Design Home: my first addictive app and how to play without paying

tforia
tforia
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read

I’m not one to get sucked into a game. Especially on the phone. So it was strange to find myself glued to Design Home, an interior design app that allows players to arrange furniture in different rooms. I was hooked from the beginning and I’ve killed a ton of hours.

Found on Apple’s top charts, I was curious. What is this interior design game I’ve never heard of? It has such a generic name, as if they didn’t know what to call it.

Launching the app, you receive an initial allotment of cash and diamonds. These are used to purchase furniture that you’ll use to design rooms.

There are many rooms to choose from. They each pay a fee for completing design. The daily challenge pays $2500 and never has a requirement on furniture — you can select furniture of your liking to fill the room. All other challenges pay $500 and have requirements on furniture: it has to be a certain brand, color or style.

Entering a room, you’ll see buttons for where the furniture should go. Couches, accent chairs, consoles, plants, wall hangings. By clicking each button, you select furniture you own or shop to buy and place. There are turquoise buttons for the required furniture and purple items are optional.

The room is pre-arranged. You don’t have a say in how the couch runs or how the rug is aligned. The room can only be viewed from one vantage point. If you use a really cool chair, you might only see the back.

Since you start out on a limited budget, if you don’t plan well, you end up with a lot of ugly furniture or furniture that doesn’t go well together. More often, you end up too poor to buy any furniture. Of course you can pay real money to get additional cash and diamonds, but I didn’t want to pay.

I only play the daily challenge that pays $2500. You use up furniture which you’ll need to spend money to replace, so why not do the challenges that pay the most? Each furniture can be used a limited number of times, usually 4 to 5 times.

In the beginning I made a ton of mistakes and ended up with really ugly furniture. It was all I could afford. I had to wait for my daily bonus and save the dollars and diamonds before having enough for a challenge. I also played too many $500 rooms so I ended up having to buy certain furniture to fulfill requirements. It was not fun but I was persistent in getting to a point where the game could be fun. It was enjoyable enough to swap in furniture in and out, seeing the different combinations a room could be.

Members get to vote on each room and after a day or two, you see your results out of five stars. If you get at least 4 stars there’s a reward. Usually some gaudy furniture that’s hard to match. You have an overall score calculated from averaging your room designs. Looking at others’ rooms, I’m always surprised how many different combinations can come from the same room.

After playing for several months, it’s gotten a little boring. Every living room is arranged the same: a circle of chairs and couches around a coffee table. I wish there was more flexibility in furniture arrangement, but that would take a ton of technological development. The app doesn’t refresh its furniture selection frequent enough. Also, the accessories, posters, vases and plants, are pretty ugly. There are posters of the Eiffel tower and a picture that say ‘New York Paris London’.

But imagine if you could walk through the rooms with a VR headset after designing a room? Then walk through others’ rooms to judge their work. I hope they go that direction. The single perspective of each room makes it less interactive, despite the 3d objects designed for the app.


Originally published at tinayang.com on August 8, 2017.

tforia

Written by

tforia

Isn't it nice tforia.com

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade