I’m sure I’m not the only weirdo who loves watching both hose flipping TV shows, as well as house buying TV shows like House Hunters International. Right?

Well, in that case, I am definitely not the only one who keeps says: I could’ve done a better job at this! Those cabinets DO fit! Those bathroom tiles ARE beautiful and that huge photo of your baby hanging on the living room’s wall IS horrible!

Well, you finally get the chance to put all your skills and ideas to test in House Flipper, a newly released Steam title that gives you exactly this opportunity: to buy the worst houses in the area, renovate and redecorate them, then sell them for a profit. Just hearing the game’s description makes my heart beat like a drum. Dum, dum, dum!

You’ll be a bit disappointed, once you launch House Flipper for the first time, to find out that you can’t just buy one of the ugly houses on sale and flip them, because you don’t have enough money.

Instead, you will have to work your way up a bit by cleaning filth from other houses, installing radiators, taking down walls and preparing a pink baby’s room for a snobby family. It’s all fun, though as this acts as a tutorial for the game, showing you what to do, how to do it and giving you a chance to earn some much needed points in house flipping skills, such as faster mopping, the ability to negotiate prices and so on.

And then, off you are to buying your first home. A small, one bedroom property that is basically a terrible mess infested with cockroaches, where Neanderthals lived. Your job? Turn that junk around and profit, so that you can buy larger houses and sell them for profit. Rinse and repeat. Literally.

There is a ton of freedom offered by House Flipper, although paradoxically there are a ton of limitations. Some completely make sense, like the fact that all items seem to be glued in their place in order to make everything easier; but others don’t really make sense, the most important annoyance being that you can’t do anything about the horrible yards of those soon-to-be beautiful houses. I smell some DLC for the yard renovations and I can only hope it will be free because nobody wants to see companies going the EA way.

But back to renovating and flipping houses, the actual process is an absolute delight! Cleaning all that garbage is insanely satisfying. I personally LOVE cleaning the windows in this game and seeing the great results of my hard work. Actually, if cleaning up your house would be, in real life, as fun and easy as it is in House Flipper, I’d be the tidiest person in the world. Which I am not.

But after cleaning all the debris and filth, the even more fun part begins: repainting the walls, choosing new tiles, new lights, new furniture, new everything.

You have a ton of options to choose from, most pieces being customizable even more with extra features or colors. You have decor items, you have rugs, you have appliances… you have everything you need in order to build your dream house and sell it for profit. (And if you want some help to achieve that, you can check out our tips and tricks for the game).

Although you’re not really building for yourself (you can do that too, but without the profit part), but for the customers. That’s why you have to pay attention to what they like and don’t, what their preferences are and build accordingly. The better you are at meeting all their demands, the higher your profits and the more money you will have for buying and flipping better, larger houses.

The actual gameplay is easy to learn and master, everything being just a few clicks away. You use your personal in-game tablet to interact with everything in the game – mostly buying new stuff for your house, and the mouse is your friend when it comes to choosing the actions you’re about to perform. Easy, fast and flawless!

Of course, most of the role playing element comes from you here. Since it’s a game where you can build and place items anyway you want to and you have an AI judging your performance, you can simply stack up items randomly in a room and call it a day and still have a successful sale.

But the real pleasure comes from you taking the time and creating house that you will enjoy looking at. House Flipper is not about making in-game money as fast as possible and flipping all the properties available in the virtual store.

House Flipper is all about turning that dream of yours – the one we were talking in the intro, about you buying and renovating houses, into reality. It’s about making you happy, keeping you relaxed and incredibly entertained. And that is something few games manage to do, despite their tons of explosions and huge budgets.

House Flipper is, in the end, simplistic and repetitive, but thanks to a plethora of items and options, you can never get bored. Two different people will never build the same house and you won’t even be able to create the same thing twice. It’s just like The Sims, where you basically have to do the same things over and over again, but it’s all the other small options and changes, the career paths you can choose, the clothes you can get, that keep you glued to the screen, thoroughly entertained.

In my opinion, House Flipper is a great game. It’s a brilliant game, actually, for both casual and hardcore players. It’s relaxing and fun and you can never get bored of it. A true gem that you must play right now! And in case you can’t find it, it’s right here: on Steam.

Final rating