I think I speak for the entire Earth delegation in that, to put up a notice over in Alpha Centauri that a hyperspace bypass will be constructed right through the happy little homes we’ve just spent many hours creating, that is a crime. It may also be a crime that I make such a lengthy and on-the-nose reference to Douglas Adams, but I haven’t checked. I think I’d need to be looking in a dark and dank basement bathroom with no staircase or light to get down there, and I just cannot be bothered. Ok, I’ll stop now, but only because the Earth is about to be obliterated in two minutes and nineteen seconds.

Anyway, Hometopia is The Sims 4 if it was created by a human that understood what we all wanted: More home design gubbins. Hometopia is a game I wrote about coming to this week’s Steam Next Fest because, when I saw the press release that said it is about designing homes with as much detail as possible, I almost jumped for joy. Ok, Lisa and I disagree on this one a little, but I always found The Sims games to be about home design. For the life of me, I can’t remember where it was said (I think a Channel 4 doc by Charlie Brooker), but Will Wright, who created The Sims, said that it was always designed around a satirical look at US consumerism.

Hometopia does take that consumerist section of the home design aspect from The Sims and makes that the entire game. In career mode, it is a little more akin to House Flipper. You focus on fixing things up on a budget and selling it on. I tried to avoid that this week during the Steam Next Fest because those restrictions don’t interest me at all. The sandbox mode on the other hand, does very much interest me as it allows me to create my dream “little” home that I can lay outside of when the bulldozers come to knock it down. Ok, that’s enough Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy references for one article!

Hometopia is everything it is advertised to be: You are given an empty plot of land, you can construct your mansion made of gold, your happy cottage life, or recreate Bill & Deana Riker’s house they share with their daughter in Picard. You can place every knick-knack and home appliance like you are actually renovating and moving in. In some cases, I’d argue that can be a little too much: I’m mostly referencing painting a room or the entire house. You paint every tile or place every square of flooring, individually. You can drag and place things, but there is no button to say “paint this entire room” which would be useful when you are doing the entire exterior.

When I showed Alexx and Lisa (our Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor) the first bedroom I had created, admittedly very much like an excited child with a drawing of the family, the first comment was, “that’s big.” I could make a crude joke about it being the first time I’ve heard that in a bedroom, but I’ll refrain and say I won’t despite highlighting it. That tends to be my problem, I’ve never been great at scale in these games. My entire house was a little large for what I thought was quite a small lot. That made painting it more frustrating, especially because I wasn’t too sure about picking a color before I’d been able to furnish it.

Another expedition into the unknown is furnishing, with lots and lots of things to choose from. Do you want beds? There are tons. There are lots of lamps too, or even wardrobes. It might not entirely be there just yet, but even if it was nothing more than a limited supply of furnishings available throughout the demo this week, it is still quite a lot. In fact, I avoided what little there may be to the Steam Workshop additions thus far, as it could be somewhat buggy at this early stage. Nonetheless, despite the entire overabundance of lamps, washing machines, and other bits and pieces, carpets and wallpapers are a little limiting. The former tend to be a little bland and woolen-looking, while the latter is too focused on flowers and things you’d find in your nan’s house.

None that is really an issue, as the aforementioned Steam Workshop support could fill in gaps upon release. Additionally, they mention that there are a few things missing so far when the game boots up. Either way, I do have some gripes, mostly to do with controls and user experience bits and bobs. Foremost is probably the options, not just being messy in how things are laid out, but also the lack of mouse sensitivity, controls/button re-mapping, or even UI-scaling. Those are some things that make a noticeable difference if you have issues, but can’t change them.

The other major issue I had which could very well be a bug, was selecting an item within some menus (Furnish>Decor). Say I pick a shoe as a bit of decor, then I hit escape because I didn’t like that one. I would then end up having to go through all the menus again to find that next item. What made this considerably more annoying is how inconsistent it would be for which menus this would occur. Sometimes it would take me back to the menu when hitting escape, other times, I’d be desperately trying to remember what it was I was looking at before I started swearing uncontrollably. That was more of a frustrating issue than anything else.

There are minor things that could/should be fixed: Floating pillows were irritating and being unable to put some objects in specific places was equally so. You may be able to rotate items to any degree you wish, but you can’t alter their angle or height, which I found out when trying to place a pair of high heels naturally askew in front of a bed. I don’t mind the high heels thing so much, though tilting one as if it was kicked off would be nice. The pillows floating or being unable to put soap or other bathroom trinkets on specific shelves, that’s more annoying overall. Though in the grand scheme of it all, these are small issues.

I would like to be able to change the intensity of lights, or even the colors they produce. Maybe I am thinking much more along the scale of Frontier’s Planet Coaster, while Hometopia is only made by (as far as I understand) five people worldwide. With the size of the team and the scale of the overall project, it is already large. With a possible modding community/Steam Workshop community, it could explode into something massive. Currently, it is quite large and open to lots and lots of creativity, however, it could use a larger library of furnishings, flooring, wallpaper/paint, and more.

Ultimately, I went into Hometopia hoping for The Sims 3 on lots and lots of caffeine, and while there are limits still, a core concept is there. You may not be able to curve walls or do some things to the nth degree all the time, but what you can do is still a great deal more than some other games I could mention. As a demo, a bite-sized meal of what I am very excited for, I’m not coming away displeased. In fact, I want to play more now and I would if I could/didn’t have other games to write about. Though no specific date is set for January 2022, I know I’ll be keeping one eye out for it.

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