First Impression: House Flipper (PC – Steam) ~ Renovations On Top

Steam store page – Official website

Sometimes, you just need to give a game or a concept a chance. You’ll never know if it grows on you or not. When I got a Steam key for House Flipper by being a subscriber to Humble Bundle’s Humble Choice, I was intrigued and interested on how this game is going to work. Are we going to flip the houses ourselves or are we going to run a company that does house flipping? Well, it’s the first. We are going to do the house flipping and decorating. And today, I want to take you on a journey with me to talk about my first impressions of this game in my usual Game Quicky format. Where I first mention the good things, then the bad things to wrap up with a conclusion at the end. Oh, and any comments on my work on this article and/or the game are welcome in the comment section down below.

No need to renovate

In this game, you play as a handy man who cleans and renovates houses. The skill set of your character goes from being a painter, electrician, plumber, interior decorator, carpenter… And your character does everything which for some jobs a (whole) crew does.

Honestly, I knew that I wasn’t too good at interior decorating, and it shows. There are several Christmas levels where you have to decorate the house with a lot of decorations. In a lot of cases, my end result often looks like a quickly thrown together mess. But, here is the strange thing about it. I enjoy decorating the houses.

In terms of difficulty: if you want a challenge, look elsewhere. The focus of this game isn’t in being difficult or providing some challenge. It’s more a sort of sandbox-ish type of game where you have to do certain jobs for people and if you want, improve their houses with for example new furniture or nicer decorated walls. Also, the price you earn goes up depending on the materials used and the amount of upgrades you did to the house. This doesn’t mean that the game isn’t rewarding to play. The before and after pictures you get after a job well done are so enjoyable and rewarding.

There are a lot of things you can do around the house. At the start of the game, you’ll unlock each and every skill by tutorial jobs. After these tutorial jobs, you’ll be able to use these skills in your own house and other jobs. The game can get somewhat repetitive if you don’t use the skill/perk system.

The perk system is a great system that helps you do certain tasks more efficient and faster. Image being able to paint three sections of wall at the same time instead of one. Or being able to upgrade your broom to clean faster (To be honest, I wish cleaning worked similar in the real world. Just heaving to wave a mop in the direction of the mess and voilà). Each skill/category has 9 perks in 3 sections. Each time you preform said skill/category a certain amount of times, you get a skill point with which you can unlock an upgrade. Compare it to the skill tree in Skyrim. This system actually compelled me to 100% each job since that made me get closer to new skill points making the next jobs go more smoothly and faster to do.

The controls of this game work flawlessly. This game also works with a controller, but I honestly prefer the mouse & keyboard combo for this game. I find that I have way better control over the game with the mouse and keyboard compared to the controller.

Visually, this game looks amazing. The game looks somewhat realistic while keeping your typical “game” look. Sadly, there are just a few things that look a bit unrealistic, but these don’t really destroy the illusion too much. Something I really like is how this game takes certain possible phobia’s in consideration. There are cockroaches in this game. But if you suffer from Katsaridaphobia, you can disable them right before you see/hear them for the first time. You can change them in glass shards. And to be honest, I find that the mechanic to clean up the glass shards works better and is a bit easier compared to cockroaches, but that’s such a minor detail.

The music and sound effects in this game are quite relaxing. I feel right at ease and relaxed while I’m cleaning and renovating houses. It fits the game like a glove and the sound effects as well. I wish there were more sound effects for some things like for cleaning, placing wall tiles… But that’s always a delicate balance if you put more sound effects in your game or less. Since, too many sound effects can be overwhelming and make the game “too busy”.

There are two styles of gameplay. You can either do jobs where you have a certain requirement of things that need to do be done. This is sort of the adventure mode of the game. Honestly, I have spent most of my time playing this game with the job system. Since, you can use that access money with the other mode. In this mode, you can play on the housing market and really buy, renovate and sell houses. You always have a list of potential buyers and trying to match a house to their needs with their live reactions at the side is a real interesting puzzle.

