Built on the foundations made by House Builder in 2024, House Builder 2 paves its way into the simulation genre. Developed by FreeMind S.A. and published by PlayWay S.A., House Builder 2 is available now on Steam.
Let’s Get Building!
House Builder 2 was released in early access, with the intention of developing it using feedback from its players. Therefore, this preview is based on its current early access state.
Gameplay
As the name suggests, the premise is, of course, to build houses! While the first task gives you a teeny introduction into the game by building fences, it isn’t long until you are chucked into the deep end. By the second task, you are well on your way to building your first house.
After being given the blueprints of what the customer wants, you then need to travel to the local warehouse to collect your materials. Customers will provide you with an advance to buy these materials. Once you have collected everything that you need, you then need to plan correctly to ensure all the materials make it back.
Like a game of Tetris, you need to fit the materials into the back of your van to transport them back to the site. If not secured correctly, then you will soon see materials flying off the back of your truck on your drive back.
The best lesson to learn here is: “prior preparation prevents poor performance”. Make sure you are fully prepped with all the correct materials; otherwise, you will be making a journey back to the warehouse. Which, trust me, isn’t a fun realisation.
Once back at the site, you can begin getting your hands dirty. Here, you will build the foundation, structure, and put on the finishing touches. Although it is just a point-and-click exercise, it is soothing to watch a build from start to finish.
Laying The Foundations
As you progress through the game, more features will unlock. Soon, you will be plastering, painting and moving furniture around. By having all these features in one game, it goes further than the likes of House Flipper. It offers more gameplay features by having the mechanics of building the house beforehand. However, the mechanics of the game itself are a way off from those demonstrated in House Flipper. House Builder 2 certainly has the foundations to rival; however, a lot of improvement is needed before we see that.
Whilst house building is, of course, at its core, House Builder 2 goes further. As tasks pop up throughout the game, there is a bit of variety. While the beginning of the game focuses on the core mechanics, it isn’t long before it goes further. Tasks then begin to show involving mowing gardens, building swimming pools, and even helping out the less fortunate. Further to this, there are also side quests at your disposal. This includes fixing up a family’s car and searching for collectables. It adds a bit of variety to the game, one in which you do not always expect
Another fun addition to the game is the easter eggs that are to be discovered. I won’t go into too much detail, but I think those who have watched the American Pie franchise will get this easter egg that is seen below.
Graphics & Audio
House Builder 2 describes itself as a ‘low-poly environment’, which gives you an idea about its graphical ability. Because it describes itself as this, there isn’t an expectation going into the game that this is going to be a graphical masterpiece. However, when you compare this to its original counterpart, House Builder, you can become somewhat disappointed. House Builder gave a realistic feel, while House Builder 2 is like Bob the Builder. It would’ve been nice to see House Builder 2 build on the graphical style seen its predecessor.
Nevertheless, the environment does the job, albeit with some issues. As I have previously said, the game has been released in early access. The idea of early access is for players to help identify any issues which the developer can fix. Almost instantly, I was running into some graphical bugs, including my car parking wherever it wanted!
It must be said that the developers are actively adding improvements, and fast. Within a couple of days of release, the team has already introduced fixes for some of the bigger issues identified.
Longevity
Due to the nature of early access, there will be constant improvements and additions. However, at this time, there is still plenty to get your hands dirty with. So far in my play-through, there have been a variety of different tasks. I am still eager to continue playing. I cannot give an approximate time on how long the game will take to ‘complete’. However, there does seem to be plenty of life in the game, in which there will be plenty of playtime.
Final Thoughts
House Builder 2 has so much potential, however, it is not quite hitting the spot at the moment. That being said, House Builder took some time to become a very good game. Hopefully, House Builder 2 will have the same ending. Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that this is currently in early access. Once the game becomes more developed, I will potentially do a full review to see if anything has changed!
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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