Low-Budget Repairs is a first person DIY simulator developed by Gray2RGB and published by Simplicity Games & PlayWay S.A. Set in 1990’s Poland; you’re gifted a house by your dear old aunt. The house turns out to be a bit of a fixer-upper. It becomes quickly apparent that you’ll need to learn a multitude DIY of skills to make the house even somewhat habitable. In this demo, which is available now on Steam, you’ll pick up the basics of painting, plastering, tiling and couch removals to give you a taste of what the full title has to offer. Available for full PC release via Steam on 13 August 2026 with price yet to be confirmed. There’s still time for you to join the 1 million players who have already added this game to their Wishlist.
This is more fun than when my wife asks me to do it
When I first watched the trailer for this game I genuinely laughed. That humour continues into this demo immediately and sets the tone as you make your way to your new house. The thing with fixing up a house is you need two very important things. DIY skills and Money. Two things your character has neither of. You quickly find yourself under the tutelage of a local handy man who will show you the ropes. Unfortunately no sooner has he taught you the basics of holding a paint brush, he meets his electrifying end when trying to repair a faulty power outlet.
Being a man who gets the job done by any means necessary, he doesn’t let something as trivial as dying stop him. It just means his advise now comes with an ethereal glow. And what better advise is there than, why try something new on your own house, when you can try it on a clients house and get paid for it.
Gameplay
The game is structured in a story narrative rather than a sandbox environment. This is the demo version however, so the full release may offer different modes. The aim is to learn a new skill at a clients house, get paid for it, then use this skill to continue fixing up your own place. You start of with painting a wall. Then you’ll need to clean up the mess you inevitably make from doing this. You then go on to fill in holes with plaster, grout and re-tile a wall. Then dispose of a couch via the window. The mechanics play similar to Powerwash simulator. I hope from them few sentences you said “well why is that fun?” and then said “ahh, I see”.
You’re advised to make your repairs “good enough” and to then charge the client. In my first play through I made my repairs as good as the game would let me. I would guess in the full game there will be some system around buying supplies and making your money stretch as far as possible. The demo didn’t explore this, so I might be wrong. As you collect your tools, these populate a scroll wheel. The amount of blank slots suggest there’s plenty of DIY mechanics to try out in the full title.
Graphics & Audio
The Graphics are surprisingly good for what I’d expect from this kind of title. I played the game on Ultra settings at 1440p and was very impressed with the level of fidelity. All the characters have full voiceover audio in both English and Polish depending on your selection. When a character talks, it’s clear there has been no attempt to lip-sync with the audio and instead just a general opening and closing their mouths. It wouldn’t even be fair to call that a nitpick as after the first time it happened, it just became part of the games aesthetic and it wasn’t a problem.
Longevity
This is a very short demo. I completed my play though in 30 minutes. I would have liked it to have been longer, but that’s because I was enjoying myself. As mentioned previously, there appears to be a fair amount of tools to unlock, so I would be interested in knowing how long the full game plays for.
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed my super brief time with Low-Budget Repairs. The demo does look different to the game trailer. I hope that means there is so much more content waiting for me in the full release. One thing that did increase my time with the game was the initial loading. The game even makes a joke about how long you’ll be waiting if you boot it from an HDD. For my second play though I moved it over to my NVMe and the load times were night and day. Just something to keep in mind if you come to try this out.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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