House Flipper 2 and the Open Roads of narrative adventures
An ode to one of my favourite genres and why I only managed to get through seven hours of the just-released Home Improvement-sim
Review: House Flipper 2
Developed by Empyrean and published by Frozen District
Rating: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
That PowerWash Simulator is a thing — and a really popular one to boot — should really tell you all, or at least most, of what you need to know about the public appetite for simulator games. House Flipper 2 (the sequel to 2018’s House Flipper) released on PC last year and made its way onto PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S last week. As per the promotional materials, the new version promises to include all the “hotfixes that the PC version didn't have upon release, plus two updates: Spring Update and Floor is Lava Update”.
I hadn’t played the original game, but had heard of its existence. The idea of a home renovation and design game seemed, for want of a better word, logical. It’s a great space to be represented in interactive form, given the limitless possibilities available. And so when the opportunity to review House Flipper 2 presented itself, I was only too pleased to oblige.
Out of the blocks, it’s a game that looks very good. Right from the very opening of the game that sees you (in first-person view, like the rest of the game) wake up in a room and receive a phone call, the look and feel of the in-game world is distinctly high-quality. And it’s no surprise because unlike House Flipper (where all of the assets were premade and bought from Unity, Unreal and other assets stores), developer Empyrean built brand new assets for House Flipper 2.
After receiving that phone call, you make your way to your first destination in the seaside town of Pinnacove and begin cleaning up a house. I was taken back to my early experiences with Stardew Valley, in terms of going square by square to clean, harvest, sow seeds etc. The process of working methodically across a grid is quite therapeutic, and this is no different in House Flipper 2. Whether I was cleaning up messes, tidying up clutter, tossing out garbage or painting walls, I was consumed by a sense of relaxed calm.
The game features a regular “story mode” version of the game and a sandbox mode. The former is an experience guided by tutorials, gentle handholding and a super basic storyline to keep things ticking along, while the latter, as the name suggests, lets you off the leash and free to build, destroy and/or rebuild whatever you desire. It’s likely this is the mode that will keep most players occupied for a majority of their time with House Flipper 2.
Thus far, I’ve spent most of my time on the “story mode” and have enjoyed the rudimentary interactions with townsfolk, the type of assignments I’m offered, the variety of tools to unlock and so on. However, as the more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed in the subhead at the top, I only made it through seven hours of the game. And by the time I arrived at that seventh hour, I was a gnashing and fuming mess — a far cry from that picture above of relaxation imbued by a zen-like calm.
And the reason for this metamorphosis was the absolutely dire jank with which House Flipper 2 is infested. Certain activities like cleaning or painting, as noted above, are quite enjoyable. A major reason for this is the fact that your onscreen persona does almost exactly what you instruct her/him to do in these modes. Now when it comes to the simple (but a staple of the game) task of moving objects and placing them somewhere, it’s a whole different story. I would describe it less as a lack of precise controls than the game just throwing up a random number generator and deciding where the object should go… regardless of your intentions.
I understand the game handled better with keyboard and mouse on the PC, and I find that quite believable since there’s very little possibility that things could be much worse. As of now, I’ve enjoyed the concept of House Flipper 2, the setting, the level of interactivity and of course, the soothing soundtrack. However, the absolute asininity of the controls, particularly when attempting to pick up and place things has made it very difficult for me to continue in the game’s current form.
I eagerly await a patch that makes controls a bit more receptive and precise. And at that point, I will revisit my assessment. For now, I’m afraid, this is it: A game with great ideas waylaid by terrible controls.
Game being reviewed on Xbox Series X. Review code provided by publisher
Open Roads and the magic of narrative adventures
Alongside the time I spent cleaning, painting and building houses last week, I also took a brief but memorable journey with Tess and Opal Devine in Open Roads. I first heard of this title back during The Game Awards in December 2020, and over the months there would be precious little in terms of tangible information about the game.
I’ll spare you the forensic analysis; suffice it to say the game eventually released at the tailend of last month across platforms. I played the Xbox Game Pass version, and was a bit miffed to see the credits roll right when I thought the story was getting somewhere.
As I sat and ruminated over the past 270-or-so minutes (yes, it was really that short) that seemingly blew past me, a number of thoughts crossed my mind. First and foremost, are there multiple endings? Next, and tracing my steps backwards, could I have done things differently and sent the story in a different direction? And third, did I miss something? This was nothing new, because these are my exact thoughts after I complete any narrative adventure.
If x then, if y then…
If the genre sounds alien, here’s some background on the world of narrative adventure games. This is a unique bunch of games that focus on crafting immersive stories that players can dive into through exploration and interaction. What sets these games apart is their commitment to storytelling. As you traverse these games, you'll encounter a mix of decision-making, puzzle-solving, and exploration challenges. These elements don't just push the story forward, they’re designed to pull you deeper into the game's universe, making every choice and action a part of the unfolding story. At the heart of a good narrative adventure game is the ability to weave a compelling story driven by your decisions and actions.
