Story:
House Flipper, as the name suggests is a game about flipping houses to make a profit. There isn’t a story here, other than the tidbits you get from prospective buyers and in job descriptions.
Gameplay:
House Flipper has you playing as a one-person construction crew. You take on jobs that have you performing repair tasks that will earn you money. You use this money to build up your skills to perform tasks faster. With the money that you earn, you can use it to purchase houses and other properties. After fixing up these properties, you can auction them off to hopefully turn a profit, then rinse and repeat.
Cleaning windows, picking up trash, selling old objects, painting walls, laying down flooring, and breaking down walls are just some of the tasks that you will find yourself tasked with. When you purchase a property, you can rearrange the furniture already in the home, or you can sell it and replace it with new furniture. Just like with the furniture, you can leave the walls and floors the way they are or you can paint them to look new and/or replace the floor with new flooring. If you think a room should be made bigger or smaller, you can take down that pesky wall with your sledgehammer or you could put up a new one. Should a property have too many windows or not enough, you can make a windowless prison or a greenhouse; taking out all the windows or building as many as you like.
Graphics and Performance:
Though the graphics aren’t hyper-realistic, the game still looks really nice. The game makes great use of lighting in the game with it looking and feeling natural and realistic. Instead of falling flat, the light from a lamp or even natural sunlight will reflect and cast shadows as you would expect it to in the real world. Objects like trash, beds, etc. have a realistic look but not hyper-realistic.
With the graphical detail being what it is on objects, it helps the game perform very well. You won’t find the game feeling sluggish or slow when playing on modern platforms, though this isn’t the case with the previous generation of consoles. Even so, the slowdown on those platforms is minimal and isn’t something that happens often. Breaking down walls, painting, really any task feels smooth and seamless.
The only performance issues I have found is when you’re navigating the various menus. When purchasing items, you have to use a cursor to navigate web pages in the game to order objects like paint, doors, and other things. When navigating either using the cursor or using the search function, the game can feel a bit slow and will have a performance hiccup every once in a while.
Sound:
There isn’t much in the way of sound in the game with the only music being found on the main menu, when loading into a property and that’s about it. Aside from this, there are the occasional ambient sounds like crickets and the occasional bird. Beyond the ambient sounds, the only other sounds are those of you doing your job. The sound of the paint roller as you paint a wall or put up wallpaper, to the sound of a wall cracking and crashing down from the impact of your sledgehammer.
Conclusion:
As mundane as the tasks in this game seem to be, this game is rather satisfying to play and very therapeutic. The sound of the paint rolling on the wall is rather relaxing to listen to and once you finally finish renovating a house, it’s very rewarding to make a huge profit and see all of your hard work pay off.
If you’ve always wanted to get into the business of flipping houses without wanting to get your hands dirty or having the financial means to do so, this is going to be the game for you. Want a relaxing game that you can get lost in and just relax after a stress-filled day, then this is the game you need to play.
House Flipper is a fun, relaxing, and overall great experience. As someone who has easily lost half a day playing this game without even realizing it, I can’t recommend this game enough.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.