A Youtuber I watch, the wonderful Brutal Moose was streaming the game of House Flipper at one point. The chill nature of the game intrigued me, despite naysayer friends ridiculing it.

But hey, we recently had a bunch of sales called Black Friday. Which here in Australia relates to a major bushfire that burnt houses and cost lives, and stores still try to push the term. I however took it as an opportunity to use my remaining Humble Monthly credit that was set to expire and pick it up cheap.

Oh. Oh wow, the chill factor is high here... At least to start with.

Live the dream of renovating a house for a couple. The husband designs artisan coffee lids, while his wife collects bottlecaps for the children of the local school. Their budget is $14 million dollars.

Well, it is not quite like that side of TV insanity. But I did set the local currency to $AUD, and it was totally out of whack with what houses actually cost here. Video games!

The weirdest part is my absence here is due to buying a house and slowly renovating it. A few times on Twitter I posted that I was playing this game, while the room next to the one I game in was languishing from being tidied and upgraded.

Everything is now in from the shed at least. I just need more shelving. And a Table. And Paint. And... All this is in the game too.

You start off in a tiny shack. Filled with trash, your tools, a laptop, and hopes and dreams of making it big. To earn your capital, you start off cleaning up the houses of other people. A few thousand per job should quickly put you on the path to being rich.

The first house is trashed. More grime and debris than your shack. And some git has gone and stole the radiator! Radiator theft is a running theme in your town, you think to yourself you should speak to the police about it, but no such in game feature exists.

Why radiators? You think. As you pull out a window scraper and agonisingly clean the grass. It is slow and painful. Once you get better, you make note of getting better tools and RPG progress your way through life.

No seriously. Why radiators? It's an odd thing to hock. Would Soft Peach or Lime Green work better for this room when I paint it later. I know, I know, I'm painting behind the radiator I just replaced and installed.

After you fix the final broken wall socket, you make sure to turn off all the lights and close the windows. The town appears totally empty. The only people you've ever met have been through email. But, just in case, you make sure the building is secure. You don't want to lose another radiator.

...Maybe I should take a picture of a radiator and hang it up beneath a window to fool people...

Cleaning jobs form the first half of the game. Paint walls. Take out the trash. Fix the electrics. Install that new kitchen cabinet. Mechanically it is all simple. Select your item from your trusty tablet, because you keep leaving your laptop at home, line up where it goes and left click.

Bang!

No, that's not a radiator exploding as someone stole it. The item is installed.

You can also pick them up and rotate things! Hooray! In small increments, or lock to the 90' angels of the house.

The niggle here is that placement still feels limited. Not everything stacks. Somethings that feel like they should sit on shelves/cabinets fail to do so unless you stand just right.

And once you have some monies, you can buy a house. Likely trashed and missing the bloody radiator, but a whole house! Far bigger and better than your shack. Renovate and decorate to your dreams and desires. Then put it up for auction.

Did the potential buyers like it? You'll find out soon. With each sale you slowly learn more about their likes and dislikes. You can target them directly. Get better at negotiating and counter their offer for something higher. Decide you'll take an auction penalty and try to make the house even better...

Or...

Maybe you want this house for yourself.

No longer will you live in a dingy shack with the pizza box you swear you'll remove soon.

This house.

This house is your house.

And the laptop can sit in its own room and make sure nobody steals your radiator.

This game has been the most relaxing game I've played since ETS2. No time limits. Very little in the way of penalties, it is quite hard to run out of cash. And you can spend your time decorating without the higher potential of giving yourself a hernia moving a couch like your rellie did last summer.

I love it.

Loved it.

Despite all the content available, there is a noticeable lack of floor plans and furniture types. Steam workshop does not yet exist, nor does any floorplan/house maker I can find. While that may feel like it will creep into "The Sims" territory, keep in mind you are the only person. There's no managing other people aside from meeting the likes/desires of those buying out houses.

Once you do all the cleaning jobs... They stop. Though I am told once you flip all the houses, the list resets to what it started with. I would like a random rotation, allowing the player to use their knowledge of the suburb purchased in and lot size to determine what job to take this session. Because as it is, you have a progression of houses getting larger and larger until you have a few hundred thousand (or equiv) to do a big job early.

I still highly recommend it, there is lots to do, and lots to design. The future potential for this game is HUGE. And I hope to see the devs continue to add to it.

There are two DLC packs also out. One for the garden. And one about a reality TV show. I'll have to check them out sometime.

Game Acquisition: On Sale (Humble Store 2019)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 2 3 4 - 1 to 6 December 2019
PC Used: Scorptec Master-RTX2070 2019 MK1

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 7 (64-bit) or newer
Processor: Intel Core i3 3,20GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 955 3,2 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce GTX 560 / AMD R7-260X
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 6 GB available space