After being totally submerged in the addiction of House Flipper, another construction-based game surrounding building homes pops up on the Xbox family of consoles. House Builder is developed by Freemind S.A and Console Labs S.A and published by Playway S.A. After its early access launch on Windows PC in November 2021, it’s time for the controller players to dabble in some virtual manual labour. Essentially this is a game all about building a home and focusing on the foundations and exterior of constructing a stable building and not worrying about the inside. Retailing on Xbox at £12.49/$14.99, is it worth getting your hands dirty and knocking up some houses?

Introduction

House Builder takes the concept of knocking up houses from scratch and takes you across the globe dabbling with different architecture and building mechanics. I was initially surprised when my first project was me standing in a snowy environment constructing an igloo from ice blocks. You then go from one extreme to the other by constructing a mud hut in the forest to more natural and modern dwellings as you progress. These first couple of fetch and build adventures ease you in gently. You’ll be gathering materials from close by and then carrying them to the build location. For instance, when building a mud hut you’ll be chopping trees, collecting vines and mixing mud into clay amongst many other actions. There is a little more to it than just laying some bricks on top of one another and with eleven different locations, there is a nice sense of variance in the tasks you’ll be performing.

Gameplay

There were aspects during the gameplay of House Builder that I really enjoyed and some that really frustrated me. For instance, during the igloo build you’re tasked with carving out ice blocks from solid ground. To acquire these blocks you must cut around a rectangle with ultimate precision, make one slip and you start the process again. I’m not sure if it was my ability to do this or if the controls weren’t adapted well from the PC build, but it was a very difficult and irritating process. These bugbears do trickle through to other elements throughout the game but eventually, you do overcome them with the skills learnt through experience.

You can speed up the process of acquiring materials through skill tree unlocks and each one appeared to trigger an Xbox achievement which was a nice touch as it felt rewarding to keep plodding on. As you hit the later levels things do get a little more complex with the added responsibility of ordering materials to be delivered, sizing up wood and measuring it to be cut yourself, flogging on surplus materials and more. It’s a shame the first couple of builds are basic and a little mundane as when you get stuck into the constructions towards the endgame, it starts to become more appealing and interesting. I felt like by the end I was running my own building firm but with the only labourer being myself. If you get stuck in certain situations there are plenty of instructions and on-screen controls which I found welcoming.

Graphics & Audio

House Builder isn’t the best-looking game by any means and could be easily compared to an early generation Xbox One title. The development team have done well to ensure that each level is completely different in terms of aesthetics. Whilst I found some of the controls and performance of some actions tedious and frustrating as they didn’t always work the first time, they have ensured that the animations such as chopping wood and collecting materials display well. For the price point though, I wasn’t expecting mind-blowing visuals and it can be easily compared to many of the simulation games focused on real-world tasks. That said, the team would have a lot of work to do to get it to the same heights as some better-performing games such as House Flipper or Powerwash Simulator.

The audio is a little lacklustre although there are familiar tunes in the soundtrack that ring through as you play. Sound effects do the job but I did notice that often I did tasks that would come back with delayed sound or none at all. With the game not long leaving early access on PC, there may be a few bugs present to still iron out.

In Conclusion

House Builder presents itself as nothing more than a casual fetch and build type of game. Whilst visually it looks a little rough around the edges, I enjoyed seeing the progression of nothing but empty space on the ground to an entire creation that I had worked on. Initially, I was seeking comparisons to House Flipper since the logos of the two games are very similar. After playing it through though, they identify as two totally different experiences. If you’re looking for something that has the aspects of grinding materials like Minecraft, building knowledge and skills and then working on the final piece to finish the building, then you’ll enjoy it. The overall presentation is very much like many other PC-based ports of similar games you may be used to, which makes sense with Playway S.A being at the helm of a plethora of titles with identical mechanics. There is enough here for a few sittings of relaxing gameplay but sadly once you’ve finished everything on offer, there is no reason to go back and play again