EDIT: They removed the "full store" gif I talk about in my review and replaced it 😂, happened after this review got some attention, just letting you all know they manipulate.

Below is my original un-edited review.

I cannot recommend Low-Budget Repairs.

I completed the game in around 8 hours, and unfortunately, most of that time was spent doing repetitive tasks that quickly became boring. My biggest disappointment is that the actual gameplay is nothing like what the trailers made it seem.

For example, walls don't realistically crack or get damaged when you drill into them. The window repair system, where you use foam, is simply a repetitive mini-game rather than the more creative solution shown in the trailers. I didn't even cut a single door in half as the trailer was showing, in fact the door just spawns when you put in the door-frame.

One feature I was particularly looking forward to was forcing the fuse box to remain active, but as far as I could tell, that isn't even something you can do in the game, I expected high creativity and weird solutions I cannot do in real life, but the only thing you really can do is put on tiles badly.

The graphics are alright, but nothing special. The story is also extremely boring, and the AI-generated voices make it even harder to become invested in the characters or what is happening.

I waited two years for this game, which probably makes the disappointment even worse. I expected a creative repair simulator where you would have to solve problems in different ways and deal with realistic consequences from your actions. Instead, I got around 8 hours of repetitive mini-games.

Maybe the game will improve with future updates, but in its current state, I can't recommend it — especially if you were expecting the experience shown in the trailers.

Some jobs i even had to skip cause it just bugged, after the game was completed I tried to just grab things from the store and run out, but it had no consequencens so I assume money got no value.


Notice how packed the store seems in the gif they added on the store page, then watch the new trailer and see how dead it is.

If you saw this game 2 years ago you was probably tricked like I was.


You can't even change your keybinds - they will release a patch for basic game features.

waited 2 years for this, what a let down

paintings and furniture hang themselves perfectly level unlike the play test and trailers where you could intentionally hang them at whatever angle you wanted just to be funny

tile cutting is a nightmare and u break other tiles in the process and for some reason the game wont register u even layed tiles in the first place

installing windows using seal foam felt more like a forced minigame as opposed to a real in a pinch creative type mechanic

i really wanted to purposely cut doors down to funny angles but the doors just materialize and install themselves.

walls dont even crack when drilled like in the trailers

story feels very low effort as do the characters and their seemingly AI generated voice lines, cant even say "♥♥♥♥♥" correctly.

was a very promising great idea with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ execution and the whole game just feels like the house flipper game but with some cliche Slavic stereotypes thrown in for some comedic relief

There are two versions of Low-Budget Repairs. There is the version in the trailer and promotional material and everything a prospective player might consume about the game. Beside this, there is the game as it is. These two can be thought of as circles, occasionally overlapping in a Venn diagram, but more distant than they have any right to be.

The game as advertised is a satirical take on the ever-popular renovation genre. You play as a drunken handyman in 1995 Poland, taking advantage of the new market economy to fleece apartment-dwellers for all they’re worth. He is there to hammer things and drink vodka, and the hammer broke on the drive over.

The actual game focuses on Maciek, the heir to a shack in a small Polish town in immediate post-communism Poland. Lacking the funds to renovate the shack himself, Maciek apprentices himself to Zybszek, a former handyman turned ghost, who advises him on how to do repairs without investing time, effort, or funds. Together, the pair set out to win the local handyman contest and ostensibly renovate Maciek’s shack.

One of these games is interesting, a fresh take on a genre already replete with the ability to renovate basically anything that is possible to renovate. The intentional encouragement to do things badly rather than an incidental lack of skill leading to things being done badly is a thing of beauty, and was desperately needed.

Low-Budget Repairs is not that. Low-Budget Repairs is very far from that.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3784779784

While there are some moments of insincerity scattered throughout Low-Budget Repairs, the game as a whole plays more or less like a standard renovation game. Players are given jobs to do to help fund the renovation of their personal project, balancing meeting clients’ requests with maximising their profits for the job. Players are hired to paint, assemble, plaster, drill—all the tasks that one normally associates with a renovation game, albeit with the potential to do so badly. Paint does not have to cover the entire blank spot on the wall. Plaster does not have to fully fill the hole. The drill does not have to make a hole in the right place.

