Low-Budget Repairs Review

Ghost Uncles Make the Best Mentors

I don't know about you but as a millennial I feel like DIY skills are something that's kinda lost on our generation. We're living in the era where convenience is king, why do something messy and dangerous if your Dad will just sort it out? Well that all flies out the window when you finally get a place of your own and realise that it's all down to you and crucially, how expensive everything is. As I sit typing this I'm looking at my own shoddy paintwork but you know what? I did that. I made my office liveable. Yeah, I accidentality painted the ceiling a bit when I got bored and tired but you know what? It's good enough. There are more important things to worry about in life. And that's one of the core philosophies of the game "Low-Budget Repairs". You're tasked with going into a place and making things good enough. Passable. Just Okay. And that's fine. This is not a game for perfectionists, and honestly that's what drew me to wanting to play this. I finally saw a little of myself in the gameplay. Most busy work games like "Power Wash Simulator" or "House Flipper" eventually make you need to strive for perfection in some way. But "Low-Budget Repairs" lets you off the hook a little bit. I've never been the type of gamer who needed to 100% everything to feel content but when the game is encouraging that, it does make you feel a little bit bad every time you see things missing from your stats. I would actually say this game actively puts things in your way in order to make things imperfect, which was definitely not something I'd experienced much as a gamer before. It seems like the controls are intentionally made to feel clunky for some things. The regular stuff like picking up items and painting feels fine and what you'd expect from games like this. It was only when I came into mounting some shelves and cabinets that I started feel like the controls were getting in the way of the game a little bit. But it did create some funny moments as I dropped things I was holding creating havoc on the kitchen table while I was trying to drill holes in the wall. Which is why I think it's all by design, they want you to feel the way it feels doing solo DIY sometimes. When you know you should probably wait for help or buy a proper tool for the job but the urge to be done with it all takes over. This game also does have story. And English and Polish voice acting. You're a young man with a clean slate, given a fixer upper by your grandma and left to make it on your own. Pretty soon you're met with a surrogate uncle figure who unfortunately meets his timely demise while sticking a screwdriver into an outlet. I wasn't expecting this at all when I loaded it up and while some parts were charming and funny. There were a few comedy moments that weren't to my taste and kinda seemed to go on a bit too long. However when they stuck to DIY jokes and ghost humour, I think they do a pretty good job. I did find that I preferred the Polish voice acting because the main character in English was pretty grating after a while. Overall I think you can see the time and effort that's gone into this game and fixing and tidying up the spaces is fun. It feels like a working class game which isn't something you get to say very often. But it was nice to feel a bit represented in that way. Perhaps the North East of England and Poland have a lot more in common than I was aware of.