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Home Sweet Home: Extreme Makeover Handheld Edition
Knock, knock. The Home Sweet Home team is here to redesign and revamp your home into a stunning masterpiece. With high quality colorful graphics and the “Sims” like home decorating gameplay, this game appeals to all kinds of gamers. With a $2.99 price tag however, is it worth the money? With flawed apps such as Elven Chronicles on their record, can Big Blue Bubble right the ship with Home Sweet Home? Let’s get our designer suit on, kick up our classiest heels and see just see snazzy this app is.
Gameplay:
The game casts you as an interior direction with a neighborhood of customers who each have their specific tastes and preferences that you must accommodate. As you begin, the game starts you out by directing you to the various menus and choices that you will have to dive on through to please your client. Sage advice is given to you like finding your budget, deciphering notes about your customer, and purchasing the right items in your catalog. Because the customer doesn’t just tell you exactly what they want, you are given a little bit of personal information about them to assist you in your quest to decorate their house with just the right touches.
If you’ve ever played Electronic Art’s smash hit, The Sims, then you will be very familiar with this app. It’s pretty simple. You pick from a catalog of furniture, accessories etc. and place them in a orderly fashion around the house. Once you’ve done that you must tell your workers which items to do in which order. And you must satisfy their whims as well like keeping them hydrated and not overworking them.
Where the game is rich in content and flair, it lacks in replay value and sheer enjoyment. For most gamers, there just won’t be enough incentive to keep working your fingers to the bone. As you progress through the game, your catalog of items begins to grow and new items are added every time but not necessarily the right item for the current customer. As well as that, at the end of every project you are awarded a paycheck. While the paycheck is a pretty good motivator, it’s merely a “point” system because staying within your budget is highly recommended so it’s not as if you can go on a spending spree. Altogether, I’m just not convinced that many gamers will have an okay time without having real rewards or achievements. After all the work you’ve done, it’s not as rewarding as you would hope.
Controls:
Decorating homes in Home Sweet Home takes just the swing of a finger. You are given a catalog of items that all you have to do is click and drag. So just as you work your magic in a RTS action app like Command and Conquer, you will be doing much of the same here. Clicking and dragging is the name of the game.
For the people that absolutely love the game and have no issues with it, I would love to ask them how they were able to control the furniture with ease. Because it was hell for me.
I had such issues trying to spin the furniture around so it wasn’t facing the wall. The issue was that in order to zoom in and zoom out of the room, you place your finger on the screen but that’s exactly the same thing you do in order to highlight a certain item. So the game has no idea which command to follow. And thus, my gaming experience was extremely frustrating to say the least. And just choosing which furniture you wanted around the room was hard because the controls weren’t responsive. Tough to highly recommend such a quality app if it has such basic control issues. A simple update patch will fix this I’m sure, so don’t let my complaint steer you away.
What We Liked:
+ Good soundtrack and sound effects + Great “Sims”-like gameplay + Exquisite visuals + Interior decorating on your handheld device + Colorful + Addictive + Original premise + Plethora of items in decorating catalog
What We Disliked:
- No point to the game (finish line?) – Very little difficulty – Figuring out what the client wants requires little thinking – Vague objectives – Clumsy and porous controls (maneuvering furniture) – Too much freedom; not enough direction – No incentive to play again or progress through the game – No rewards, achievements etc. – Moving objects around extremely awkward and clumsy – Tutorial and directions are way too complicated than it needs to be – No Free Play mode
Final Verdict:
Big Blue Bubble deliver the stunning visuals, the creative premise, the “Sims”-like gameplay, and the freedom to do pretty much whatever your interior decorating heart desires. But like like other titles in their arsenal, the game lacks execution and serious control issues. Maneuvering furniture around is extremely difficult and moving about the room and trying to select which piece of furniture you want to control is stressful. I know that interior decorating ain’t no walk in the park, but it shouldn’t be this hard for me to spin the couch from facing the wall to facing the television. Home Sweet Home gives you the freedom to do what you want but because of it there’s little incentive or direction and is not rewarding at all for the gamer. To make matters worse, they charge $2.99 for this flawed app so I can only recommend slightly to those who enjoy the house decorating part in the “Sims” or house decorating in general. A quality app but greatly flawed nonetheless.