Now, if you are interested in this game and want to get even more out of it… Well, you can expand this game with additional DLC. You can access most of the main content without the DLC and I can still tell you that this game is still a lot of fun without the DLC. Every DLC adds a handful of missions, new items and new mechanics and expand the game even more. The only negative I have is that the DLC’s are a tad bit expensive in my opinion. I would find a more fair price to be €9,99 instead of €12,5. But oh well, it’s clear that a lot of effort has been put into them and if you are really enjoying the game, I think the DLC is worth it.

This game auto-saves at the interval you set in the options’ menu. And if you leave in the middle of a job, you can continue it when you boot the game back up again. There are some bugs with the cloud saves, but one of the main forum threads has a solution for that. But, the amount of options and things like that in this game is just amazing. You can set almost anything to your hand and I love it.

Something I also really enjoy in this game as well are the achievements. They add additional challenges and charm to the game. They add some replay value, and they even make some jobs unique. Since, if you only stick to the requirements to finish the job… Some achievements can be easily unlocked by later jobs.

Now, something that is amazing is that this game also supports the Steam Workshop! So, if you don’t find what you are looking for in the base game or DLC… You can visit the workshop and look at the over 16000 items on it.

Renovations needed

Overall, the UI is close to perfect. But, at this moment of writing, the text entered into the tablet has some minor delay. It’s also not easy to remove everything at once. Something like a blinking cursor in the search field when you want to type in it would go a long way. Sadly, there are other minor things like that in the visuals. For example, the long grass at your home stops at a certain line. Near the hedges, actually. Another thing in terms of visuals and UI is that sometimes, it’s a pain finding the exact spot of e.g., dirt on the mini-map. In very rare cases, the task list or the mini map is saying that there is still stuff to do while there actually isn’t.

This game is translated in a lot of languages. I love this fact, since it makes the game a lot more accessible. Maybe, I might be extremely strict on this, since I’m an editor for the Dutch/Flemish translation of WordPress… But, the Dutch translation has various typos and inconsistencies. From wrong use of verbs to not using capitals in menu’s. Thankfully, the English version of this game works extremely well and still, I find it extremely impressive that this large game with so much text is translated in so many languages.

The overall quality of the translation is fine, but I honestly think that in an update, they should let various language experts go over the translation since I think there is a lot that can be polished up and improved. Since, if you aren’t well versed in English and know what everything means or what different objects are called, you might have problems with this game.

Overall, the camera works perfectly. Since, this is a first person game, you have full control over it. Sadly, in some montage sections, the camera dips quite weirdly. These moments are thankfully extremely rare and are mainly caused when you do the assembly in a different order. Knowing what the next steps are or going out of the assembly process and going back in usually fixes these minor camera goofs.

There are some minor things that could be communicated to the player better. The best example I can give is in the painting. In a lot of cases, like in the assembly process, you hear a little sound effect when you are finished with a step. You don’t get that with painting. When your wall is done, you don’t get a small notification in the corner or something. Of course, this might be because of the perk that you don’t waste paint on already painted walls but still… It should have more communication.

Like how tasks disappear way too quickly from the small to-do list on the right side of the screen. Give the player some time to see and realize which task they just completed. The task disappears when the jingle of task completed plays.

But the biggest offender of not communicating is the demolition. It’s not easy to fully destroy a wall and know what’s going to disappear or which pieces are waiting on you to hit with your hammer. I honestly think this should be improved upon since it makes this game a tad bit annoying sometimes. A great start should be unable to build a wall in that spot and have the offending still to destroy bricks flash or turn in red or another color. A similar fix would be helpful if you are unable to find that last dirty spot on the windows. Since, the lighting there sometimes makes it extremely hard to spot sometimes.

Sadly, some mechanics are a bit too finky sometimes. If you buy a shelving unit and try to place items on it without a ladder… Oh boy, it’s no easy to put items higher than eye height. Or that if you pick up tiles, and you want to change to different tiles, you first have to remember to lay the remainder down. Thankfully, as soon as I got “used” or knew my way around these little quirks, these problems didn’t annoy me that much anymore.

The invoice – Conclusion

I never expected this game to be so much fun. It’s an enjoyable relaxing time waster that fans of casual games, simulations should give a shot. I’m quite certain that if you enjoy building aspects of games, you’ll enjoy this game as well.

