Monuments Flipper Preview

The debut title of developer Monuments Games, developed in collaboration with seasoned simulation dev, Games Incubator, Monuments Flipper is the latest game in the ever-popular first person simulation genre, and yet another that dons the Flipper moniker. For anyone not familiar with the term “flipper”, it’s the process of acquiring property (or any sort of commodity really) for cheap and then selling it at a profit, usually with a level of work going into increasing the value of it first through renovations or renewals. To the disappointment of at least one of my GameGrin colleagues, Monuments Flipper does not involve you physically flipping a monument on its head.

The ever persistent "ghost scaffolding" infestation is the hardest part of renovating an old church

We start off in a surprisingly cozy office space. There’s nothing to really do in the office yet unfortunately, except to pull out your map and get started on the first monument, the Old Village. Not so much an Old Village as it is just two small huts and a mostly covered well, but we get to learn the basics of the game here, such as the different tools used for both renovating the actual buildings in the level, and the finer tools used on the tables you can set up to restore damaged items strewn across the level, and getting them ready for display. You will have to do pretty much every aspect of the job manually, cutting down every individual wooden plank with your axe, and picking up every piece of litter one-by-one. There isn’t a leveling system implemented to speed up these processes like the ones seen in similar titles such as House Flipper, although you do build up EXP to several different categories: Roofer, Archaeologist, or Renovator on the Statistics page — which means a system might arrive sometime further down the line of development.

There’s not much to write home about with regards to visuals, if you’ve played one first-person “simulator” or “flipper” game, then you’ve pretty much seen them all. The buildings and items around the levels are perfectly presentable, but are dated in 2022, and the animations that go with using each tool are severely simplistic, but that also means that there is plenty of room for improvement and polish as the game approaches its full release. The sound design is also another weakness in the preview build, with the music maintaining a liminal essence as if you’re stuck in a lift trying to transcend from the ‘90s into the early 2000s, and the levels being filled with either looping stock foley sound effects of nature ambience or absolutely nothing, such as the Notre-Dame cathedral level which, despite being set within the city of Paris, has no street or city ambiance effects.

This is suspiciously starting to feel a lot like actual work...

The preview build I had access to only had several monuments across France, but the full title will boast well known monuments from around the world. I was able to try my hand at several well known French monuments, such as Château d'Azay-le-Rideau, the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral (seemingly cleaning up and repairing the roof after the real-life fire in 2019), as well as the Eiffel Tower. Though each job has some variety with the tasks included, such as building up roof trusses for the renovation of the Notre-Dame cathedral, or clearing rust off of the Eiffel Tower girders, most of the tasks tend to remain the same from site to site. You set up your scaffolding, you clean graffiti and mildew from the walls, you pick up rocks and stones to rebuild damaged sections of buildings. Though not the most dazzling of gameplay, it’s definitely on brand for these types of simulation games, and lends itself well to unwinding with a nice album, podcast, or TV show on the side whilst you work your job slowly.

Must fight the urge...to make...a reference to...The Shining...

With the promise of further monuments from around the world in the full release, and a dev that takes feedback from the community, Monuments Flipper lays the groundwork for an enjoyable simulator — one that could find its own niche amongst players that enjoy work-like games, such as the Euro Truck Simulator series. Although a full release is still some time away (the developer anticipates sometime in Q2/Q3 of 2023), there’s enough hours of gameplay here to give you a solid taste of what’s to come.