By Linnie W. Phillips 
They say that a good book should have delighted you by the end of the first chapters. Basically, if you’re not invested by then, you’re probably going to be a really tough sell, if you’re going to like it at all. I think this mentality also applies to games. This is one of the debates that annoys me when it comes to exams. The argument that you can’t fairly judge a title without playing at least most of it doesn’t make sense to me. We call it a game loop for a reason. That being said, if you”re not hooked for the first hour or so, unless things change tremendously, you”re not going to be hooked forty hours after. I don’t think all developer teams get this memo. Please keep this observation in mind as we approach today’s game. This is a real estate simulator, I played it on PC and it is … Well, that’s certainly one thing.
Heck, the early 2000s want their game back and not in a good way. I have (as is usually the matter) no problem with the premise of the real estate simulator. This is (obviously) a simulator in which you buy houses, improve them, and then sell them for a larger profit. So, a renovation SIM card with a payday. It would be nice if there was some semblance of fun. I played for a little over an hour and gave up. I’m a very forgiving player and I always give things the benefit of the doubt, but my God, I had dental surgery which was more fun than this one.
The tutorial in the real estate simulator, if you can call it that, allows you to buy a sleeping bag and sends you to the slums to buy a tent. They then put the sleeping device in the tent and sell it for about $1000. I know we are in a housing crisis, but you could buy a shed for less than $1000. Once you have set up this complete bluff, go back to the office and put it on the market. Then comes the totally ridiculous bidding part of the game, when a number of people show up, all eager to move into their ridiculously inexpensive tent.
Some of these people will want a more expensive tent for them to be outdoors, while others will tell you that they are looking for something at a price that matches yours. They will then close the deal and charge you exactly what you have agreed so that they will tell you that it is too expensive. Among the tent buyers, there are scattered clients who are looking to pay several thousand dollars for much more expensive properties that they cannot afford by far. This means that you are turning away a lot of people who shouldn’t be there at all so that they can tell you that your Service is really bad. So you offend your customers by not providing them with a Service that cannot be reached very early.
If you sold your first tent in the real estate simulator and ripped off the penniless life in the slums (you actually live under a bridge), you will fall asleep in your office, wake up the next day and have to redo the whole mess all over again. This brings us back to the beginning of this little article. If I develop a contraction after only an hour of playing, why would I want to continue? I am sure they are buying big houses and expanding them and selling them for millions. You will probably have to face the tedious task of getting it right so that demanding buyers get exactly what they asked for. The point is that you have to make it happen. The next tens of hours of the game could be absolutely exceptional, but I didn’t see them because I was on the third day of the game, I decided that it was just a little ridiculous and I went to play something else. By the way, if you have bought and sold several tents, you may have enough to offer the customer a storage container or a school bus. Even if we do mental gymnastics to suspend reality enough to make it all work, there is definitely a problem here.
The graphics of the real estate simulator are decent, although a little simple, the music is quite non-existent and the voiceovers are surprising. The thing is, I like The Sims. I was really looking forward to seeing what Real Estate Simulator had to offer, and if it had set me on the path of decorating and selling houses (think House Flipper), I would have forgiven many of the obvious flaws here. I can forgive the shady graphics if the game is good, but in this matter it really isn’t. The only really positive thing I have is that this title works. The only thing that really makes points is that it’s not an imperfect mess, but it shouldn’t be a very high bar.