Now, this game isn’t perfect. There are some things that should be polished up. It’s such a shame seeing this amazing title with some rough edges. Especially when there is so much love and soul put into this game. And it pains me that most of the negatives are almost nitpicks. I think that an update where things are polished up, mechanics are made more consistent with the other mechanics… That would be a very welcome update.

Overall, this game is a relaxing enjoyable game. It’s mindblowing how the game handles so many combinations and mechanics so well. The expansiveness of this game is so broad that I can see myself coming back from time to time after a stressful day at work to wind down. (By doing chores in a way, but hey…) While the game has its problems, some textures, and models looking a bit too out of date… There are a lot of other things like two different game modes that more than make up for it.

It’s quite clear that this game is a passion project by the developers and the love and attention to detail is shown in the game. When writing this first impression/review, I had a really hard time finding actual negatives in this game apart from several technical things that can be improved by a few patches.

I found this game at the perfect moment. I was looking for a more relaxing game I could play to wind down when I’m over stressed or had a busy/hard day at work… And then booting up this game and hearing the calming music and being able to let my creativity flow and create and improve houses… If you got interested in reading this article or looking at gameplay video’s, give it a go.

If you enjoy games like the Sims or building in Minecraft or more relaxing games, I would highly advise this game. While I totally understand that this game isn’t for everyone, it did click with me, and I’m still so surprised that this €20 game has so much value and polish. Now I’m so curious to see where the active developers are going to take this game next.

And with that said, I have said almost everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Advertisement

First Impression: Terraria (PC – Steam) ~ The Adventure Of Digging

Steam store – Official website

I know I was going to write another article this week, but I felt that I was pushing myself creatively too much so I decided to let my readers decide on which game I was going to write next. Twitter polls only give me 4 options and Terraria won. So, Terraria. A game that quite recently got it’s “final content update” not too long ago. So, in it’s “final form” is this game (still) worth playing? Let’s take a look at the game together in this article while I talk about my own opinion on the game and invite you to leave a comment with your opinion on this content of this article and/or the game. 

Editorial note: Review written while playing v1.4.1.2

The Adventure of Digging

There is no real story in this game. This game is an open world sandbox game. This game gets compared to games like Minecraft. Some even call(ed) it Minecraft 2D. But let me tell you, there is a lot more to this game than just a “simple Minecraft clone in 2D”.

The amount of differences in gameplay mechanics is so huge you can’t really compare Minecraft and Terraria a whole lot. I only use the comparison to say things like: “If you don’t know what Terraria is, think of Minecraft in 2D with some extremely interesting mechanics, richer combat, more bosses…”

I think it’s high time to talk about the “story” that exists in this game. Since there is some sort of a story in this game. I’m not going to talk too much in-depth about it, but if you want to know more… then I invite you to read the lore page on the Terraria Wiki. While in-game, you won’t really encounter this story so it’s an interesting additional piece of content for this game.

I’m going to apologize in advance if I compare this game a lot to Minecraft since this article comes from somebody who has been playing Minecraft for years upon years (since Beta 1.4 in 2011) and only recently got into Terraria. I have played it with some friends in the past but rarely on my own.

Now, I think this puts me in an position where I can take an interesting angle while reviewing/talking about this game. I think that’s it’s going to be very clear as soon as you read the following paragraphs. Now, this might mean that some things won’t get reviewed too in-depth to keep true to the theme of the article.

Terraria outdigs Minecraft

I honestly enjoy Terraria more in the music department. While Minecraft has an amazing soundtrack, I feel that Terraria uses it’s music in a better way. Honestly, it has been quite some time since I played Minecraft with the in-game music simply I find Minecraft a bit too silent. But it’s quite rare to have a silent moment in Terraria. Also, it has a lot of unique music for each type of biome, boss and if you are underground or above ground…

Something I adore Terraria for is the fact it solves the issue a lot of players have with the early game grind. So, it works like this. When creating a character and when you create a world, you have to choose if you either play on Journey, Easy, Medium or Hardcore. If the world and character matches, you can enter the game. And here is the thing, you take your items and inventory with you.

