As a concept, I love The Sims. The idea of building up my dream home, planning the furniture layout and painting it with pretty decor is my perfect idea of a cosy game. In fact, I’ve even gone as far as to learn 3D modelling softwares to live out this fantasy in the past.
Despite loving the idea of The Sims, I’ve never much cared for the actual ‘simulation’ aspect of it. I couldn’t really care less about my character’s day job or their love life. Give me an unlimited budget and I’ll create a property worthy of Grand Designs.
If you’re on the same wavelength as me, then you’ll love the latest game from The Isn’t Company. It’s called Hometopia and puts the power in players’ hands to build their ultimate dream home from scratch. A couple at the studio with extensive experience in home renovations are leading the project’s development, so they have plenty of experience in what goes into crafting a perfect home.
‘After my wife and I fully renovated our 120-year-old former fraternity house by ourselves, we knew we wanted to bring that same experience to others in a more accessible but less exhausting format,’ says Alex Ahlund, founder of The Isn’t Company. ‘There aren’t really any games out there that let you build and renovate realistic homes from scratch with other players online, either, so we knew that was an important feature we wanted to incorporate.’
Taking the ‘Sim’ out of Sims
The game looks to give players the ultimate homebuilding freedom. Unlike other construction games, there’s no need to lock items into a grid system. Walls, furniture, and items can be placed in any location and at any angle. It’s essentially a very user-friendly 3D modelling tool. Houses can be built up to be any size. If you’ve been planning out that mansion concept for a while, this might be the tool to build it in.
It doesn’t just stop at one house, though. Hometopia has the scope for players to build entire neighbourhoods in one of the five unique areas and biomes. Construct your own roads, place streetlights and shrubbery to make the game world feel truly idyllic. There’s a career mode to get stuck into if you’d prefer some sort of progression. However, the sandbox mode seems where the most fun is to be had. With an unlimited budget, you can let your imagination run completely wild.
Share the load
Building a complete house from scratch is a big task, which is why Hometopia is also playable online. Put your head together with a pal and co-create the living space that you’ve always desired. It’s playable in either first-person or with an overhead camera, too. That makes it especially easy to figure out how to best position each of the game’s assets. Speaking of which, Hometopia will have Steam Workshop support at launch, so players can share assets and design blueprints between each other.
I recently wrote about games that are especially good for moving home. If Hometopia was already out, it would be going at the top of the list from the concept alone. The weeks before moving in can be an exciting, if stressful time. Using a tool like Hometopia to put some home design ideas into practice sounds like it could be immensely therapeutic.
Hometopia is participating in the Steam Next Fest from October 1st to October 7th. During that time, a free demo will be available to download if you’d like to see what the game has to offer. After that, the game is expected to launch onto Steam in January 2022.
What do you make of Hometopia? Let us know across our social channels.
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[Featured Image Credit: The Isn’t Company]