Hi, let me explain the "gameplay" of Design Home to you. It will take about three paragraphs, because it is excessively intricate for a game that is basically about picking which turquoise Ottoman will work best in the outdoor dining room of a Turkish villa.You probably know this already. Why else would would you read an article about Design Home? However, on the off-chance this article piqued your interest without knowing anything about Design Home, you will need to pay close attention. Also, thank you for taking a chance on me.
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In Design Home, you are a designer presented with variety of briefs: "Townhouse on Beacon Hill," "Goodbye UK, Hello Singapore!" or "Palace by the Sea." These are mostly just rooms with varyingly hideous wallpaper, while the game decides where all the furniture goes, but you get to pick the styles of the furniture, ergo: the vibe of the place.
You pay for furniture in either cash or diamonds, because the game has two currencies, and they are equal in value. This means that while you sometimes have enough collective currency to buy a thing, you still cannot buy it because they are two different wallets with, theoretically, different functions. Still no word on why some things cost diamonds and others cost dollars.To complete your design you must meet simple requirements, like "use two Luxe items" or "use a floral armchair." Once the design submitted, you get $500. Unfortunately, here is the thing—the proverbial fly in the design ointment, if you will. That floral armchair will cost you at least $1,200, so you are actually losing money.
This is the trompe l'oeil that Design Home is founded upon: the illusion that you can turn a profit. You never, ever will. It's the Great Freemium Lie. Soon enough, no matter how conservative your spending, you will burn through the cash Design Home gave you to begin with, and you will find yourself sheepishly, sheepishly purchasing the absolute cheapest white side table the game offers, a hideously small ceramic elephant which somehow still costs like $300, because you literally have to put it in the room to finish the challenge.
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You started the game full of hope and joy, making really bold creative choices that you felt were true to you. You were just starting to develop a clear, coherent (yet unique) voice in the world of design. Then, just like that, the brief became your master. You used to use Eames replicas. Now you're buying goddamn beanbags because they're the only beige chair in the game you have the budget for, and that budget is approximately $48. You used to have fucking $18,000.Anyway, that is the first strike in the Evil box for Design Home. That's what we are trying to figure out: Is Design Home Good or Evil?Good: 0, Evil: 1Design Home is essentially that part of The Sims where you put furniture in the house you've just built, which is the best part of the very best game. The second best part— or at least the part which I did most often—was putting in a cheat code that would let teen sims "woohoo" when ordinarily only adult sims could do it because I was SUCH a horny little fuck.Score: Good: 1, Evil: 1I do not care for each room's aggressively floral backstories. They serve to outline the premise of your fictional hiring, which is completely irrelevant to the challenge itself. They also read as if they were written by Carrie Bradshaw, which actually makes quite a lot of sense because of courseshe had something commercial going on the side. Columnists can't afford that lifestyle!!!Score: Good: 1, Evil: 2
The Premise, in its Most Basic Form
The "Briefs"
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Kathy. Fucking. Kuo.
The Cost
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Score: Good: 1, Evil: 4You thought you just did this for fun? No. You also do it for fame. Every room in Design Home is scored out of five, and if you manage to get above four, the game gives you a free piece of furniture. If you do really well, your room is displayed in a sort of Instagram-style feed within the game, for all the Design Home world to see.Here is the thing: You're being judged by players of a virtual interior design game, which means they are 97 percent moms whose display picture is their kid, or a selfie in a car—like, always in the front seat of a car. They do not have the same taste as you. They simply do not. Plus, the game is doubly rigged because it always pits two very good designs or two really bad ones against each other. So you're either made to downvote a good design, or forced to give some barely-there, weak-ass room 4.6 stars when it doesn't even have a rug (rugs completely tie your rooms together, and should be considered an absolute necessity). Somehow, in this arbitrary process, you only end up with 3.8—even though you used like four different house plants to add life and colour—just missing out on the beautiful armchair you really really wanted.Score: Good: 1, Evil: 5