Castle Flipper (PC) Review

Contrary to what the title suggests, there are no flipping castles here. Instead, you will be taking the role of a medieval craftsman in this building simulator. To be honest, building is the easiest way to describe it, aside from building peasant houses and castles, you will be doing a variety of mundane tasks ranging from collecting garbages, getting stains off the wall to repairing furniture and building houses.

For comparison, check out Ultimate Games other title Train Station Renovation.

Right off the bat, you will have a small scale of undeveloped land given to you, and somewhere in the land is the quest board where you will find available jobs through which you will be able to become king of your land. The path to the throne is pretty simple, just accept the quests on the board and it will take you to different places like ruined camp, wrecked ship or castles in need of renovation. Despite the attempt to have dynamic tasks in the quests, it all ends up being repetitive carpentry chores. The difference is just between fixing a hole on a ship by filling it with a wood plank and fixing a hole in a castle’s wall with nearby brick blocks.

I can’t help but felt a lack of objectives when playing this game. I’m not talking about quest completion or the ultimate goal of becoming a king. Even at the end of the game, it feels unaccomplished. To be the king, you will have to complete all the quests, have a certain amount of gold, build a castle of your own, and build and rent houses to people. All that sounds like a challenging long list of works, but anyone who enjoys doing drag-and-drop building, picking up trashes after messy tenants, or repairing the furniture, or decorating rooms with household accessories would not care much about lack of main contents. I personally hate doing chores, but I can understand why some folks can get pleasure out of virtual chores.

You can get bored from time to time if you are not into the continuous grind of repetition. The good news is there are a few interesting backstories of the quests to add some sense in what you are doing such as having to renovate a dungeon or allegedly haunted castle. The bad news is they are loosely tied. You may find a few letters and notes here and there, but you are just there to clean up and fix the place up at the end of the day. The story doesn’t go anywhere. It also has a talent tree system but instead of increasing attack damage or becoming stealthier as in Action RPGs, what you get is the ability to sense garbages from distance. You can also unlock new furniture types by either buying them or completing the quests to get creative with your decoration style. Also, a few points of interest are available, such as trade market, quarry, and lumberjack, which I didn’t find myself visiting frequently.

A few minor bugs might hold you back sometimes, but there is nothing a reboot can’t solve. Castle Flipper is, in short, a very conveniently easy renovation simulator, almost everything is from one mouse click away, which makes it too easy even for people who aren’t familiar with this category.