House Flipper 2 just became a platformer with a new 'The Floor Is Lava' mode, and no, it's not just an April Fools' joke

A house with lava on the floor
(Image credit: Frozen District)

Long before videogames existed, some bored child, probably trapped in their house on a rainy day, invented an analog platformer with one simple rule: get across the room without touching the floor. Chairs, tables, cabinets, couch cushions, ottomans, anything that could be leapt to and stood upon became a safe space in a dangerous world. On that day, "The Floor Is Lava" was born.

Fast-forward to today and its legacy continues. First-person home renovation simulator House Flipper 2 has announced a new "Floor Is Lava" mode, and while it was cooked up to celebrate April Fools Day, it's no joke. It's an actual mode. Turn your house into a platformer, create a course through the lava using furniture, shelving, and other objects, and share your course with other players. Here's a scorching hot trailer:

The courses you can build go far beyond dropping a few sofa cushions and footstools to create a path across your living room. The trailer shows a player leaping across pipes and hanging lamps a dozen feet above floor level and using a trampoline to get an extra-high bounce. 

There are also lots of items like directional signs and even what looks like arrow-covered wallpaper to show players the way through your course. Maybe this is all a plan to supplant the inescapable Minecraft parkour course videos on TikTok. Of course the stuff you can jump on is yellow, but let's hope this doesn't reignite the infamous yellow paint debate once again. 

House Flipper 2's "Floor Is Lava" mode is live now, and it's free if you own the base game. Happy April Fools' Day, and watch your step.  

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.