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7.1 excellent
I'm reminded of that Homes Under the Hammer episode where the family unknowingly rented out their second home to criminals... that completely trashed it by installing sprinklers and lamps for a hydroponics system to grow marijuana. Just what do tenants get up to these days? That's what I want to know.
Real Estate Empire 2, from Rusty Axe Games, is a colorful house-flipping strategy game that isn't shy with numbers. Gone are the player customization options, computer opponents, and titular dollar sign from the previous game. They've been replaced with goal-oriented levels. And lots and lots of tenants.
Each level challenges you to complete a number of goals within a set number of months. These goals can be anything from increasing your net worth to a certain dollar amount, to owning a certain number of five star properties, to renting out a certain number of homes to good tenants, etc. You get to choose your name and headshot at the main menu and then you're off flipping and landlording in one of the many neighborhood scenarios.
About a dozen houses occupy the onscreen neighborhood. Clicking on one of them sends any necessary data (estimated value, mortgage payments, etc.) to the information panel at the bottom of your screen. Little spinning "for sale" signs oscillate above available houses. If you have enough money to make a down payment on a mortgage, you can make an offer to the bank and purchase a house. Arrow buttons allow you to adjust your offer up or down. Propose too little and the bank will either reject your offer or make a counter offer. An acceptable offer will win you the house, and you'll automatically begin advertising for a tenant.
There are five kinds of tenants in Real Estate Empire 2. Based on their previous rental history, these are bad, sketchy, fair, good, and excellent. The better the tenant the less likely they are to tear up your rental property. (Even the excellent tenants do a fair amount of damage!) Tenants send in applications seemingly at random, and a big part of the game's strategy is deciding whether to accept a less than desirable tenant to generate rental income immediately... or wait for a possibly better application even though it means less income in the meantime.
Just what are these tenants getting up to in my houses? With a bad tenant you can expect to make expensive repairs about once a month. Whereas with an excellent tenant it seems like a (slightly less expensive) repair is needed every month and a half. (A tiny progress bar counts down to when the next maintenance event occurs.) Where are the innocent little old ladies who sit around quietly knitting, drinking tea, and watching TV? Repairs can be postponed, but eventually you'll have to bite the bullet and pay unless you want your house to be condemned.
Tenants are either unhappy, indifferent, or happy. Happy tenants are less likely to suddenly move out and create a gap in your income, so it's worth doing whatever you can to keep them smiling. That probably includes lowering the rent. Real Estate Empire 2 allows you to choose between low, normal, and high rents for each of your properties. Stuck with a bad tenant? Jack up his rates!
The days advance at about one per second, though you can speed through to the end of the month by clicking a "Hurry Month" button if you're waiting for rent or tenant applications or offers on houses you've put on the market. Even when galloping along, your days are still interrupted when anything notable happens, such as a new tenant applying. Once a month your tenants pay rent and you make a mortgage payment to the bank. The bank allows you to miss three mortgage payments... after that they foreclose on the property.
Homes can be upgraded up to four times (up to a five star rating), each time increasing their value and the amount of rent you can ask tenants to pay. (Luckily you've tricked them all into signing leases which allow you to raise or lower the rent at your whim.) Upgrades automatically increase rent; some renters will be happy to have a more spiffy home while others would rather it stay as it is so they don't see a rent increase. Alternatively, you can completely renovate a house, dramatically increasing its value. Keep in mind that you'll have to give tenants one month's notice before kicking them to the curb and sending in the contractors.
The neighborhoods are vibrant and the houses colorful, despite Real Estate Empire 2 being rather static when it comes to graphics. Rental income and mortgage payments fly back and forth between your properties and your cash readout at the top of the screen, and herds of green dollar signs bound forth from the screen at the completion of a level. The background music is light, cheery, and perhaps a bit too repetitive. I had a lot of fun playing through the normal campaigns, though perhaps luck seems to be a bigger factor in the early parts of a level than I like in my strategy games. Even some levels in the tutorial I had to replay because I got strings of nothing but bad or sketchy tenants lining up outside my properties.
It takes some time to get used to the interface and where the necessary numbers are, but when the game is whizzing along nothing seems really out of place. On levels which required me to own a set number of renovated homes, I couldn't seem to find any information telling me which I had renovated and which I had merely maxed out on upgrades. God knows my memory was no help! Some aspects of the between-game interface need some work. For example, the game is sorely lacking a "Restart Level" option.... and perhaps the possibility of the game realizing you've put a level in an unwinnable state. Many times I found myself with no property and without enough money to interest the bank in any purchase... and the game just continued counting out the days cheerfully. Finally, at the main menu the player selection box requires you to type in your name every time you want to switch between players, even if you've already created a player.
A tutorial gets you up and running, but assumes you know what abbreviations like "Mtg." mean. (Mortgage.) Strangely this is mistakenly spelled "Mty." in the onscreen pop-up tooltips that float above your properties. I was a bit confused until I realized that the y was supposed to be a g. A more indepth manual is available online from Rusty Axe Games if you need help, and should probably be included somewhere in the game release.