House Flipper 2 Video Game Review

The original House Flipper was released over five years ago. In theory I would not consider myself the target audience for the game. I don’t watch home remodeling shows and wouldn’t consider myself to be very good at decorating or design in general. Despite all of this, I generally enjoyed the original House Flipper. The game excels at being a calming relaxing experience. This is why I was excited to try out the sequel. House Flipper 2 is a good sequel as it improves upon the original in a number of ways even though some people likely won’t like some of the changes. 

The premise of House Flipper 2 is basically the same as the original game. You start the game moving to the small town of Pinnacove. With the help of a friend you start doing various jobs around town as you build up your reputation and bank account. You eventually start to take on bigger jobs and can start to purchase your own properties to flip.

I would say that there are four main elements of the gameplay.

The first is cleanup. To start the game you are mostly responsible for picking up trash and cleaning up messes. To pick up trash you just use a trash bag and click on the trash you want to pick up. Cleaning up involves using your brush and scrubbing the areas with dirt and stains.

You wouldn’t think that cleaning up dirty houses would be all that exciting. Yet for some reason it is oddly relaxing. The gameplay is really simple and requires only a few button presses. It is satisfying though looking at an area that was once really dirty that is now clean. This will clearly not be for everyone, but those who enjoy these type of games should have fun with this aspect of the game.

Next you are responsible for painting and adding tiles, planks and other surfaces to the floors and walls. Applying tiles, planks and other surfaces is easy. Just click on the stack of items you are using to surface. Then point and click where you want to place it. Painting is a little more detailed. You need to fill your paint roller with paint. Then you will hold the mouse button and move your mouse back and forth over the surface that you want to paint.

Personally I had some mixed feeling about this aspect of the game. Tiling and applying other surfaces is fun, but really straightforward. People are probably going to have really mixed feelings about the painting mechanics. I think it actually does a better job making it feel like you are actually painting versus the original House Flipper. The problem is that is can be kind of taxing on your wrist and hand since you will have to move the mouse around a lot to paint a large wall. I would recommend turning up the sensitivity of your mouse as that should help a little. I personally didn’t mind the painting mechanics, but I know some players are going to really dislike them.

Next comes the destruction and construction mechanics. Around the middle of the story you get the ability to tear down and build walls. Tearing down walls is really simple. Just select the section of the wall you want to destroy and hold the mouse to swing your hammer. Building walls is quite different. First you will select a start point. You then move your mouse until you reach the furthest point you want to build along the horizontal plane. Then you will move your mouse up until the wall is as tall as you want. Finally you hold the mouse button until the wall is built.

I didn’t really have strong feelings about either of these mechanics. It is kind of satisfying tearing down walls and seeing the wall crumble after each of your hits. The building mechanic works quite well and is straightforward. It feels like it is missing player input though, as you just have to hold a mouse button until you complete the wall.

The final element of the gameplay involves buying and selling items and furniture. Selling furniture is simple. Just point your sell gun at the item you want to sell. Then just press a mouse button. In the story mode you can only sell certain objects. When flipping or in the sandbox mode, you can sell whatever you want. Buying involves going into the store and picking the item you want to purchase. There is some customization options you can choose from. You then just choose where you want to place the item. In the story mode the game tells you exactly what items to buy. In the other modes you can pick for yourself. Finally some of the story missions have items that have been packed up. You need to open up the boxes and place the objects in the room.

Your enjoyment of this aspect of the game is kind of going to depend on how creative/design driven you are. Technically you can just plop the necessary items in the room and the game isn’t going to know the difference. Those that want to put in the time to actually place items well though have a lot of options. Normally I would consider myself to be one of the type of people who would just plop the items in the room and then move onto the next. I would say House Flipper 2 did a good job trying to make me care about reasonably arranging the rooms. My houses still probably look terrible compared to people with design skills, but I still got a sense of accomplishment out of what I created.

At this point people who played the original House Flipper might think that I missed out on something. A somewhat big component of the original game was an assembly mechanic. Certain furniture and appliances needed to be assembled after you placed them in the room. This game mechanic has been moved out of the main gameplay in House Flipper 2. Instead it was moved to a set of mini games that you can play. These give you various things that you can assemble. You earn stars based on how quickly you create the items and if you make any mistakes. Completing these mini games gives you a discount in the store for the same type of objects.

