Game: Furnish Master
Genre: Casual, Indie, Simulation, Early Access
System: Steam (Windows and Mac OS)
Developer|Publisher: Alex Blintsov
Controller Support: No
Price:US $14.99 | UK £11.90 | EU € 14,80
Release Date: February 20th, 2024
The review code was provided with many thanks to Terminals.
Furnish Master is a 2024 interior design game about furnishing apartments, houses, commercial estates, and outdoor spaces.
The Premise of Furnish Master
In Furnish Master, we furnish and decorate real estate, apartments, rooms, houses, commercial properties, and outdoor spaces. Meanwhile, we expand our business and earn more money to buy stuff.
Gameplay
Furnish Master has two gameplay modes: story mode and sandbox mode.
In Story Mode, we complete tasks and jobs in order. Each completed job unlocks a new one, so we develop and expand our interior design business. The jobs range from fixing a store (including loading the shelves with stock) to collecting domino pieces and arranging them to fall. The more we develop our business, the more money we have to purchase furniture and decorations for our spaces. Then, we have Sandbox, which allows us to play with all the available decorations and furniture without spending any money.
Controls are easy in Furnish Master, we move the camera with the right mouse button, rotate furniture with the wheel button, and select with the left mouse button. Everything else has its own button on the screen. You can customize almost anything you have on-screen – the color and material of the furniture.
Sometimes, the controls need to be more responsive. I needed clarification about changing colors and materials, but not once or twice. Also, throughout the game, the exit and enter buttons look the same in different parts. It needs to be clarified. In the future, the game could use more direction in menus or even options to always have directions on the screen, like we’ve seen in some games recently.
Arranging furniture and decorations is mostly smooth and easy. You can arrange them, merging several cabinets or shelves to make one unit. That’s good, but you need to align them manually, which can be exhausting when trying to do it on a bigger scale. The same goes for all furniture, even carpets.
You need to align the rug and put it on the floor. Because it doesn’t snap automatically to the floor, where it belongs. I may be wrong about it. This way might be better for more customization options and more advanced users. Still, it certainly wasn’t better for my gameplay.
It could also use a hint or skip system for some jobs. Why, you ask, especially in an Interior Design game? The developer has implemented a bit of puzzling in this game.
Sometimes, it works fine; occasionally, it does not. It worked great for me when asked to help a customer finish a gigantic puzzle with some missing pieces. I found the puzzles and put them in the puzzle. The job is done. There is no need for hints, and not that any were offered.
But then we have the Domino job, where, yet again, we have a puzzle, but this time, we need to fill in a domino chain after finding the missing pieces. Why it doesn’t work? For one, you need to find out how many pieces are missing. Also, there are no set positions for the pieces – you fit them as you see fit.
The most annoying part is that every time you fail, you have to start from the very beginning, getting the job, talking with the client, finding the pieces, trying to put them in their correct places, and then pressing the button for the chain to start falling. So, no trial runs for part of the chain either.
You don’t have hints, you can’t skip it, and worst of all, you can only do another job after finishing this one. It’s a game about interior design. You shouldn’t be stumped by a domino chain.
Furnish Master boasts an economic element to the gameplay. You fulfill jobs and earn money to buy more stuff. It sounds slow, but thankfully, we can purchase and invest in a small shop early in the game, making earning money much faster and easier.
When fixing the shop in question, we must also stock the shelves. One would think the developer would devise an option to stock them in bulk. Instead, each bottle of water and so on is placed individually. After getting the store, you can stock the shelves as you like with stuff from the in-game store, and honestly, I saw little difference in earnings whether I did that or not.
Performance
Furnish Master is marketed as in Early Access, so it is expected to change for the better as time goes on. For now, it has a satisfactory amount of options to choose from when it comes to furniture and decorations. I did experience a few freezes here and there. Sometimes controls would get funky, as in not reacting fast (or in one case when painting the walls – at all), but the overall gaming experience is good.
There are some things to consider, like adding more jobs to choose from instead of doing them to unlock. Adding a hint or skip button for some jobs, or even a feature where a job expires after some time, like in real life, will improve the gameplay.
Settings
Furnish Master has extensive video and display settings, as well as basic audio settings and language support. According to the game’s steam page, the game will be in early access 12 to 18 months, during which time various bug fixes and upgrades will be implemented, as well as adding mod support and additional furniture and decorations.
Conclusion
Furnish Master is a new addition to the not-overly-saturated genre of interior design games. It has some exciting features and some that need a bit of work, but overall, it’s a good beginning. It’s marketed as a relaxing game, and for me, the sandbox mode and parts of the story mode were relaxing. But the game as a whole? Still waiting.
Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure. 