So this means that you can take your strongest gear to a new world if you want to. That also means you can skip over the whole early game grind and directly get into the good stuff if you want. The only thing I could complain about this mechanic is that the menu UI is a bit clunky in that regard. I would have loved if the character selection screen and the world selection screen where combined. That would help switching between Classic and Journey mode so much easier. It also means you can play both Crimson and Corruption worlds with the same gear and character.

If you use a character created in the “Journey” difficult, you can even duplicate items when you have collected enough of a certain material. For example, if you collect roughly 400 pieces of a certain wood type, you can duplicate it. And guess what, this mechanic also transfers over to other worlds with the same character. You also have more control with this duplication mechanic like controlling time, weather, strength of the enemies among other things. Compare it a bit to commands in Minecraft with the duplication mechanic as an additional mechanic.

At first, I was afraid that this duplication mechanic was going to be overpowered. But I enjoy trying to collect every single variant that there is. There are a lot, but I mean a lot of items in Terraria, it’s not even funny.

Exploring and adventuring in Minecraft can be a lot of fun. Yet, at the moment of writing I feel that Terraria has a lot more to explore and do. Don’t get me wrong here, since it’s only by a slim margin. I feel that the dungeons and the progression is just a bit better implemented in this game than in Minecraft. But, I’m afraid that more big content updates like the Nether Update and Cave & Cliffs might give this point to Minecraft.

Now, something that Terraria nails over Minecraft is the combat. I find that the flow of the Terraria combat mechanics are a lot better than Minecraft’s. Also, there are much more way to fight your enemies than in Minecraft. From swords, throwing knifes, bows, morning star… In combat I love to use my sword for close by enemies and my bow for enemies further away.

There are also more bosses and enemies to fight in this game than in Minecraft. So, you can experiment with the different weapons that you can collect. Some weapons even have a special effect where you can spawn an ally and/or a pet. And then I haven’t started talking about the special armor that allows you to double jump, fly, climb walls….

Since that changes the gameplay quite a lot. There are various items that give you additional movement options and they all are unique and fun to play with. There is nothing to compare it with, since the enchantments in Minecraft compare more to stronger pickaxes or pickaxes of a certain material. Things like a double jump, wings, rocket boots… You have to juggle these items since you have a limited amount of slots to use. You also have the “social slots” that can also change your character’s appearance without showing your armor. The downside to it is that the effects of those items aren’t applied to you during gameplay.

One of the biggest advantages in my opinion is the fact that Terraria is on Steam and can use the Steam Cloud feature. This means that you can easily back-up your saves to the cloud and you don’t have to move files around when you play on another computer. I can only wish Minecraft had a similar system. I’m toying around with saving my worlds in my Dropbox folder but I don’t know how stable that will be.

Both reach the end

Of course, there are things where I can’t pick a precise winner. There are things were I can’t say which game does it better. One of these things are the controls. Both games have amazingly solid controls. I’m purely talking about the PC versions since I haven’t played one second of Terraria on a console platform and I find Minecraft’s interface on console like the PS4 and Switch extremely clunky to use. But that’s my opinion and beyond the scope of this article.

The only minor nitpick I have with the Terraria controls is that I have a bit of trouble getting the grappling hook to work the way I want. But, I rarely use it so I haven’t given myself time to get used to it so yeah, that’s nitpicking.

If we would talk about difficulty, then you could either ask which one is the easier game but I rather ask the balance and progression. Both games have different mechanics and punishments. Both games have amazing difficulty settings so you can play the game at your own pace and difficulty. Both games have very different ways of punishing the player. Both games use beds to skip time and set spawn points of the player. The “biggest” difference is that there are items in Terraria that allows to warp to your spawn points when things get to hairy or your inventory is full. But this is only a one-way trip.

Minecraft has it’s hunger system to juggle while you have to juggle your mana use in Terraria. So picking a winner for who has the best difficulty system and things like that is impossible. Even when you are geared out the nose in both games, there are still things that can ruin your day so yeah.

Also, both games have a sort of achievement system where they teach you the game and nudge you in the right direction.

The next things were I can’t decide a winner is the visuals. While Terraria has a lot more items and animations than Minecraft, I feel that the smaller block pallet in Minecraft pushes the players to be a bit more creative with the items you have.

On one hand, the fact you can dress up your character to whatever you want in Terraria is an amazing feature but the skin layers in Minecraft is something that I have found something amazing to play around with too.

Also, I think it’s not even possible to pick a clear winner in terms of visuals and animations since both games aren’t even played on the same plain. Minecraft’s art needs to look good from every single angle while Terraria’s art “only needs to look good up front”. And both games pull it off extremely well. Biomes feel give the right feeling and the color pallet used in both games give them their own unique feel.

The villager system is something that I can’t find a winner for. Since Minecraft’s Village & Pillage update, the villager trading system is completely reworked with profession blocks and them having to restock. This makes trading now quite interesting since you need to level up your villagers by trading with them. In Terraria, there is this social system. You need to build houses for NPC’s to come and you have to puzzle them together. If you place certain NPC’s close together, it’s possible that you get locked out of certain items. And it also depends on your biome you build the house in. So, yeah. It’s a puzzle on it’s own.

Minecraft outdigs Terraria

Now, there are somethings I prefer Minecraft’s way of doing over Terraria. Also, let me be clear here. The things that, in my opinion, Minecraft does better don’t mean that Terraria’s way of doing it is bad or broken perse. In terms of certain mechanics, there are things where I prefer Minecraft’s way of doing things over Terraria.

One of these things it the fact there is an infinite world in Minecraft and not in Terraria. Terraria’s world is large but when I created five different worlds, I found structures that weren’t there in my other worlds. Maybe it’s just me but I enjoy the fact that everything in the game can be found in the same world. Well, Terraria does have a more enjoyable map-system since you can more easily see everything you have explored so you can easily find your way back to a certain place…

Also, I miss some information from the F3 menu in Minecraft. Things like my coordinates, which biome I’m in… Those aren’t really present in Terraria. There are a few items in the game that give some information like your depth, but it takes up a slot in my inventory… So yeah.

Earlier I said that Terraria has a lot of items. I can also mention that Terraria also uses a ton of crafting stations. Now, if only there was some sort of recipe book like in Minecraft that would tell you which items you can craft and what the recipe is and which crafting station you need to use… That would have been great. I’m so glad that I have a second monitor attached to my PC so I can have the Wiki open when I quickly want to look up something.

But I find that Minecraft teaches the players a bit better with some landmarks and the recipe book on how the game works. For example, when you touch the water, you get the recipe for a boat. Or when you punch down a tree, you get the recipes for the wooden tools.

In Terraria, you have the guide explaining some of the recipes but I find that interface quite clunky to use. Especially since you can’t place workstations to see which items you can craft with them and the text can be barely readable since it’s one color. This UI isn’t the best.

Now there are three nitpicks I have with Terraria. The first is that when you press “esc”, you don’t pause the game. You don’t pause the game when you loose focus either. This let to some deaths, and even one while I was writing this article. But hey, this isn’t such a big deal when you get used to open the settings menu.

The second nitpick is that when you exit the game in Minecraft, you enter at the exact same location when you click the continue button. This isn’t true in Terraria. You enter at your spawn point.

And the 3rd and final one is that I would love to see or hear some drowning damage when you are drowning. Since now it simply slowly costs you health until you go above the water to breathe.

So, I think it’s high time for a conclusion since this article is getting rather long don’t you think?

Is Terraria a good game? 

To answer your question, yes. Terraria is a VERY good game. Is it better or worse then Minecraft? That’s a wrong question in my opinion. If you would ask: “if people who enjoy Minecraft will enjoy Terraria”. That would be a better question. The answer is yes by the way since I’m a great example and I know that there are a few other examples in my friend group as well.

Terraria and Minecraft are two very different games but they have some similar elements. Exploring their world and adventuring in it is an amazingly rewarding experience to play through.

Terraria is an addictive game with it’s amazing visuals and it’s freedom. I have sunken quite a few hours into it before I decided to write this review but I feel that a lot more time will be spent in this game before I decide to give the game a break.

I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys sandbox, adventure, RPG-games like Minecraft or Starbound. If even anything sounded remotely interesting to you, I encourage you to give this game a shot. Since I find that the negatives heavily outweigh the positives for Terraria.

So, with that said I think it’s time to wrap up this article. It was certainly an unique experience to review a game while comparing it to another one. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I would love it if I would be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!