Returning to Open Roads, it’s the story of a mother (Opal) and daughter (Tess), who dig into the grandmother’s (Helen) life after the latter’s passing. And over the course of the next three hours, you’ll go up and down on an emotional seesaw as you try to figure out Helen’s past, and in doing so, learn some things about Opal and Tess. The story unfolds over two separate user interfaces: One, a first-person walking simulator rendered in realistic 3D and two, comic book-style cutscenes that contain the conversations and choices.
Overall, it was an entertaining little game without multiple endings and conversation choices that serve to flavour your journey, rather than influence it. Which is fine, because the story I experienced was gripping and shaped in equal parts by what was playing out on screen and what was happening in my mind. And ultimately, isn’t that what we really play narrative adventures for?
It’s a combination of what you think might be going on and what’s happening in front of you that makes this sort of game so compelling. Take for instance (particularly since it is the peg of this piece) Open Roads. While Tess is trying to piece together the clues she picks up to make sense of her grandmother’s story, you are attempting to piece together the overall story in your mind — which will in turn inform your decisions.
I should add at this point that this isn’t publisher Annapurna Interactive’s first rodeo when it comes to well-executed stories of mother-daughter relations. Narrative adventure aficionados would do well to check out Hindsight and A Memoir Blue. Neither of these push the envelope graphically, cinematically or in a gameplay sense. Also and despite my grumbling at the top of the piece, both these games are also around two-and-a-half to three hours in length. They also don’t feature particularly trying gameplay loops, however, where they pack their respective punches is in the story department. As you’d expect with games of this nature. But they are both fantastic experiences that stay with you long after you’ve rolled the credits.
Why I play
Before I give you the impression that all narrative adventure titles feature minimalist gameplay, I should point out that one of the most interesting aspects of this genre is that despite being roughly under the same umbrella, games vary vastly in terms of their gameplay loops. Now whether that’s the extremely basic found phone game MR. ROBOT 1.51exfiltratiOn, the more complex Telltale titles (such as The Wolf Among Us or The Walking Dead games) or those in the Life is Strange series, or the deeply fleshed-out gameplay loops found in Quantic Dream games, they’re all narrative adventures that have three things in common: Story, story and story.
Compared to traditional point-and-click games, narrative adventures concern themselves less with puzzles for the player to solve than situations for the player to resolve. In other words, what will have you scratching your head isn’t how to use a rubber chicken, a piece of chewing gum, a walking stick and a dirty rag to escape from a burning room, but whether or not you should protect one character from another by presenting a false alibi. Instead of the immediate payoff, you’ll be thinking about the ramifications and broader consequences.
It’s also a reason why this is one of my favourite genres. Sure, I enjoy games that require me to demonstrate my mastery over my reflexes, muscle memory, lateral thinking, alertness and eye for a great pass. But it’s always been the idea of being immersed in a story — one that I can, to some extent, influence — that’s always been among the biggest reasons I’m drawn to videogames. And it’s narrative adventures that allow me to experience this story immersion in their own unique ways.
This isn’t to suggest, mind you, that I’ve enjoyed every single narrative adventure title I’ve ever played. For every As Dusk Falls, there lurks around the corner a terrible dinosaur game (that shall remain unnamed) that prioritises its agenda over story and characters. This isn’t to suggest by any means that I am opposed to games having a message. Far from it. Stories often become more compelling when they’ve got a strong message behind them. Take for instance Life is Strange: True Colors that has a strong LGBTQ+ message, but uses it to enrich the story rather than take charge of it altogether. In fact, its predecessor Life is Strange 2 does something very similar with its anti-racism message.
Endings
The inherent replayability of a majority of these games stems from the idea that having the ability to choose options and make decisions translates into branching storylines, ergo a variety of endings. You can see this in the likes of such Supermassive Games titles as Until Dawn and The Quarry, the aforementioned As Dusk Falls, Last Stop and even Westwood Studios’ Blade Runner from all those years ago.
And yet, it isn’t the endings that are as essential as a sense that what you are doing is making a difference. With games like Open Roads, Hindsight, A Memoir Blue, the BAFTA Award-winning Venba and several others, it’s the journey you influence, not the destination. Put differently, you still get from A to B, however it’s the route you take and the manner in which you give that route flavour that varies. For instance with Open Roads, I completed the game having maintained a very civil relationship between Tess and Opal. But now I’m curious to see what would happen if they were sniping at each other throughout the game.
With all that in mind, and with only Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth staring at me from over on the backlog, maybe I’ll return to Arcadia for another run at the first Life is Strange game, and bask in the wonder of narrative adventures a while longer.
In closing…
I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to be playing this week, so I think I’ll catch up on some television, more specifically, the recently-released Fallout.