House Flipper 2 is finally coming to consoles roughly 4 months after launching on PC. I’ve got a few dozen hours in the title now and it is a massive improvement over the original in every tangible way. You’ll clean, sell, paint, demolish, and build your way to a state of Zen. House Flipper 2 is much more of a video game than the original, so let’s break down what’s new.
The Style
The first thing you’ll notice in House Flipper 2 is the level of polish. It is far more of a complete video game package than the first title. Gone is the asset store feel to how the home and items within it look and feel. There’s even some light story stuff that I mostly ignored. You’re moving into your parent’s old home and looking for work. Quickly you’ll start cleaning up and redecorating the local populace’s various domiciles.
Phone calls have voice acting though I’m not sure if it was AI-driven or actual people acting. The writing is inoffensive, still, I found myself skipping all phone calls after the first few. They’ll leave a message that auto-plays and keeps the action of cleaning from being broken up. House Flipper 2 for me is much more than just rebuilding homes to get more money, it’s a state of Zen as I follow the game’s mission structure to clean, paint, redecorate, demolish, and build my evenings away as I listen to a podcast or watch a live stream.
While there is a sandbox mode available right away I always gravitate towards the campaign. You’ll start out doing basic cleaning tasks, the occasional paint job, and slowly unlock the various tools you will need to completely redo a home. Alongside the unlock system is a leveling one that gives a solid feeling of progression. It’s not a “numbers go up” one, instead, you do every skill in the game more quickly and it was jarring to start up a new save on Xbox after I had upgraded everything on PC over the past few months.
The Doing
Your main tools early on in House Flipper 2 are your cleaning brush, trash bag, and paintbrush. Your first handful of jobs will see you cleaning people’s homes, unpacking boxes, and doing light room redecorating. Your trusty flipper tool is always there to quickly sell items the owner no longer wants, and with a press of a button, the game will put a yellow highlight on any item your current tool is meant to be used on. One of the bigger changes in the game is how painting works. You will now select a rectangular shape on a wall and paint within it. It works well though both on PC and controller it can feel a bit wonky at times.
House Flipper 2 works on a controller, though it doesn’t feel great out of the box. Using a controller with Hall effect joysticks I set the deadzone to zero and still had an issue with precision because of the aim-acceleration curve. The moment you start moving the reticle it wants to take off like a comet. While it made turning around a pain I ended up lowering the overall turn sensitivity way down on Xbox to compensate for it. On PC the game controls great and hopefully, it won’t take too long after launch for the devs to make it feel more at home on a controller.
House Flipper 2 is exactly what you’d expect, gameplay-wise. You will slowly build your way up to completely renovating homes through a decently long campaign. At any time you can go on the market and buy a new home to flip or turn into your office. I lost hours after buying a new place, completely gutting it, and turning it into my dream house before putting it up on the market for a hefty profit.
Sights and Sounds
House Flipper 2 is a nice-looking title, being a big step up from the routinely drab-looking original. The game doesn’t support HDR on Xbox, at least not during the review period. It does use auto-HDR on PC so I’d recommend playing it there if you have a solid monitor/TV and gaming PC. Performance on console and PC is excellent, feeling as close to a locked 60fps on console as one could hope for. There is a large variety of items you can place throughout a house and in its yard. I never had any slowdown no matter how much I filled a room up with various items.
The music isn’t memorable nor is it ever in the way. It’s a game I routinely had the sound turned down for as it was my go-to chill out as I listened to The Dollop or watched a Jaboody stream, title. It’s pleasant sounding musak that fits the vibe. I ran into no bugs, with my only issue being a lack of precision when using a controller.
Wrapping Things Up
House Flipper 2 is a massive improvement over the first game. While it can have some issues with a controller it’s not enough to keep me from recommending the title. Painting, Planting, Selling, and Flipping has never been a more enjoyably chill vibe than it is here.
House Flipper 2
Played on
Xbox Series X & PC
PROS
- Variety
- Graphics
- Campaign
- Sandbox Mode
CONS
- Controller Precision
Really enjoyed what I played of the first game, but it just isn’t something I’d buy myself. This would have been a great GP addition.
Heading off to the Xbox store to buy it now - played the original on Game Pass and it scratched the Powerwash Simulator itch, but I ran out of jobs and people to make houses for.
This seems to be everything I wanted - prettier, more jobs and can build houses, so I’m sold.
Thanks for the review!
EDIT: Installing now!
Looks nice!
I liked the premise of the first game, but it got repetitive real fast. Glad to see them expand on things, so will pick it up.