Let's enter a world where every dilapidated building represents an opportunity for transformation. House Flipper 2, the sequel to the first opus released in 2018, offers an immersive and captivating experience where creativity meets management to redefine the art of property renovation. Whether you are passionate about decoration, a budding entrepreneur or simply curious to discover new horizons, this game promises an enjoyable adventure. Each property becomes a blank canvas, hoping to be transformed into an architectural masterpiece. The first House Flipper benefited from no less than eight DLC.
Renewal ?
Advertisement
Just like its predecessor, House Flipper 2 allows you to renovate several buildings, this time with a much larger scripted part than previously. To scan it more widely and complete it, it will take between ten and fifteen hours, more if you want to reach 100%. Traveling through these multiple properties is an adventure in itself, where each discovery reveals other perspectives and inspires new restoration projects. The choice is vast and does not lock us into identical creations. Each house has its own experience and each request corresponds to its character and its spirit, but also to its owner. Even if customers impose their demands, it is always possible to have fun personalizing furniture or pieces. The only limit is our budget.
The power of creation
One of the most exciting aspects of House Flipper 2 is its creative freedom. With all the customization options offered, we can tailor each area to our tastes and needs. Every detail can be adjusted to design unique spaces that reflect our style and temperament through the choice of materials and the arrangement of furniture, but also through interior and exterior decoration. If we prefer a minimalist and refined design rather than a more eccentric and daring design, House Flipper 2 offers us a blank canvas ready to be painted according to our wildest desires.
But before you can fully dive into customization and design, you have to clean a lot of homes. Indeed, the software introduces the player to its tools with a first house having suffered carnage. We could compare this house to a pigsty… At the beginning, we have at our disposal: a garbage bag, a sponge, a pinball machine (device allowing the sale of objects) and our hands to move the objects as we wish. To be completely honest, it is difficult, at first, to believe that we will succeed in reaching the status of renovator seeing what is offered to us. This is a lot of cleaning, but ultimately opens up other possibilities for using new tools. To put things into perspective, we say to ourselves that we are on the show “C'est du Propre” the time to take care of four or five homes before obtaining a brand new instrument: the paintbrush.
Advertisement
It must be recognized that true freedom lies above all in the house that the game makes available to us at the start of the adventure. It is strongly recommended to resell everything, because the change is very important to have fun. Indeed, our home is the blank canvas on which we can assert ourselves with passion. It is useful to know that once our home is beautiful and stylish, we can market it in order to rehabilitate a new residence that we have previously purchased. This allows us to increase our work a little so that we can renovate even more. This is also one of the important aspects of the game that really allows you to have fun and express yourself.
Another feature which was not present in the previous game is the possibility of assembling furniture yourself in order to put it in your house. This new feature also reduces the cost that items may have in the store.
Strategy and reflection on the program
House Flipper 2 doesn't just offer a creation experience. It also offers a series of challenges and objectives to test our management skills. Managing the budget effectively and meeting the demands of demanding customers are all elements that contribute to making the experience realistic and rewarding. Every decision we make impacts the success of our business, so we must choose carefully and overcome the challenges that stand in our path to greatness.
Indeed, the game offers a main plot and a secondary one. The story and side quests are presented in the form of emails that we receive on the PC which sits on our kitchen worktop. To differentiate them, the detail is light since it is a simple orange label which serves as sorting. We actually didn't separate the two and decided to do the goals as they came down. Sometimes we had a choice and sometimes we didn't. Each quest earns money based on our efficiency. This characteristic is judged by the stars that we earn by progressing in the required tasks. It turns out that it is possible to complete a mission by obtaining a single star, but remember that the goal is still to obtain three stars systematically to establish yourself as leader of the renovation.
Real estate transformation is not without its challenges, and House Flipper 2 perfectly captures this reality. Every project presents its own obstacles, whether structural repairs, design dilemmas or demanding client preferences. However, with every challenge comes an opportunity for growth and learning. By overcoming these obstacles, we expand our renovation skills, strengthen our creativity and sharpen our business acumen. Every success is a well-deserved victory, and every failure is a valuable lesson that contributes to our growth and business development.
When we first start in a house, our phone is likely to ring. The customer calls us to tell us about the instructions he had included in the email. We have a choice of four responses, with the last one ending the conversation. Often, the owner will interrupt us during a task that we are performing with fervor. We're not going to lie to each other, if we really had the choice of response, we would have wanted, more than once, to tell them how dirty and messy they are. Some we might understand because of their personal history, but others have no excuse.
Overall, using a cloth or sponge is the mechanism that comes up most often. However, after having polished floors and walls several times for many minutes, we have the opportunity to improve our tool. The same goes for the entire wheel of our instruments. The more we use them, the more experience points we obtain that we can ultimately pass on to our devices. In this way, we increase our scope of action and our efficiency. Thanks to this, we can, for example, paint on larger surfaces or cover more areas with the different tiles.
The only downsides that can be raised in House Flipper 2 are its gameplay, which is much more focused on the keyboard and mouse combo than on the controller, as well as the loading bugs which require you to restart the game. Regarding the gameplay, it's is a fairly annoying element even if once you get the hang of it, the feeling gets better. You have to persevere to get used to it and progress more calmly in the game. Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to test the game with a keyboard and mouse via the console, even if the option is available.
A formula that works?
House Flipper 2 is nothing revolutionary in terms of graphics or soundtrack. Indeed, few differences are notable compared to the first opus. Note all the same, the care that was taken with the sound effects, reinforcing the immersion. Even if this software is not transcendent in these aspects, it has nothing to envy from other simulators.
The game offers the chance to be an expert in renovation and to be able to flourish where this is not always possible in real life. House Flipper 2 makes you want to completely redecorate your home and shows its full potential when it is possible to build your residence yourself, from the foundations to the decoration, as we did in The Sims. However, we must not forget to buy, renovate and resell buildings to grow our portfolio. For this last functionality, we must move our office so that the renovated house can move to the auction section of the menu.
The game offers unique worlds and residences where nothing is the same. We start in the city and continue on the coast or in the middle of the forest. Each home is atypical and in total harmony with its environment. To give an example, a chalet in the middle of the woods will have a cachet and a character that will not be found in a villa on the beach which will be more focused on shellfish and crustaceans.
The developers are committed to releasing content, regularly offering updates and additions to enrich the experience, but this remains to be seen over time. It's a license that keeps us coming back regularly to discover what the game has to offer. In the first installment, new features, new properties to renovate and special events. Each update brought its share of surprises and new features, so we hope that the little brother follows the same movement.
Tested on Xbox Series