart my business.Īnd it doesn’t take long to achieve that: my first building was a tiny house that suffered extensive fire damage. House Flipper reminded me of those adult coloring books that people enjoy for relaxation, except that here I am allowed to tear down and rebuild the original drawing however I desire. As a failed screenwriter, that’s freeing, let me tell you. In that way, I suppose, the game makes no sense at all, but the unrealistic freedom is part of the fantasy no matter what artistic designs and choices I made, I could never be judged as “wrong” by my employer. In the end, even if I made the nursery look like an undertaker’s lobby, as long as I put a crib in there, I got paid. There was always a set list of objectives to hit, but outside of that, I had carte blanche to go as wild and wacky as I wanted. These jobs involved cleaning rooms with a broom, painting walls, purchasing furniture and fixtures, occasionally repairing wall outlets and so on. People requested through e-mail that I come and clean their garage or redesign a room as a nursery for an impending baby. In the beginning, I started out just as a kind of cleaner for hire. – I could really just do whatever I felt like doing at my own pace. With no time limits and no external problems to deal with – like budget, uncooperative builders, bad weather etc. Cleaning HouseĪll in all, if you don’t take any of it too seriously, House Flipper is more of a meditative experience. It’s certainly a game that will not interest everyone, but if you like the idea of creating a beautiful home without the real-life tedium, time pressures and manual labor, it may be one worth checking out. From Polish developers Empyrean, the game allowed me to do exactly what I thought it would: blow up aliens…wait…buy, renovate and sell houses for profit in an endless loop. When trying to meet a specific word count in writing a personal biography, Derek sometimes adds Oscar Wilde quotes, like, “Be yourself everyone else is already taken.House Flipper is pure fantasy. A fan of classics as well as the latest and greatest, Derek balances sampling the newest entertainment media with revisiting the well of a (thankfully) never-ending backlog. After being immersed in nerd culture for many years, Derek is now happy to write about the media he enjoys instead of just ranting to his friends. He is a fan of science fiction and fantasy, video game and tabletop RPGs, classic Hong Kong action movies, and graphic novels. Derek majored in journalism and worked for a print newspaper before discovering the internet. When he is not writing, playing video games, watching movies or television, or reading novels or comic books, he occasionally takes some time to sleep. He lives with his wife, three dogs, and a likely excessive number of video game consoles. Derek Garcia is a Game Feature Writer for ScreenRant.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |