I rarely, if ever, play any types of “simulator” games, but after playing the PowerWash Simulator at the end of 2022, I got curious about checking out House Flipper 2 at the end of 2023. I’ve seen lots of positive buzz around the first game and saw how it plays in general, so I knew what I was going into. And it’s… fine, I guess? Not that entertaining for someone who doesn’t love the simulation of jobs games and not as mindlessly fun as PowerWash Simulator. But it’s alright.
The basic premise of House Flipper 2 “story” campaign is very simple – you go through a series of “quests” that have specific requirements and usually involve cleaning, refurbishing and even rebuilding houses. All of the “quests” have clear goals and don’t let you do what the client doesn’t want to do, so in a way it serves as a tutorial of sorts to the possibilities that are available when you unlock the ability to buy and refurbish houses yourself, with no restrictions (there’s a separate sandbox mode just for this too). In that process of titular house flipping, you can do whatever you want with the house and then set it up for the auction to sell it, to get more money to get more houses. And I’ve done it precisely once, found it really boring and never did it again, because… does anything matter? What is being judged, what affects the price you can sell the house for?.. The game doesn’t really explain any of that, in contrast to the extremely handholding quests.
Which is, I suppose, the biggest issue with the title – it’s very inconsistent. Some tasks are fun to do and easy to understand. Some are horrid to do and make little logical sense. There’s a cute idea for special “assembly” missions where you can build furniture, but the camera and camera controls in that mode are some of the worst I’ve seen in decades for seemingly no reason. There are things that the game just fails to explain and if you haven’t played titles that use similar mechanics – good luck figuring it out, I guess.
So, I dunno. I liked doing the “story” (the story and voice acting are actually dreadful) quests, but it wasn’t as meditative and entertaining as PowerWash Simulator. I didn’t like the main “it’s in the title” free form house flipping, but maybe people who are into these types of games will. It’s a fine enough game, but hardly that interesting, unless you’re making sandbox joke houses on purpose, I suppose.