Making beautiful living spaces in House Flipper seems to be something people enjoy. It’s like The Sims, a place of aspiration and creative joy. But what about a game for those of us who make awful crap heaps for their Sims? Who pinch every penny?
Looks like that’ll soon exist: Low-Budget Repairs is an upcoming game where you’re a handyman doing renovations in 1990s Polish apartments, and your job is to fulfill the letter of the contract, not the spirit, so you can make as much money as possible.
I’m pretty in love with the trailer, to be honest, which looks like perfect physical comedy. It’s House Flipper by way of Surgeon Simulator. Do it all wrong. Do it badly. Ratty old couch has to go? Throw it out the window. Paint too expensive? Water it down so it goes further.
I am especially enamored by the section of putting up wallpaper. Wallpaper is awful. Why did people in the ’90s love wallpaper so much? I will never understand this and I was there for the ’90s. (I wasn’t paying attention.)
In between and during jobs you’ll also make trips to the hardware store for more materials and tools. You’ll be, of course, incentivized to choose the cheapest stuff possible rather than lasting fixes. Duct tape, for example, serves perfectly well to fix a leaky pipe rather than a whole new segment of expensive plastic piping.
Perhaps nothing exemplifies this game’s spirit more than the section of the trailer on laying tile. Could it be perfectly aligned and held up with the right amount of cement? Sure. Would that take more time and effort? Absolutely. So just get it up there. Cover that wall. What’s a few misaligned pieces and little gaps are the corners?
If that sounds like your jam, there’s a playtest running now with an unfinished version to play. You can find Low-Budget Repairs on Steam.
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