I am not sure what to think about this change. In some ways I liked the assembly mechanics in the original game. It made setting up the house feel more realistic. Some of these assemblies were kind of fun as well. Others were kind of annoying and I kind of dreaded doing them. The good news is that they are now optional. The mini games are pretty fun and you likely won’t complete them within time on your first attempt. At times I kind of miss the assembly while working on a house though.

Overall I would say that House Flipper 2 is a more streamlined experience than the first game. In a lot of ways I appreciated this. The game seems easier to play and the mechanics are more straightforward. Some of the annoying elements of the original game are gone. It feels like House Flipper 2 is quite a bit more polished than the original game.

I think House Flipper 2’s greatest strength is its laid back feeling. Outside of the timer on the assembly mini games, there is no time constraints in the game. You can take as much time as you want on any of the jobs. There really isn’t any way to fail. You can turn in a job as soon as you get one star. Completing the job at three stars does give you a bigger reward though. I don’t know what exactly it is, but the gameplay does a great job relaxing you. The game is not action packed, but it is oddly compelling. It is really satisfying looking back at a house that was a disaster and comparing it to what you have after you complete your job. If you enjoyed the gameplay of the original game, I think you will really enjoy House Flipper 2 as well.

There are three main gameplay modes in House Flipper 2. The mode I gravitated towards was the story mode. This basically involves a number of jobs to complete. In these jobs you will go from room to room doing certain tasks. When you enter each room you can press tab and see all of the jobs you have to complete in the room. If you aren’t sure what jobs you haven’t completed in a room, there is a button you can press which highlights what tasks you still have to complete with your currently selected tool.

For the most part I enjoyed the story mode. The jobs are fun and varied enough where it doesn’t feel like you are doing the same thing in every house. I kind of wish this mode was a little longer though. I would say that it took me around ten or so hours to complete all of the missions. This was with me taking my time and getting three stars on each job. If you rush it will take a decent amount less time. While I enjoyed the story mode, I wish it was a little longer.

The next main mode is the flipping side of the game. After a while you get access to purchasing houses. You can then enter these houses and fix them up. These work similar to the story mode except you aren’t given any specific tasks you have to complete. You are going to want to clean up the house and fix any serious problems. After that you decide what you want to do. When you are done fixing up the house, you can then sell it (hopefully for a profit).

I had mixed feelings about this mode. Parts of it I enjoyed where it felt like the story jobs. I kind of wish there was a list of tasks to complete though. This is where the fact that I have no design skills whatsoever comes into play. I don’t really know how to design a house, and with no direction I had to just guess what to do. I tried to do the best I could making something that I think looked good. It would have been nice if the game gave you some indication on what customers were looking for. Therefore you should just design the house how you want, and hope it is something that the buyers’ want. A little direction in this area would have been really useful.

Finally the game has a sandbox mode. This mode is basically a design mode. You just create whatever house you want from the ground up. As I am not really a designer I didn’t really spend much time in this aspect of the game.

While the story mode only takes around ten hours to complete, if you are the type of person that likes designing houses; there is unlimited amount of replay value in the game. I never really got into the design side of the original game so I can’t compare the amount of customization options between the two games. Some players seem to think there are less options in the sequel. While this is disappointing, I still think you can get a ton of time out of the game if you are the type of player that just likes to design different houses.

On the whole I enjoyed House Flipper 2. In some ways it is better and in other ways it is worse than the original game. On the positive side the game seems more streamlined and polished than the original. This makes the game easier to get into and more satisfying as a whole. House Flipper 2’s greatest strength is just that it is really relaxing playing the game. I wouldn’t say it is the type of game that I would normally play, but it is such a change of pace and surprisingly satisfying. If you enjoyed the original House Flipper, I see no reason why you wouldn’t enjoy the sequel as well.

Some players may be disappointed by some of the changes though. A few of the mechanics have been changed. While I kind of like the painting tool, others will really dislike it. Others will miss the assembly mechanics even though they were moved to separate mini games. Otherwise there might not be quite as many customization options as the original game.

My recommendation for House Flipper 2 comes down to your thoughts on the premise and the original game. If you have no interest in the premise and didn’t care for the original House Flipper, I don’t think anything will change for the sequel. Those who find the premise intriguing or enjoyed the original game, should enjoy House Flipper 2 and should consider picking it up.