You’re spoiled for choice these days if you love games about doing chores, which I guess I can’t fault you for given the thousands of hours I’ve spent making numbers go up in various MMOs. If cozy cleanup games like Unpacking or PowerWash Simulator aren’t enough to sate your hunger for affectionately simulated mundanities, you may want to check out House Flipper—it is free for the next few days, after all.
You can claim a free-to-keep copy of the game on Steam through April 6, where it and its numerous DLC packs are discounted for the storefront’s House and Home Fest. If you get hooked, the Flipper Bundle with all the game’s paid DLC is also on sale for just over $36. The sequel might be out with a Scooby-Doo DLC and everything, but you can’t beat free.
Another reason to claim this is that the remastered version is set to release later this year, and anyone who owns the game will get a discount based on how many DLCs they have. You can read the price breakdown here, but if you just get the base game that amounts to four dollars off the remaster’s $50 price tag. It’s not nothing!
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If you aren’t familiar with House Flipper, it’s a home renovation sim where you bust down walls and clean up messes in grimy, devastated living spaces. Once they look spiffy enough, you sell them at a profit and buy new ones. The DLC expansions throw in extra furniture, pets, and new settings altogether, with one free DLC taking you to a cyberpunk city.
While it certainly appeals to a particular niche, it won’t be for everyone. “There’s a definite satisfaction in taking a gross room and making it look nice, and it’s pretty cool that you can knock down (and rebuild) walls,” said PC Gamer senior editor Christopher Livingston in his impressions of the game back in 2018. “But I just don’t find the act of slowly and mechanically painting and cleaning much fun, especially with the knowledge that my actual house could do with a bit of that.” But for free, it can’t hurt to try.
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