After its success of being the number one most-played demo during Steam Next Fest 2023, beating out the likes of Lies of P and Viewfinder, House Flipper 2 has now hit the market. Enter the sequel’s open-plan living room for a tastefully updated, relaxing, renovating good time. Here are ten reasons why House Flipper 2 is an improved fixer-upper experience over its predecessor.
Sandbox Mode
The biggest addition to the game is the new Sandbox Mode, which allows players to start from the absolute beginning and build their own dream home. This mode gives you a plot of land and lets your imagination run wild. If you’ve always wanted a home cinema in your bathroom, now is the time to see how that might look.
Build it, share it
Once you’ve built your grand design, you can now share it with others on the mod.io platform. Or, if you have foreman’s block, have a look around some community creations for inspiration. There’s even the option to create missions for other players by crafting and sharing a proper fixer-upper challenge, with leaves and trash everywhere, and marks on all the walls for them to set right.
A new flipping tale awaits
For those who also want to live the life of a Flipper, a new story campaign awaits. Start afresh by taking on small jobs to build up your reputation and bank account before progressing on to bigger, more elaborate projects. No prior knowledge of the first game is required because your in-game NPC friend, Tom, is only a phone call away and ready to offer help, information about the neighborhood houses, and juicy gossip about their residents.
New setting
Speaking of the neighborhood, House Flipper 2’s new campaign is set in the picturesque seaside town of Pinnacove. With leafy suburbs, sandy beaches, promenades, and verdant forests, this small fishing village boasts a nice assortment of locations for renovating and developing on. The three region types available at launch are suburban, coastal, and forest. Developer Frozen District has also shared promising plans for three more region types post-launch.
More than a new coat of paint
With a new setting, and five years between games, a new and improved look was needed. House Flipper 2’s graphics have had a fresh lick of paint. The level of detail is vastly improved, with individual objects looking more distinct from one another. Also, rather than continuing with the photorealistic style of the first game, House Flipper 2’s graphical design is a bit softer, with a cheerier, brighter overall feel while still maintaining realism.
New details
This new style and level of detail extend all the way down to the individual objects in the world. It’s now possible for you to tweak the look of all kinds of things. If a chair’s color clashes horribly with the wallpaper you’ve picked, it’s easy to adjust both so that you can find a match. Or if a rug’s garish pattern makes you feel dizzy, a quick hop into a menu will prevent anyone from calling the interior design police on you.
Snapping to attention
House Flipper 2’s improvements are more than a new coat of paint though. Deep within the inner workings of the game, a new grid system makes it super easy for you to place objects so that they are in just the right place for maximum aesthetic value. Find yourself slipping into a zen-like state as you meticulously arrange books on a shelf in color order. It’s also possible to adjust the heights of the floors and ceilings for cases when you need to give a hung painting a little more border clearance or fit an extra shelf in.
New jobs, new tools
House Flipper 2 also has some new tools peaking out of its belt. To let your inner house builder out and run wild, a new set of landscaping tools has been introduced. These will allow you to manipulate the terrain to your heart’s content and even let you build downwards, giving you the option to build bunkers and basements. There is also a new Trash Generator tool that will let you really muck up any house you build, setting a challenge for other would-be flippers to come in and work their magic.
Finally, one small feature that unlocks a whole new dimension of gameplay – trashbags have been introduced in House Flipper 2! Picking up rubbish in the first game was just a case of clicking on it to make it disappear. Now, you get a trash bag and once it’s full, you can lob it and try and score a three-pointer in a nearby wheelie bin. Seeing how far away you can shoot and score from is very satisfying.
Upgrades
The classic House Flipper tools have also been revamped. The Flipper Tool is now the Architect Tool. It still allows you to sell items at the push of a button, but now it can copy the properties of an item and paste them directly onto other items. For example, if you spent several minutes getting a chair to look exactly how you want it, you can just copy those settings and paste them onto the rest of the chairs in your living room for that matching set look. The paint roller has also received some improvements and can now be adjusted in size so you can get bare walls coated a lot quicker. All items work in diagonal directions too, so you now have a lot more control over the finer details of decoration.
Making good
Finally, there is a wider variety of jobs and missions to take on in House Flipper 2. There are the standard cleaning jobs – with the bonus of being able to fling the trash bags around now – up to full house renovations. However, more work will be required to really make good on a property. You’ll now be tasked with repairing holes in walls and roofs, as well as wiring up all of the lovely electronics you have placed tastefully around the house. Thankfully, the system is simple and intuitive, so you don’t need to sweat about cable management.
There is also an improved perk system. This means that the more certain skills are used, the more perk points become available for that type of activity which can be spent on buffs, like speeding up your cleaning speed.
All of this adds up to House Flipper 2 being a big step up from the original. New mechanics, better graphics, and an entirely new sandbox mode result in a creative and relaxing experience like no other. You can buy House Flipper 2 on Steam today.