Building House Flipper 2 from the ground up
House Flipper was a surprising Steam hit of 2018. While not necessarily enthusing the critics straight from launch, the simulation title found a large and faithful community that ensured its long-term success.
This also allowed developer Empyrean to continually update and improve upon the game, release several DLCs, and port it to all platforms, guaranteeing its own sustainability and making House Flipper a standout success.
Empyrean partnered with co-developer, publisher, and fellow Polish company Frozen District throughout the original House Flipper's development, and to deliver its sequel, coming out this Thursday.
"We weren't expecting this big success at the beginning," Frozen District lead producer Jakub Bujas tells GamesIndustry.biz. "I started working [on House Flipper] one year before release. So, at the beginning, it was rather focused on being a small indie project, focused on renovating houses, flipping them. It was a nice idea, but we weren't sure if that was a gold mine. That was the biggest project of our company.
"As we got nearer and nearer to the release date, we realised it was getting huge. People were focused on it, got an interest in it. After the release, we got a big community, and they really like to play our game.
"I think [it was a success] because [it had] chill vibes and it hit a niche, that's for sure. The second thing is that despite many problems with the release – we had bugs and some optimisation problems – people from our community were really heartwarming. They understood what we were doing, and they were really supportive. We were really small, like seven or eight people, working on this project. So, I think that the success is also [thanks to the community], because they
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