Summer House Review – Less is more in this wistful, holiday destination building toy

Summer House Review – Less is more in this wistful, holiday destination building toy

Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer creates a car? My earliest "summer houses" in Summerhouse resembled Homer's vehicle when I first started playing. Why would someone provide the means to make something so terrible for me, a person who lives in a house but otherwise has no architectural knowledge?

Similar to Townscaper, SUMMERHOUSE is a sandbox toy where you can place house-related pieces onto one of four landscapes: a desert, a lush meadow, an urban sprawl, or a freezing mountain. There is only creative exploration; there is no game.

Many of the pieces—such as the plastic chairs, ventilation units, and off-white laundry on a line—appear to have been taken directly out of a Sims trailer park. Placement is completely freeform, so if you truly want to use abstract sculpture to express yourself, you can stack old pipes or dirty windows.

But I really wanted to perform better after some early ugly. My works never got beautiful, but they did become intriguing when I restricted my content palette to smaller sizes, which was a surprising and even better result.

The laid-back vibe of the place is reinforced by its simple, light user interface. To exercise control over your decision-making, just right-click on the gallery you want to view, be it a wall, roof, door, window, ornament, or block of nature. I started to value the 'random blocks' option, which allows you to randomly pick until something inspiring arises by using the right click over the full collection.

At first, I thought there wasn't much of a selection in the galleries. Maybe this is because I own every Sims 4 expansion pack and stuff pack, so I've grown accustomed to having that much building space.

However, have a look at Townscaper, which expressly limits initial decision-making. Only the color and the placement of an object (apparently a random block) can be altered along the x, y, and z axes. As you become more familiar with the grid and its functions, you can seek more agency in Townscaper, but the game makes it clear that its goal is to be minimum.

Then a sort of Christmas spirit began to emerge, and I realized that I needed to concentrate on making fewer decisions, not more. I constructed small settlements with distinct architectural styles that all adhered to a vague cultural concept. walls of stone with sporadic additions of wood. Perhaps someone with an abandoned shed lives next door to the family that takes pride in their garden.

This naturally also explains the name of the game, SUMMERHOUSE, which is a peculiar place you discover on a leisurely road trip or even an Airbnb where you can spend a day or two. It's cozy and new, but it's also flawed.

I spent some time building, looked up other types of homes and communities on Google to get ideas, and added effects like "night" and "rain" to give my work more life. After that, I discussed with my husband if we might save up enough cash for a trip abroad in the upcoming years. My participation was sporadically meta and quite focused at the same time.

I think a player with great destination literacy would love SUMMERHOUSE the most. Is that anything that exists? Someone along the lines of my pal the travel agent.

She frequently shares pictures of intriguing, themed homes from the Falkland Islands, Australia's outback, or other places.

In case you think my meager crafts are still ugly or lack creativity, I'm really humiliated by the screenshots I sent for this review. I promise you, they're a huge improvement over my initial creations.

But when I look at them, at the pieces I used and the countless more I decided not to use, I get a strangely peaceful feeling that everything is just the way it should be. Not everyone is a fit for Summerhouse. It was intended for me.