Yesterday’s game was focused on big acts of chaos (admittedly committed in a very ordered way). And while there are certainly a number of boosters of the second law of thermodynamics, it does exist within a broader framework of self-organization. Open systems tend to evolve complexity over time.

In short, given the right frame of reference you can win, you can break even. Order triumphs.

I mentioned in DD3 that I’d had a bit of a falling out with The Sims. This is true. But one thing I quite enjoyed, outside of the context of the game, was the toy-like house building editor. I found it very satisfying to layout floorplans, pick carpets and wallpaper, heavens, even window treatments. Especially given that an entire home could be built in a half-an-hour (or as Sonja affectionately calls it, “two-and-a-half hours”).

Segue to the Boston area housing market. My wife and I looked for months for a place, and it became apparent that for a house to be “affordable,” it would also have to be a “fixer-upper.” This of course spurred the consumption of “nesting-porn,” aka, This Old House. Like The Sims, a house could be renovated in a few short half-hour sessions, and (for the viewer) quite economically.

Today we pull order out of chaos with a game of renovation.

Fixer Upper

The narrative: You are a young carpenter just hanging out his shingle, as it were, as a renovator of fine old homes.

The game is somewhat like an RPG in its structure. You start with basic skills, unlocking new skills and new branches of the skill tree as you go. You also gain party-members in the form of contractors who join your team. Like yesterday’s game, there is a story arc, and drama between the party members.

There are two gameplay modes, the first of which is the narrative Campaign mode. Like yesterday’s game, you start with a single decrepit structure, but your job is to push back the forces of entropy, on time and under budget.

Areas within the house that need attention are flagged. All flagged areas have to be addressed before the project can be signed off. There are also a number of optional tasks of various difficulties that will boost your reputation if you complete them.

Each of these flagged stations brings you into a mini-game which is based around some aspect of home renovation:

• Cutting and placing tiles
• Painting
• Drywall
• Plumbing
• Electrical
• Landscaping

Each of these is a small, relatively short casual-style game, which I’m not going to design tonight. They range, let us say, from tetris-like games for bricklaying to Incredible Machine style gameplay for electrical work.

In addition, there are numerous finishing touches that are simply applied in the manner of the Sims House Editor.

All of this work drains the budget, which must be managed if your little shop is going to turn a profit, and hire the specialist needed to compete for bigger, fancier restoration jobs.

Order from chaos is the cookie. A restoration job takes 1-2 hours, and at the end, you get a couple of minute long virtual “This Old House” documentary of your restoration, showing the before, the progress, and the after. And because there are numerous optional restorations/additions possible (but only so much money), each play through has a different final look.

You take the profits and move on to the next project. You hire new people, buy new tools, shop for new fixtures and options.

In campaign mode, there are bigger and more complicated projects, triumphs and setbacks, many contractors to choose from, and all the time you are pushing your skills and creating your unique master carpenter.

The second mode is Free Play, where you can play with all the skills, contractors and fixer uppers in Toy Mode, with lots of money and lots of tools, and no time limits.

Both modes unlock new content as you go. Some unlocks in the campaign mode would give you new options in free play, and vice versa.

In addition to the basic renovation gameplay, you would want a variety of cookies, a builders gallery with pretty renders of the homes you have renovated, a library of your “Shows.” At different stages in your development you could add non-contractor skills like Author or Show Host that could generate book and TV deals that bring in more money and bigger projects, like celebrity homes.

Remember, measure twice, cut once, or remember to quick-save.

-game over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.