MakeRoom Review (PC)

MakeRoom is as jiggly as it is puffy, and it’s as squishy as it is undisputedly adorable—four keystone bridges that equate to a perfect and effortlessly wholesome candy-coated sandbox platform. It’s giving essences of Small Spaces, or, to be more in with the times, Design & Conjure. It’s lightning in a bottle—a stupendously charming and elegant canvas with cascading colors and mesmerizing design elements that make fledgling interior designers curve at the knee in excitement. It is, without doubt, a hidden gem that I wish I’d caught wind of a lot sooner. Better late than never, I suppose.

Of course, a thousand pieces of a jigsaw puzzle doesn’t sound like a lot on paper. Or at least, not when it’s against other chock-a-block sandbox builders that boast anywhere in the vicinity of tens of thousands of decorative bricks *cough* The Sims. But as it turns out, MakeRoom doesn’t necessarily need the depth of a bottomless treasure trove of customizable items to sway its audience into stacking their cubbies to make idyllic worlds. The composition alone, in all honesty, is enough to turn the tide in its favor here. Oh, it’s ambient and warm, compelling and accommodating — like a sun-kissed campfire on a summer evening. Without having to stretch its wings, it makes me want to stick around and stoke the flames whilst its wisps wax wonderfully with its natural lighting.

Suffice it to say, interior decorating simulators are a dime a dozen. But that isn’t to say that they’re all destined to fall beneath the same umbrella. And I’ll be honest with you — MakeRoom just does something a little different to elevate that signature blueprint to something even more impressive. It’s a masterclass in coziness, and it just works, warts and all.

Bubbling Worlds of Wonder

MakeRoom brings a simple concept to the table: you, an interior designer, positively explore a diverse range of thematic settings—studies, camper vans, and glorious backyards—and create custom environments with a generously crafted thousand-piece toy box of fully customizable items, all of which can be altered to accommodate cats, vampires, and the vast swaths of critters who happily flesh out the archipelago and its warmly colored boroughs.

Between a campaign that offers its own selection of pocket-sized requests and jobs and a custom mode that allows its users the chance to breathe life into their own capsulated rooms, MakeRoom finds a perfect balance—a middle ground that grants you the right to pursue countless possibilities and creative solutions. And with an admirable amount of furniture and other accessories to choose from—a catalog that includes natural flora, potted flowers, study materials, and a whole pedigree of candy-clotted room decor—it offers you the freedom to capture and evolve ideas by the banquet. A lot of bang for your buck here, for sure. And I know what you’re thinking: How does it stack up against the likes of Small Spaces? Well, in more ways than one, surprisingly.

What’s Mine Is Yours

The fact that MakeRoom harbors a striking art style is one thing, but the fact that it also makes the process of tailoring and customizing your own petite worlds is another thing altogether. Thanks to its intuitive design tools and full-fledged suite that bends to your wildest creations, both making and implementing items can be a tremendous amount of fun. It helps, too, that said suite offers additional embellishments and “final touches” for you to experiment with to sweeten the scene, with features like cats and other furry companions playing a large role in the final composition,

MakeRoom isn’t a massively complex game — and that’s great, as it provides newcomers with the basic assets to jump straight into the fray without needing any prior experience in the sandbox field. It does have a minor learning curve, particularly in the early stages of each project as you gradually learn how to correctly identify and allocate furniture in specific locations. That said, as the game itself doesn’t exactly make an effort to slap you on the wrist for any wrongdoings, the actual process of learning the suite is a great deal of fun, and it’s definitely made to feel both rewarding and satisfying once you’ve mastered the fundamentals of the system, too. That also counts for a lot.

With all of the above in tow, MakeRoom still finds additional ways to keep you scrubbing your inner creative for more projects, with incentives that range from subtle ambient effects to creature comforts, online liveries to in-house design requests all contributing to a surprisingly bulky indie sandbox that can keep you lathering paint onto the canvas for hours, perhaps even days. With enough replay value there, it feels almost too easy to recommend to both novice architects and seasoned builders alike.

Verdict

MakeRoom is arguably one of the most compelling cubby-sized interior decorating simulators on the market, no doubt about it. It’s the culmination of an admirable heritage of cozy sandbox build ‘em ups banding together to formulate a commendable torchbearer—the end result of an epic battle to steal the spotlight from countless other worlds. Is there still room for improvement? Absolutely. Yet, the minor issues that MakeRoom does foster are so minute that it’s almost impossible to identify them, let alone scrutinize or pick at with a fine-tooth comb. And that fills me with nothing but confidence, to be honest, that the game itself has the potential to broaden its reach to attract more content packs and, with any luck, some juicy DLC. Here’s hoping.

Let it be said that, if you absolutely adore charming interior decorating simulators similar to the likes of Small Spaces, Unpacking, and Design & Conjure, then you certainly won’t find a shortage of inkblots and paintbrushes to work with here. More to the point, if you’re itching to dab your hand at a brand-new diorama that bears all of the lovable components and custom fodder of a near-perfect bauble, then MakeRoom ought to be more than enough to quench your appetite.