By Andi Nuruljihad for Gamesforum

Transforming mundane tasks into exciting, often addicting work is the foundation of the simulation game genre, and House Flipper by Polish studio PlayWay is a great example of this. Following in the tradition of “real work” sims like Euro Truck Simulator and Car Mechanic Simulator, House Flipper puts you in charge of a real estate development business. The goal is to keep your business going by purchasing and renovating old homes to resell them for a profit.

Fixing up a house involves quite a bit more than buying new furniture and picking out paints, and House Flipper wants you to roll up your sleeves and really get into the process. The houses you acquire are in terrible shape -- the windows are covered in grime, there’s garbage everywhere, and stains of all colors mark the walls, floors, and ceiling. It’s up to you to do whatever it takes to make the house fit for proper living, and that means picking up trash, plastering drywall, tiling floors, and mopping up any messes.

The indicator on the bottom tells you what your next task is.

Don’t expect to jump right into flipping houses from the get-go. House Flipper begins with a tutorial introducing the various renovation tools at your disposal. It’s barebones but just enough to help you get a grasp of how the gameplay loop works: complete a laundry list of household tasks in whatever order you want.

Once you’re out of the tutorial, the game gifts you a small building to serve as your office and leaves you to your own devices. The purpose of the game is to renovate and resell your current office at profit, but you’ll soon find it’s not quite that easy. Your current office can’t be sold until you’ve found a proper replacement, and that costs a lot of money -- money you don’t have.

You can make some cash by taking on jobs from client requests sent to your in-game tablet. Thus, the player finds themselves picking up after some of the dirtiest homeowners you’ll find in a video game just to afford to sell their current building. I didn’t go into House Flipper expecting to get an extreme sports version of house cleaning, but that’s half the game.

No Room for Error

Yes, I mop my mirrors. You don’t?

There are quite a few tools at your disposal, but little risk of getting them mixed up. the game auto-selects your active tool based on what your current task is. It’s an interesting design decision almost certainly made to streamline the gaming experience on mobile, but it takes away any challenge from the renovating process.

It doesn’t help that there’s very little mechanical difference between the different tools. It’s exciting in the beginning to learn how the tools work, but once you’ve identified their similarities, the game becomes mindless busywork where you finish out jobs to the client’s very strict specifications. For example, both painting a wall and plastering drywall involve selecting the tool for the job, tapping to dip your tool into plaster/paint, and tapping on the area you want to apply it. When the tools are largely the same and the act of selecting them is automated, you have to wonder what the purpose of it all is.

Doing client work is the only way you’ll be able to afford to purchase houses for flipping.

That’s not to say there’s no value in mindless busywork. With hundreds of hours invested in Euro Truck Simulator 2, I’ve learned how calming -- almost therapeutic -- completing simple, repetitive tasks can be. I just wish the job structure in House Flipper wasn’t so constrictive. Clients have very exact wants and zero wiggle space for creative interpretation. In fact, you can’t even apply paint to a wall unless it’s the specific color your client has asked for. There’s no punishment for mistakes because the game ensures you can’t make them.

Creative Mode

House Flipper truly shines when you’re fixing up your own house.

It’s important to note that all of these restrictions only exist when taking on paid work from clients. After several hours of completing mind-numbing jobs, I almost forgot that the whole purpose of House Flipper is to flip your house!

The starter house the game gives you is tiny, run-down, and filled with dusty furniture and tacky wooden cabinets -- in other words: a real fixer-upper. You can really let your creative juices flow here. Of course, you’ll still have to clean up, plaster over holes, and retile floors, but you have absolute freedom in picking out paints, tiles, and a carpet that really ties your room together. This part of House Flipper almost makes the tedium of taking client jobs worth it, and it’s here that the game achieves maximum zen. If only the game wasn’t trying so hard to pull you out of it.

Waiting to Play

You can spend Flipcoins to speed up the Cash transfer process.

House Flipper has two currencies: Cash and Flipcoins.

Cash is spent to purchase items used for renovating homes, such as paint, tiles, wallpaper, light switches, and so on. You earn cash from selling homes and completing client work. However, the money you’re owed by a client isn’t immediately sent to your account after payment. Instead, some jobs require you to spend thousands of dollars renovating a client’s home, and you won’t make that money back until 3-4 hours have passed. Unless, of course, you spend Flipcoins to draw that money instantly.

You can buy a Starter Pack to bypass transfer times permanently.

To my surprise, House Flipper uses a pay-or-wait monetisation model. This model was commonplace in the early days of free-to-play when social media platforms like Facebook ruled the online gaming space. It’s since fallen out of favor, replaced by loot boxes, interstitial and video ads, and rewarded video ads.

The implementation of pay-or-wait in House Flipper isn’t quite as extreme as you’d find in the Facebook games of old, like Travian or Farmville -- you only need to wait for a few hours, instead of a day or more. Still, it really puts a damper on your progress and forces play in increments rather than playing to satisfaction. Of course, you can always spend a bit of money to bypass these waits entirely, or spend Flipcoins to get a Cash bonus.

There are hundreds of items that you can unlock and purchase.

There are 541 locked items in House Flipper and they each cost 5 Flipcoins to unlock. Completing an achievement will give you 5-15 Flipcoins; finishing all achievements should give you a total of around 800 Flipcoins. Upgrading your various tools will also cost you some Flipcoins. You shouldn’t expect to be able to unlock all of the items in House Flipper without spending at least some money.

The Final Word

House Flipper has the potential to give players a truly zen-like release. The actual house flipping is relaxing, and there are plenty of creative options to explore and experiment with. I found it a lot of fun to pick different paint colors and rearranging furniture, and I enjoyed watching my house’s value rise. Unfortunately, so much of the game is wrapped up in a tiresome client work loop that’s built atop an overly rigid mission structure. The tedious client work is sandwiched by frustratingly long wait times that had me looking for the exit button. I suspect players with less patience might take the long transfer periods as an opportunity to find another title more appreciative of their time.