House Builder

House Builder is a simulation game about building houses. It was developed by FreeMind, a Polish studio also known for Frigato: Shadows of the Caribbean and Medieval Machines Builder. It was published by PlayWay, also known for publishing House Flipper.

Mechanics

House Builder is a first-person game. We play as a one-person construction team, needing to build houses all on our own.

The game is set in various parts of the world and time periods which determine our possibilities. Apart from standard houses made of bricks, blocks and concrete, we can also create some more imaginative buildings. For example, we'll build clay houses in Africa, igloos in the Arctic (manually cutting blocks out of frozen snow), shrines in Japan and log cabins in Siberia.

The construction process is not just about building walls, windows and roofs. We must also gather necessary materials (which can be dangerous with wildlife roaming around) and process them by hand with various tools - hammers, chisels, wood processing machines and construction vehicles.

We must also remember to use the correct materials to avoid unpleasant consequences. If we really mess up, we'll have to raze everything to the ground (manually driving a bulldozer to do so) and start all over again.

As we progress through the game we unlock more advanced resources and tools. By upgrading our skills we also unlock new possibilities. This means our projects become more complex, costly and labor-intensive.

Technical aspects

House Builder features decent graphics, not standing out from other simulators published by PlayWay.