Game: Dream House Days DX
Genre: Simulation, Casual, Family
System: Nintendo Switch (also on PS4 and mobile)
Developer | Publisher: KAIROSOFT CO
Age Rating: US E | EU 3+
Price: UK £11.69 | US $14.00 | EU € 13,00
Release Date: July 29th, 2021
Review code used with many thanks to KAIROSOFT CO.
Dream House Days DX is a building simulation game for a variety of platforms. Players have to build up their own rental properties to make it as comfortable and as desirable as possible for renters.
Story and Gameplay for Dream House Days DX
The story is very basic for this game: players are starting up an apartment building, and they have to furnish and decorate each of the available rooms to make them as appealing as possible to potential renters. Players have loads of money to build and decorate each apartment from beds to potted plants, sinks to whole kitchenettes. You can choose to even build in the shared areas, giving the renters places to hang out together and make their home life as pleasant as possible.
As for gameplay, Dream House Days DX plays a lot like an idle game. Potential renters come and go, viewing the place as you build and decorate. Rent money comes in, giving you room to expand and add more furnishings. It’s similar in this regard to a lot of building sim type games; it reminds me a lot of Two-Point Hospital and other similar titles.
The game seems to work best when players use the touchscreen; it’s a little hard to navigate with the Switch Joy-Cons and probably the PS4 controller are well. But players will find that controlling the game with a handheld device is a much easier and better experience.
The Pros of Dream House Days DX
Dream House Days DX is one of those games where players can go absolutely crazy. They can design rooms with whatever styles suit them, buying new furnishings and blueprints to make their renters happy and get more money to expand their apartment empire.
This game is so much deeper than that, however. Each potential tenant has a set of stats; those that love the rentable spaces will pay more for the location and be less likely to haggle. Players can help their renters get married and form relationships, have children, become friends with other renters, and even bring home pets. You have almost complete control over the lives of the people who live in your building, and you can manipulate the spaces to get better renters and delve into their lives as well!
The Cons of Dream House Days DX
This game throws you into the deep end of the pool and really expects you to learn all the details of staying afloat for yourself. The game says “Add furnishings!” without any hint as how to get started, how to delete furnishings you misplace, what should go where, and what layouts people find most appealing. There is almost no direction, which I can see some players absolutely loving. But while there are games that are too hand-holdy with the tutorials, this game seems to swing way too far in the opposite direction.
There are so many details in this title, it’s really impossible to lay them all out in a short article. It’s enough to make your head spin as you try to delve into the process while people are coming in and touring while you’re still trying to figure out how to get everything they need into these small apartments. There also feels like a lot of waiting. Waiting for renters, waiting for new tickets, waiting for rent money to come in. Then another flurry of activity as a bunch of things happen at once. Then more waiting again.
The mobile version of this game has microtransactions, but those have been removed for the Switch version. Players also now have the ability to play offline, which was impossible for the mobile version. There is also no Adding Friends for online play on the Switch. Since players can no longer purchase tickets in the game with microtransactions, the only way to earn new tickets is by time played; players get one new ticket for every 30ish minutes of gameplay.
If you enjoyed the mobile version, you won’t find much of a difference on the Switch (and presumably for the PS4 as well, though I haven’t played that version personally). So if you have been playing on your phone, I would stick with that version.
Conclusion
For a simulation game with a lot to do, this game is okay. I didn’t find anything so special about it that I would pick it up over any other sim game; there are so many out there that are more fun to play and are cheaper. This game doesn’t quite do enough to stand out from the flooded building simulation market.
Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure.
