House Flipper is a game where creative freedom lets you design houses as you wish to, with the Farm DLC bringing a little more quality of life to the game.
House Flipper was developed by Frozen District, a Polish community-orientated developer group whose focus is mainly on creating games that gamers from any walk can enjoy, and it shows with House Flipper and their earlier title The Tenants. The Publisher PLAYWAY S.A. have some popular titles under them, such as Thief Simulator, Car Mechanic Simulator, and Discovery Gold Rush.
Exercising your creative freedom in House Flipper is easy. Once you have managed to get your perk trees maxed out that is. The game is very slow going in the beginning but luckily, your beginner jobs are easy and provide plenty of opportunities to level up each tree. The perk trees range from cleaning to negotiating with clients, each having its prerequisites for gaining a perk point in them. For example, in the cleaning tree, you must clean a certain amount of items to get a skill point.
Unfortunately, that means every single piece of trash you pick up contributes to that whether you are cleaning a house for a job or because you want to sell the place. This can become extremely tedious after a while but you luckily only have to go through it once. Once the tree is maxed out and you have access to the perks that make life easier such as being able to paint up to five blocks. All that’s left is making enough money so you can go buy your first house.
What is the currency in House Flipper? Well, Frozen District has you covered with an option in the settings to change the currency being used to one of twenty-five different currencies. House Flipper has its own exchange rate between currencies, so each item is a different price depending on the currency chosen. That isn’t the only user-friendly option in settings, and you can also change cockroaches into glass shards instead if you have katsaridaphobia (The fear of cockroaches) or if you just genuinely don’t like cockroaches and bugs in general.
When deciding on what house to buy outside of jobs, you have to remember how much money you will be left with to build that picture-perfect house. Whether you go for a more modern look or more of a gothic-styled house, there is plenty to do with over 30 houses to choose from in the base game.
When playing House Flipper with no DLCs, you can’t do anything for the garden but you still have access to a large variety of furniture and decor for a patio. In House Flipper, whether it’s putting up new walls to make a new room or tearing them down for an open plan, it’s up to you to decide from layout to design how the house is going to look.
House Flipper’s Farm DLC brings in a whole wheelbarrow load of new mechanics for House Flipper fans and a whole lot more freedom in the way you can redesign the various homes you buy. The Farm DLC took over a year to develop and was developed by Frozen Way and published by Frozen District. Frozen Way is another indie Polish development team known for Builder Simulator which was released in June 2022.
The Farm DLC brings in brand-new mechanics that have been long awaited by the fanbase. One of the most awaited mechanics is the architect’s tool. This allows you to build outbuildings that can be connected to existing houses to create more space. The Farm DLC adds three empty plots, which means you will be able to build houses in your designs.
They also added the ability to construct balconies, so if you wish for the main bedroom on the second floor to have its private balcony, you could create it. Of course, no house is complete without a roof, and while there is only only one variant of roof types to build, more will hopefully be added with the next major updates.
Sometimes in House Flipper, some scaffolding just won’t be able to reach up to the spot you either need to clean or paint and so the developers brought in a fun new toy to play around with. The grappling hook is a godsend for when you need to get up to a higher ledge and install a new window. While the grappling hook does have quite a few pro’s to it, its cons are about equal, as sometimes you don’t really stick to the wall or you can end up gliding through the air too fast and end up glitched through the wall and having to walk back into the building you were busy with.
The Farm DLC wouldn’t be true to itself if you couldn’t farm. There is a large range of crops and other items you can use for production. For crop production, the hoe comes in handy. You can create full-scale farm plots, something that was only briefly touched on in the Garden DLC, but it was not to the extent you see in the Farm DLC. Any crops grown are stored away safely and you can either sell them or keep them for decoration. Just imagine a beautifully designed kitchen with some fresh produce as decoration either in a fruit bowl or on the chopping board.
The Farm DLC doesn’t stop there as animals are added. While cats, dogs, and exotic pets were added in the Pets DLC, the Farm DLC adds animals you would expect on a farm such as goats, sheep, cows, and chickens. But one of the most noticeable is the horses as you can actually mount them and run around the plot of land you are on. They have also added new furniture so you can create a full obstacle course for the horses.
The horses aren’t the only pleasant surprise you get. Those who enjoy collecting cars can now buy them in the game and place them down in the garage or out in the open. At the moment the only car is a pickup truck. The cars act like the gates on the property do, allowing you to travel between your bought houses, the various jobs you take, and your office.
When creating designs in House Flipper, you always take photos so you can either share the designs on social media or see how much you have changed up a house. The Farm DLC has added a drone, allowing you to have a bird’s eye view of your house and take photos from a whole new set of angles that you couldn’t before. That’s not the only thing the drone is capable of, as the drone can also be used to look after your crops, from adding fertilizer to watering them, it makes farm work easier.
Even though the Drone is a godsend for those that enjoy letting their inner photographer out, one of the most welcomed mechanics added is the paint gun which allows you to paint a larger surface area on your exterior walls. This considerably cuts down on time spent outside decorating since won’t be spending half an hour just on painting or paneling walls. The paneling mechanic was also upgraded, so you no longer have to panel the wall strip by strip and instead, you can now panel large sections on both the exterior and the interior.
Another surprising mechanic added to the game is a dynamic weather system to go hand in hand with the already existing day-to-night cycle. This brings a realistic touch to the game. For an added realistic touch, being able to sleep in a bed to switch between day and night was also added to the base game of House Flipper.
When you only have the base game of House Flipper, the trees can be an annoyance, maybe there are too many, or they could be blocking a good view in front of a window. The Farm DLC adds a chainsaw that allows you to chop down trees much faster than the tool in the Garden DLC.
There are about nine houses you can buy in Farm DLC and three empty plots. But that’s not the only thing added. There are TEN unique and engaging jobs to do. Each client is voiced over, which makes it more enticing to do them. Each client also has a unique story but they also know one another. This gives the game a general feeling of a close-knit community. The Farm DLC also adds over 1500 more items to the game.
Unfortunately, the Farm DLC does have some major bugs. When building a new house, be careful how many items you add, including animals, as the game can stutter or suffer from performance issues. There are a lot of bugs with the animals as they tend to glitch out, from getting stuck in the doors to the product you pick up from the animals bringing grass into the new barn building you created for housing.
Overall, House Flipper’s Farm DLC is a unique and more quality-of-life addition to an otherwise engaging game that can keep you busy for hours. While there are some obvious bugs, they don’t detract from the overall gameplay but they can still be annoying for those just starting. You can still unleash your inner creative demon and find your style in this home design simulator game.
