Farm Flipper (House Flipper: Farm DLC) – Review

House Flipper has been around for over 5 years and its sequel House Flipper 2 is primed for release on PC later this year, meanwhile console fans are a few steps behind with the long-awaited Farm Flipper DLC finally arriving on Xbox this week.

House Flipper is a simulation game tasking players with buying run-down houses and then doing them up to flip for a profit. Since release we’ve seen a few DLC packs released, some have been free updates, while others have been higher-end paid DLC such as adding Luxury apartments, Gardening and Pet’s which offered slightly more than just a few more building to renovate.

Farm Flipper follows the latter offering a wide array of additions. 11 new houses, 5 empty plots to build upon, 7 farm animals such as sheep, cows and chickens, new tools to use and almost 2000 new items.

Starting off with Farm Flipper you’re thrown into a pretty straight forward renovation of a barn when locals Joe & Lily have awoken to find their barn damaged and their favourite cow Molly missing, you’ll need to tidy things up, replace the doors and patch up the roof to make it a little more comfortable for Molly.

As well as unlocking the property (Hundred Cones) for the main browser, completing this early level unlocks the architect tool, the hoe tool and the option to buy pets from the main menu with each pet having their own personality, so you can expect some to be lazy and dirty creatures, while others might be neat and energetic, so if you feel like moving your own home to the Hundred Cones and putting up a herd of sheep, Farm Flipper has you covered.

Back to the main content and you’ll find a map screen which shows the nearby locations and jobs available (House Flipper Pets owners will know what to expect)., but rather than just buying a property, performing the required upgrades and selling it on, there’s a little more narrative which makes it feel like you’re actually helping others out rather than just making as much money as possible to fund your own fancy house.

The early jobs won’t take long to work through, but they will introduce you to a few new tools such as the grappling hook, architect tool, chainsaw and drone. Unless you’re really lucky, you’re likely to encounter the new dynamic weather system as well, but unlike your average British builder, work doesn’t stop when the heavens open, so rather than heading indoors for an elongated tea break, you can keep working to build, renovate and refurnish the properties.

Working through these 11 new quests, it might take a few evenings of work but there’s still the option of revisiting any location to resell to make more money just as with any other property in the game.
There’s also the added bonus of managing your farm-like properties, whether that’s collecting chicken eggs, milking the cows or growing plants and vegetables that you can take out to leave lying around or, like the animal products such as milk and wool you could sell them to make some extra money.

Just like the Pets DLC there’s a certain element of “Sims” gameplay, as you can role-play owning a farm, managing the animals and produce and earning money, but I would have liked to see some reason for doing so, maybe something like unlocking some nice sheepskin rugs when you’ve sold a certain amount of wool.

Graphically it’s worth remembering that the core game House Flipper is five years old, so there’s a few rough edges and while they’re areas that could have been fixed with patches and updates, you’ll still encounter a few issues such as rain appearing indoors, animals clipping through walls and occasional framerate drops which remind you why House Flipper 2 is on the horizon.

Audibly there’s a few new tunes which seem to stick with the typical country inspired music but otherwise most of the sounds you’ll hear will be familiar from the base game. There is some decent quality voice-acting to introduce each of the main quests, which add a little more personality to the game and help to keep it feeling like you’re working for someone else, rather than just recycling buildings.

As mentioned above the overall presentation was always going to be limited by the base game, but the development team have done a good enough job with the new additions.

The main new addition is the architect mode allowing you to build your own buildings rather than just a few internal walls, you can pick up an empty plot of land and literally build the house of your dreams, the forthcoming sequel is going to expand on this, but judging how console players have had to wait 7 months for this DLC, we expect it could be as late as next autumn/fall when House Flipper 2 arrives on consoles. Which make this a worthwhile addition.
There’s also a new set of perks to unlock which will help you build cheaper and faster and design multiple floors and larger buildings.
The farming side also has a new set of perks, which will create more produce and upgrade the drone to allow you to fertilize your plants from the air.

These new perks add more legs to an already packed DLC, the initial quests are a little short, but when you consider that’s how new locations are unlocked and made available for a DIY project, it’s probably for the best that you won’t need to spend hours to unlock each one.

Overall Farm Flipper (House Flipper: Farm DLC) adds plenty to the base game and at $19.99 it represents great value. The additions of farming your own vegetable patches, and looking after animals serves the role-playing “sims” genre more than the building and renovating “simulation” areas, but House Flipper has always been about the merger of the two.
If you want to just grab a new house (or plot of land and create your own) and then decorate and furnish it to perfection and then sell it on, that’s perfectly fine, but if you want to step-away from making money from house renovations, you can build your own dream farm, and work on it, while still earning some funds from the work you do.

Most of my criticisms rest more with the base game rather than the DLC contents, and most people considering this DLC will be well aware of what House Flipper does best (and what areas it struggles with).
It’s could be a while until we get House Flipper 2, but while you wait Farm Flipper is going to provide many hours of what you love with plenty of new additions regardless of whether you want to build a house for yourself, or just for profit.