Published:
Our Verdict
Low-Budget Repairs is a janky renovation simulator with some dull mechanics, but the way it embraces its silly side and lets you live the life of a cowboy builder makes it a lot of fun at times. Who doesn’t like throwing sofas out of windows?
Nobody wants a cowboy builder to work on your house. Wonky tiles, patchy plaster, and uneven paintwork would be getting away with it lightly. However, I never expected being a cowboy builder to be quite so fun. While Low-Budget Repairs isn’t quite what I expected, it’s an enjoyably silly take on the renovation game genre.
It’s not a simulation game about doing things perfectly. While you’re ultimately working to rebuild your house, the aim is to make as much money as you can from the jobs you’re undertaking. Can you messily paint a wall and get away with it, or give a client a cheaper brown sofa when they asked for a red one? Why not do it if you can get away with it, pocketing the difference in the process?
Low-Budget Repairs’ approach to handyman work is its highlight. You can flush small bits of trash down a client’s toilet, tiling takes a “that’ll do” approach, and you can use bowls around a client’s house for cement mixing so that you don’t need to buy your own. You’re mentored by a drunk ghost, and most of the people you interact with are strange characters.
This silly streak adds something unexpected to the main loop of accepting a job, earning some money, and using what you’ve made and learned to renovate your aunt’s decrepit old bungalow. I was worried after two prostitution jokes were made within the first five minutes, but the story blossoms into a quirky and endearing one.
Some of that tone transfers to the gameplay, too. You’ll be asked to put out fires, pick locks in your own house, and push unwanted sofas out of windows in tower blocks. If there’s a way to try and get away with doing something the wrong way, you’re persuaded to do it. You don’t need to be professional; there’s no TrustPilot-style review site in the world of Low-Budget Repairs. Trying to balance spending as little money as possible, but also completing jobs successfully, is an engaging extra element for each job. There’s a level of experimentation here that most other simulation games don’t allow for.
However, not everything is as satisfying as messing around. Painting and plastering are dull after the first couple of attempts. Dip your brush in the bucket of paint, slap it on the wall, dip the brush again, and repeat until the task is ticked off. It’s repetitive stuff.
I think it’s going for a Powerwash Simulator style of calming monotony, but the game is too clunky for it to work and the tasks are too small to feel any sense of accomplishment. Methodically cleaning a massive house in Powerwash over the course of three hours is immensely satisfying, but patching up a little bit of broken wall in Low-Budget Repairs doesn’t hit the same.
Other tasks suffer from similar issues. While plastering is vague, tiling is frustratingly intricate. It’s so hard to get pieces in the right place, and any little mistake sees everything come crashing down. And while picking up sofas and chucking them out of windows is fun, you’ll be fighting against the game’s controls to actually do it. I often wanted to just skip some of the tedious tasks to get to whatever is next. I guess doing so would be the mark of a good cowboy builder, and you can often complete a job without doing everything, but it’s not worth it if you end up losing money.
Low Budget Repairs’ need for additional polish goes beyond the general mechanics, too. It’s not a pretty game, the framerate struggles at times, the subtitles haven’t been translated particularly well, and I had one freeze that required a full forced restart of my PC. With some updates and changes to how some tasks work, the game would be a lot more fun to play.
When Low-Budget Repairs lets its personality take over and it lets you mess around as a mostly useless handyman, it’s great. It does things I’ve never seen before in a simulation or management game, and it might be a distraction for anyone looking for a proper renovation sim, but I think it stands out well. There are other games you can pick up if you want to rebuild a house properly. Low-Budget Repairs is the game for those of you who love a shortcut or two.
