Haunted House Renovator Review (PC)

I’ve come to learn that cleaning a haunted home with a ghostly companion is a lot like driving cross country with a toddler as your backseat spectator — it adds absolutely no value to the task at hand whatsoever. It’s like juggling several balls at once: you spend one portion of your time toying with a poltergeist, and the other part cleaning up the shards of glass that they “accidentally” leave behind after the game’s over. You entertain the other side; you clean up their mess; and life, in some respects, moves on, with both parties repeating their duties in one ever-evolving fiasco. The same thing applies in Haunted House Renovator, a cleaning-centric first-person IP that tasks you with juggling the same balls—scrutinizing the spectator and working to complete renovation tasks.

As much as I’d like to say that Haunted House Renovator isn’t just another version of House Flipper — I can’t. It seems that, at least since the acclaimed series made its formal debut, a lot of building-based games have attempted to steal a lot of that same basic thunder. And, while I can’t exactly fault these spiritual successors for being loyal to their primary influences, I, along with a great deal of other people, can raise the question of whether or not enough is enough. That said, I’m all for a sliver of originality, and so, the idea of being able to renovate a haunted home is enough of an incentive to coerce me into picking up the bucket and mop — again. In the back of my mind, I’m still convinced that it’s DLC for House Flipper. But deep down, I want it to be a lot more than that.

Tainted Dreams & Forsaken Homes

Firstly, let’s go ahead and pop that balloon. To make it clear, Haunted House Renovator isn’t a horror game. Well, it’s certainly eerie, and it does contain a solid amount of atmospheric elements and derelict settings. That said, this isn’t the sort of game where you would leave a broom somewhere, only to find it somewhere on the other side of the house beneath a shadowy silhouette of some demonic deity. No, the game’s primary intent isn’t to scare you, but to provide a spooky backdrop for you to explore, expand, and ultimately renovate. Again, like House Flipper, but with fewer time share suburban households and more, shall we say, gothic mansions with pesky poltergeists.

The good news is, Haunted House Renovator isn’t just about restoring old homes to their former glory. Well, it is, but there are also a few additional curveballs for you to overcome along the way. Herein idles the second and, arguably, most important part of the job: banishing the spirits and cleansing the location of any unwanted juju. For tasks like these, the game grants you the opportunity to utilize a couple of different strategies, with the first being a simple net-and-pulverize approach, and the other being a slightly more elaborate ritualistic approach, which involves chalking out symbolic shapes and forcing the ghost to leave its nest. And there’s more: you can also adopt these spirits as companions to help you complete your work around the house. Again, not a horror. Cute, though.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spirit

To answer that all-important question of whether or not there’s enough for you to customize and build in Haunted House Renovator — yes, there is! Aside from the paranormal happenings that take place during the shift, there are also numerous rooms to clean, items to install, walls to paint, and decorations to unlock. With an extensive list of custom wallpapers, color schemes, and interior designs to choose from, you shouldn’t find it to be a major problem to unleash that inner creative here. Plus, dare I say, putting pen to paper here is also a lot more satisfying than it is in other generic flipping sims. Perhaps it’s the setting—the added complexity of a cobweb-riddled mansion—or that it provides you with more work than your average contracting job. Whatever it is, the work that you put in here feels incredibly rewarding — and that’s great.

Thankfully, Haunted House Renovator isn’t restricted to a single estate; the campaign also rolls out the red carpet for a fairly sizable package of levels, which varies from your bog-standard apartment to the occasional listed building with dated roots. There are also a few other things of note, too—the addition of a co-op mode, a beginner-friendly interface to help inexperienced users both navigate and cleanse the environment of its spiritual nuisances, and a spooky but not-so-scary atmosphere that adds that little extra depth to the experience. A lot of bang for your buck, you could say. And yet, even with a large chunk of content for you to shovel through here, there is still something dragging it back—a notch in the pipeline that prevents it from emerging from its shell.

Who You Gonna Call?

While the core gameplay loop is satisfying in its own right, there are several things of note that keep this renovation IP from breaking the shackles of a somewhat perplexing experience. For starters, the game doesn’t offer a great deal of guidance, which means that, while the latter parts of the journey are as equally rewarding as they are addictive, the initial phase isn’t quite so inviting, with a lack of hand holding being the one thing preventing newcomers from carving even deeper into its world. To add, the game has quite a lot of bugs, some of which prevent cutscenes from triggering, UI elements from working correctly, and crucial information from appearing on the screen. And that’s a shame, given the amount of potential that the basic infrastructure of the game has.

Verdict

Haunted House Renovator takes that tired blueprint of a generic house-building project and transforms it into a surprisingly sprightly sandbox sim with oodles of ghoulish activities and atmospheric effects. Thanks to its inclusion of several original features—the ability to adopt spirits, as well as the option to pursue one of several career paths, for instance—it actually brings a great deal more to the table than your average House Flipper clone. Don’t get me wrong, the breadth of the experience is still the same as countless other projects on the market, meaning, the lion’s share of your time is still spent completing generic chores, filling in the blanks, and making gradual improvements to a residential building in exchange for small rewards. But that isn’t to say that the actual process of ticking these boxes isn’t anything short of satisfying.

It’s a love letter to renovation—an ode to gothic architecture, derelict estates, and the supernatural realm of ghosts and ghouls. If that’s the sort of job that you wouldn’t mind signing your name down for, then I can assure you that you won’t be disappointed with the jigsaw pieces that fuel this entry-level interior design project. Here’s hoping, of course, that with a little bit of time in the oven, those remaining loose threads will be straightened out in due course.

It feels like an easy one to recommend, given that it makes a commendable contribution to its chosen sphere of influence. Paranormal activity? Check. Entertaining progression? Check. Mischievous spirits? Check, check, and check. Need we say more?