House Flipper 2 console review

For a good few months now, House Flipper 2 has been my filler game – the one I find myself going back to between releases and reviews, or just to kill half an hour when there’s nothing much else to do. Since reviewing it at the back end of 2023, I’ve been hooked. And not hooked like I got with games like Destiny 2 or Diablo 4, going back time and again for the grind, but hooked like you get hooked on the feel of your own pillows, or the taste of a favourite snack. It’s comfort gaming, through and through.

Transitioning from the PC version to PS5 has been pretty easy. I played with controller on PC anyway, because I spent most time with House Flipper 2 on my Steam Deck. It’s the exact same game (with a few additions, which we’ll get to), with the same campaign and mechanics. That being the case, if you’ve played it thoroughly on PC, there’s not much of a reason to play it again on House Flipper 2 again on console. If you missed it, though, it’s absolutely recommended.

For those who don’t know, House Flipper is from developers Frozen District and Empyrean, and the sequel to 2020’s House Flipper. It plonks you in the rough and ready overalls of a handyman or handywoman, canonically named David or Hannah, respectively, returning to your hometown of Pinnacove to make a living as a house flipper.

The story campaign, in so far as there’s story at all, gives you the goal of eventually renovating a famous old house in the town, and to get there you’ll need to take on plenty of jobs, big and small. There are “missions” ranging from tidying up in the aftermath of a wild party to completely remodelling entire homes and businesses, with plenty of variety along the way.

You’re responsible for every aspect of the job, and it only takes a few missions to unlock all the tools at your disposal. You can paint walls, lay floors, rewire the electrics, knock down and build brick walls, but you’ll also need to clean the windows, scrub stains out of the upholstery and furnish buildings from an extensive catalogue of items.

The more you do a certain thing, the better you’ll get, levelling up each skill and unlocking perks for them. You can get a giant paint roller, for example, or empower yourself to carry more rubbish at once. It may not sound exciting, but House Flipper 2 has some of the most relaxing and rewarding creativity tools around. Developing your skills far enough unlocks special courses that allow you to design things like furniture, which then reduces the cost of these items in the catalogue.

If you tire of the campaign or simply want more creative freedom, you can enter Sandbox Mode and build an entire house from scratch. The amount of options available is impressive and the ability to fly makes it much easier to work on high storeys. You can lose hours in this mode, as there are no restrictions like money or time to slow you down.

There’s even more here than before, too, as the console version of House Flipper 2 launches with the Spring Update already included. This gives the ability to do things like light candles and fires for greater ambience, or lay a variety of carpets (which were strangely absent from the PC release). There are more plants and items in the catalogue, and you now have the ability to simply resize items if you need to.

Perhaps the strangest addition to the console version is the inclusion of The Floor is Lava, a minigame accessible by purchasing a VR headset in-game and interacting with it. An added mission in the campaign allows you plenty of opportunities as you clean up the offices of Frozen District and get to handle a bunch of VR headsets. Once in the game there are three time-trial style parkour levels to work your way through.

It’s a fun little minigame but not what anyone is coming to House Flipper 2 for, and honestly it doesn’t control all that well. Your vision is restricted and the jump is weak (and mapped to triangle or Y, for some reason), so it rarely feels super essential. It’s a nice inclusion if you want a departure from the primary loop, but it’s little more than a distraction.

House Flipper 2 on console doesn’t add anything unique to the experience (and remains just as fiddly to control) but doesn’t take anything away from it, either. If you don’t have access to the PC version then it’s definitely worth picking up here, It’s an incredibly serene and customisable experience, and one that really rewards your creativity.