House Flipper studio moves into large-scale demolition and rebuilding with The Constructors

From the makers of House Flipper and The Tenants comes a new game called The Constructors, revealed today at the PC Gaming Show. It promises a very different take on home renovations. Where House Flipper focuses on fixing up individual houses, The Constructors is all about large-scale work: Knocking down old buildings, putting up new ones, designing neighborhoods, and shaping the urban landscape of the city of Wondersville.

As the owner of a big construction company, everything comes down to you. Creating the neighborhoods of the future is obviously a big part of it, but there is no glory without mundanity. You'll also have to get all the necessary permits and paperwork, hire contractors to actually get the job done, deal with clients who may not be entirely happy with how things are going, address environmental concerns, handle protesters, and maybe occasionally decide whether a turned head or cut corner might be better (for your profits) in the long run than playing by the rules.

I've never been a big fan of games that replicate real-world jobs (if I wanted a job, you know, I'd get a job), but The Constructors comes from a background that promises to make the experience interesting. The original House Flipper, released in 2018 "is like Viscera Cleanup Detail only for super gross houses," which is immediately intriguing in my book, and was successful enough to spawn a sequel that's expected out in 2023. The Tenants, meanwhile, comes at home ownership and maintenance from a very different perspective: that of a landlord, and in Jorge's case, a very bad one. (Naturally he pointed the finger at Cindy, "the worst tenant ever," for driving him to become a slumlord.)

"The tenant/owner relationship dynamics is really what sets The Tenants apart from other management sims," Jorge said in his 2021 look at The Tenants, and I hope The Constructors will offer the same thing across a wider range of interactions. Laying out playgrounds and putting up apartment buildings is entertaining in its own right, but maneuvering through a maze of government regulations, union bosses, angry customers, iffy suppliers, shouting picketers, and (I have to assume) shadowy mob guys sounds to me like where the real fun is.

The Constructors doesn't have a release date yet, but is available for wishlisting on Steam.

Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

Read more
doctors treat plague-stricken peasants in the medieval-ish city-builder Nested Lands
Nested Lands is a 'brutal' survival city-builder about guiding villagers through a plague-infested world, and you can play its open alpha right now
Obenseuer
This brutalist life sim gave me a free tenement block to renovate, but my mushroom addiction kept getting in the way
RoadCraft
Snowrunner follow-up RoadCraft shows off its roadbuilding and logistics automation in a new trailer, and I'm already in love with its mobile quarry
RoadCraft
RoadCraft isn't just another demanding offroad sim for petrol heads – it sated my desire to micromanage production lines too
A cloaked man ponders an offering of gold in a large chest in Streets of Fortuna.
This ancient city sim constantly simulates 1000 NPCs in a clockwork murder sandbox where you can poison someone's drink and leave 'confident that you've pulled off the perfect crime'
All Will Fall - A concrete and wood ramshackle city in the middle of an endless ocean
This 'physics-based survival city builder' stuffed all my favorite words into its title so I'm automatically psyched
Latest in Sim
PowerWash Simulator 2 screenshots
'More evolution than revolution': PowerWash Simulator 2 is coming late 2025, and it's bringing online multiplayer and split-screen co-op with it
A child stands on top of a dinosaur exhibit, hugging the nose of a dinosaur skull.
As a real life museum employee, I'm a bit confused by the amount of pirate ghosts in Two Point Museum—but it's not going to stop me trying to make the most realistic exhibits I can
A citizen of a city
A lot is going on for Cities: Skylines' 10th anniversary—from freebies to new creator packs—but there's still a big ol' elephant in the room
Staring eyes in a face covered in oil
Death Stranding 2's PS5 release date is in June, let's hope it doesn't take 8 months to hit PC this time
Cities: Skylines 2 screenshot - street level at night
Cities: Skylines 2's asset editor remains a distant dream: Colossal Order is still working on it but says it's 'proven more technically challenging than initially anticipated'
Town in Tales of Seikyu with two townsfolk sat on the stairs
Tales of Seikyu is just your regular farming simulator, apart from the fact I've got shapeshifting abilities and I'm engaged to a pretty persistent kappa
Latest in News
Man facing camera
The Day Before studio reportedly sues Russian website for calling infamous disaster-game a 'scam'
Will Poulter holding a CD ROM
'What are most games about? Killing': Black Mirror Season 7 includes a follow-up to 2018 interactive film Bandersnatch
Casper Van Dien in Starship Troopers
Sony, which is making a Helldivers 2 movie, is also making a new Starship Troopers movie, but it's not based on the Starship Troopers movie we already have
Assassin's Creed meets PUBG
Ubisoft is reportedly talking to Tencent about creating a new business entity to manage Assassin's Creed and other big games
Resident Evil Village - Lady Dimitrescu
'It really truly changed my life in every possible way': Lady Dimitrescu actor says her Resident Evil Village role was just as transformative for her as it was for roughly half the internet in 2021
Storm trooper hero
Another live service shooter is getting shut down, this time before it even launched on Steam