Last year, I was fortunate enough to try out a 20 minute demo of Frozen District’s House Flipper 2 at EGX London 2022. Despite the short introduction to 2018’s House Flipper‘s sequel, I had a lot of fun and before I knew it, the demo had come to an end. I booted up the original game the moment I returned home.
While House Flipper wasn’t as impressive after trying out its far more intuitive sequel, I could see why it captivated so many people when it first came out. For the same reason why I sunk so many hours into Fallout 4‘s settlement building mechanic, I was stuck in House Flipper; having the opportunity to clean out a building and make it new and sparkly is addictive. At least it is for me anyway…
It’s probably a good thing that I don’t have my hands on the full sequel yet because there are important things that I need to wrap up in my life before I’m given the full hit of House Flipper 2, especially considering I spent three hours on this demo alone. Unlike the demo at EGX, there’s no timer on the latest demo of House Flipper 2. Instead, you’re given a beachside house to flip and some quests to complete as you do so. Well, I threw out that quest malarkey and instead dug into the core mechanics of House Flipper 2 to design the house I imagined turning this dump into.
Starting out the demo, you wake up on a beach in front of the house you’re supposed to flip. You’ve seemingly been washed up there as there’s a dingy by your side. An NPC will then call you and tell you turn the house into something that’s sellable, which you can do without question – or you can argue with him about how you got on the beach in the first place and why you’ve been seemingly kidnapped to flip a house. The dialogue options in general were a bit of a surprise and I thought they were a nice light-hearted touch.
What wasn’t a nice, light-hearted touch was all the manual guides lying around the place. A tutorial is great and I much prefer having all our tools and abilities at the start of the game this time rather than having to go through the campaign in order to fully flip a house like in House Flipper. What isn’t great is splitting each section into a manual and then leaving them around the house – because then I have to pick them up when I’m done reading them and take it outside or something, just anywhere out of the way. This also means when I want to check back on said section, I’ve then got to go hunting for the manual which I last saw being chucked from the upstairs window. I’m really hoping this is just a mechanic in the demo because there’s nothing wrong with the ol’ fashioned tutorial in the menu way of things. Funny enough, with all the manuals lying around there was nothing pointing me towards the use of a torch, which would have been really handy when I was trying to paint the walls at night.
To start any house flipping, you first need to clean up. This is my favourite part of the game. You basically take a bin bag around the house, throwing everything into it, and then take this bag out to the big bin. This is an added addition to House Flipper 2, and you can even take pot shots at the bin from the upstairs balcony for a little extra fun. You can also sell any unwanted items, though the quest objectives annoyingly request that you sell everything – even if the furniture is still in good condition. This annoyed me somewhat, not just because I hate getting rid of good furniture but I also feel like we should be given the freedom to choose whether to sell something or to make it a part of our design. This is something that I’m hoping is just limited to the demo quests.
Once the house has been tidied up, it’s time to flip it. You can revamp everything in House Flipper 2, from demolishing walls to replacing all the appliances and floors. However, what I did notice is there seems to be a lot less freedom in what you can scrap in this demo compared to the one I played at EGX. I could only demolish the select walls included in the quests and I also couldn’t remove some annoyingly placed radiators unless they too were a part of the quest. This also extended to replacing the doors and windows. This, again, I’m hoping is just a restriction for this demo because I was really looking forward to completely transforming a home’s layout.
Frozen District has pretty much improved every mechanic that the first game entailed, and has also removed the boring sections which included fitting appliances, radiators and fixing fuses (these mandatory quests in the previous game really took the joy out of house flipping). Everything feels more fluid and realistic, from physically stroking your paint brush on the wall rather than just filling in blocks, to laying down individual tiles. The demolition mechanic is also vastly superior; you can now create precise holes and there’s a lot more control over what you can do (on the walls that you can demolish).
I do have some qualms with the detail design system, however. When you select an object in the store, you can press [E] to open up more detailed design options. These include picking materials, patterns and basically switching the look of the whole object asides from its size and shape. The only problem is that this menu is really glitchy and I’m hoping this is fixed in the full release because it was almost impossible to use in its current state, especially when designing the rugs and bed covers. For some reason, when picking a colour or pattern, the preview will show the last selection you hovered over rather than what you actually picked, so you can’t see the final product until you’ve bought the thing. The menu also takes you through the colour changes first and then takes you to patterns, however I think these should be swapped as it doesn’t make sense to pick your primary and secondary colour before you know how they’re going to be used. Not to mention this whole system is incredibly fiddly and it’s not clear how to go back to switch the colours if you’ve changed your mind after selecting the pattern. This menu section needs some serious flipping before release.
Further quality of life suggestions include changing the way panels are previewed in the store menu; as, because they’re shown inside a box, you really can’t see what you’re picking. I also noticed that some menu items will appear and disappear depending on what room you’re in – as there’s a filter function on the store anyway, there’s simply no need for this. There also doesn’t seem to be an easy way to change the standing position when placing objects – this especially applies to books as you can only lay them flat on a shelf. I found this very strange indeed.
Finally, I also had some qualms with the store options in general – though I’m completely aware (and hoping) that this only applies to the demo. Despite the huge variety of colour and material changing options at your disposal, I still felt somewhat limited in what was on offer. This especially applies to rugs, as there’s only one available. I also found it strange that there were no curtains in the game either or framed pictures, just posters (especially because framed pictures are included in the trash the game prompts you to sell).
Despite this, when you compare the House Flipper 2 demo to the first House Flipper game, it’s a vast improvement both mechanically and visually. I’m really impressed with what Frozen District has done in their sequel – the demo just needs some flipping before this product will be fully ready for release.
Jess played the House Flipper 2 demo on PC with a review code. House Flipper 2 will release later this year.