However, despite this potential for things to be a little wrong, the ability to truly be a chaos goblin set loose into an unsuspecting flat is missing. While I can hang up a painting in the wrong spot, it must still be hung for the job to be completed. The wall must still be painted. The plaster must still be applied. I am still confined to the world of the job I have been hired to do with very little opportunity for creative misunderstandings.

This is especially true with the elements that are required to actually complete any given job. As an example, a job might require tiling an empty spot in a bathroom. A creative approach to this task might be to apply the smallest portion of the fewest possible tiles, thus saving the remaining tiles for another job. However, the game has an unstated minimum expectation of how many tiles are required and how they must be placed for the job to be considered complete. That this is never stated or any indication given as to what percentage of tiles have actually been placed means that the best approach is to just place tiles normally until the game says that element of the job is complete. This turns the entire chaotic element, then, into nothing. I’m doing the same thing I would be doing in any other renovation game, just with a Polish ghost yelling “cholera!” at me.

And if I can be honest, I think I prefer painting when it does not involve a drunken ghost.

Once it became clear that this game was not going to be the irreverent take on the genre I so badly wanted, I tried to approach it on its terms as best I could. This game wanted me to be a handyman in post-communist housing blocks, and so I would be the best handyman I could be on those housing blocks.

It’s here, however, that the game truly suffers. From a gameplay perspective, the game is not a particularly polished renovation sim. It’s not possible, for instance, to remap keys, leading me and my laptop-with-a-Dvorak-keyboard to have to reset elements of my machine to be able to play the game at all. The game also runs unreasonably hot, causing me to also have to drag my external fan from its hiding place in the cabinet. For those who are inclined to motion sickness when playing certain games, this game will also trigger that nausea, and I could not find a way to fix it.

Beyond this, the game itself is riddled with bugs. Tasks will not mark as complete when they, in fact, are. Furniture will not rotate in such a way as to be able to be placed in position or removed from its packaging. The act of actually engaging with renovation is tedious and dull, with the player having to constantly move back and forth unnecessarily. At one point, while placing a cabinet, I accidentally clipped through the building’s ceiling and touched the face of God. Upon reloading, it happened again. It took four attempts to place the cabinet, after which, I can only assume that I achieved sainthood for my infinite patience.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3784780261

More problematic, however, is the game’s writing and the decisions around it. This is a Polish game, and as such, I assume it was all originally written in Polish. That the game tries to be a comedy means that, inevitably, some elements of that comedy will not survive the translation process. That’s the nature of comedy, and I can accept that not all jokes within the game are meant to be understood by me, a non-Polish player.

However, what isn’t—or at least shouldn’t be—expected is that none of the humour lands. Where Zybszek is clearly meant to be the comic relief in a game about a terrible handyman, he instead comes off as obnoxious and annoying, with me dreading his every frequent appearance. The various other characters Maciek meets are similarly annoying, their voices grating and off-putting.

The game’s Steam page discloses that the game was translated using AI, and it is obvious. Watching the voice misalign with the text, and hearing the AI fail to translate some swear words (like “cholera jasna”) adds a layer of cheapness and lack of care that does not help an already cheap and broken-feeling game. The writing in Low-Budget Repairs is a nearly textbook case of why AI should not be trusted to do game translations. Humour is difficult to translate as is—this is a case study in how not to do it with the end result being a game that is obnoxious to engage with on every level.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3784780700

I will freely admit that I only picked this game up because of its surrounding marketing. I am a chaos goblin at heart, and the ability to exercise my inner demons inside a 1990s Polish apartment block sounded like a riotous good time. What I got instead was a generic and dull renovation sim that became grating and obnoxious the more time I spent in it. Part of this is, of course, the objective reality of the game—it is not a good game, and it does not run well, and I do not recommend it. Part of it, however, is also how thoroughly duped I feel. The game I thought I was getting a chance to play is not real. The game in the trailers and the marketing materials does not exist. Instead, in its place lurks this eldritch simulacrum, draped in the trappings of a fun and interesting game, but making it clear that ultimately, it’s the same tired thing as always, just done worse and with no awareness of just how miserable it is.

If you enjoyed this review, please check out the full version at Summit Reviews [summitreviews.biz] and our curator page. Thank you to Gray2RGB for the review copy, and thank you for reading! [/url]