House Flipper 2's sandbox mode basically looks like The Sims build mode in first person

I'll admit I passed on the original House Flipper craze because I'm not one for job sim games. But I really like to build and decorate houses, which, it turns out, House Flipper 2 is totally prepared to support. House Flipper dev Frozen District has already announced that the sequel would have a sandbox mode, but now it's been shown off in a new trailer. I'm all in this time.

In the original game, your goal was of course to come into a house and fix it up by demoing walls, cleaning up trash, and rolling on a more charming color of paint. Sandbox mode lets you ignore all responsibility and simply build from scratch. You can edit the lot dimensions and terrain heights, use free-placement or snap to the grid, and switch to a top-down editor instead of the usual first-person perspective. Frozen District also references its 1,500-piece catalog of furniture and the ability to share your houses with the community.

House Flipper 2 - A first-person view of a kitchen area with pink walls and a bar with stools and other decor — (Image credit: Frozen District)

The sharing bit is mostly so you can build custom flipping quests to share with your friends, I gather. The trailer shows off how your build can denote walls and items that should be changed and also a rather detailed "Trash Generator" for littering the property with your exact specification of moss, cans, broken tiles, and other debris. It's not a flip if you aren't bending over for hundreds of cans, apparently.

I fully did not expect House Flipper 2 to pop up as one of the upcoming Sims competitors. Sure, it doesn't have the simulated people part, but I don't actually play Live Mode in The Sims 4 anyhow. I'm just here for the building and I'm totally down to take a new build mode for a spin. Look at how they can just build their own custom exterior walls in the exact ratio of colored siding to bricks that they want. That's the dream.

House Flipper 2 was already the most-played Next Fest demo in June, so it seems that plenty of other folks are ready to go hands-on. House Flipper 2 launches on December 14 on Steam for you to either flip houses as usual or just build your own.

Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She joined the PCG staff in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.