One of life’s greatest, yet simplest pleasures is having a space all to yourself. You don’t have to share it with anyone, and you don’t have to care about who’s coming and going. That means you can decorate it any way your little heart desires.
There’s definitely an art to interior design, and we’re not just talking in a professional capacity. When designing for yourself, it’s all about creating a space that’s distinctly “you” while still looking like a place a human lives rather than a goblin hovel.
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When designing for others, it’s about listening to feedback and making compromises on your aesthetics and theirs.
In either case, there are plenty of opportunities for decoration and design in games, whether you’re making your dream vacation home or just trying to make an abandoned husk more presentable.
10Animal Crossing: New Horizons
For You And For Me
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Pretty much any game in theAnimal Crossingseries is perfect for the decoration-minded. Since the very start of the series, the inside of your home has been your castle, yours to decorate as you see fit, provided you had enough bells forNook’s villainous little paws.
If we had to highlight any particular entry for interior design potential, it would probably beNew Horizons.
Not only do you still have executive control over what goes in all of your home’s rooms, but with theHappy Home ParadiseDLC, you also get control over a bunch of other peoples’ homes.
When you’re on the clock with Happy Home, a client will give you a description of what they want, and you may use all of your budget and resources to design the perfect room for them. It’s the perfect opportunity to go positively mad with power.
9Fallout 4
While the base-building element ofFallout 4wasn’t exactly its most beloved element, it did give you a much higher degree of customizability for settlements you actually care about.
Even if you’re able to’t be bothered to build a generator for every single settlement affiliated with you in the Commonwealth, there’s still plenty to do at Sanctuary.
With the game’s elaborate area customization system, you can pick up, move, place, or scrap pretty much anything that’s sitting around. Using materials salvaged from around the wasteland, you can then build all kinds of cool decorations and helpful emplacements.
Obviously, if you’re sharing space with anyone, you’ll need food and water and all that other boring stuff, but once that’s settled, the sky’s the limit.
The game’s various workshop DLC packs also add more potential for shenanigans, such as building elaborate contraptions, power armor customization stations, and even creating your own Vault from scratch in an underground cavity.
8The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom
Like Building With LEGOs
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildhad a fairly simple home decoration mechanic, wherein Link could pay Bolson and his men to add a few decorations to his derelict home in Hateno Village.Tears of the Kingdomtakes this concept and builds it out a little further with a novel modular twist.
By contracting with Hudson Construction in Tarrey Town, Link canpurchase a plot of land on the town’s outskirtsand use it to build a home from the company’s composite room blocks.
Using your Ultrahand, you may flip and stick these room blocks together into pretty much any configuration to create your ideal home.
The interior of most of these blocks is unfortunately static, but if you don’t like the vibes a particular block’s furniture is bringing, just sell it back to Hudson and get a different one. If you want a home made up entirely of kitchens, it’s your right to have it.
7Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire
It’s A Secret To Everyone
Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire
Something just about every kid has dreamed of at least once is having their own secret base, a concealed hideaway that only they and permitted guests could find.
As thePokemonseries has a lot of elements that kids enjoy, naturally, that concept would find its way in eventually.
Originally introduced inRuby & Sapphireand carried over intoOmega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, Secret Bases allow you to create your own covert hangout in certain overworld spots like loose dirt or big trees.
Using furnishings purchased from several specialty stores, you can decorate your Secret Base however you please. You want wall-to-wall Fire-type representation? Sure. You want it to look like a junkyard? Why not!
Secret Bases would be a consistent element in both the Hoenn and SinnohPokemongames.
Diamond & Pearlwould have you build them in the massive confines of the Underground.Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearlfollowed suit, though for some reason, those games only let you decorate with statues.
6House Flipper 2
Just Like On TV
House Flipper 2
For reasons beyond our understanding, starting in the early 2010s, real estate-centric reality TV shows became really popular. Everyone wanted to see a grody, abandoned house get flipped into something humans could actually live in.
If you want all the house flipping fun without, y’know, flipping houses, tryHouse Flipper 2.
This game takes you through the entire flipping process without all that messy manual labor. You’re presented with various dilapidated homes, which you cancompletely break downand build back up, personally selecting things like flooring and wallpaper.
Once the house is up to code, you can fill the interior with furniture and decorations to create just about any theme you could want. Whether it’s a real home you’d actually want to live in or a 1:1 recreation of the Krusty Krab, you can make it happen.
5Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale
Capitalism, Ho!
Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale
You know how most shops are painted in soft, relaxing colors and have aesthetically-pleasing emplacements and decorations?
They’re not like that just for fun; a shop is designed that way to make you feel comfortable and unpressured, which in turn makes it easier for you to buy things.
If you’ve ever wanted to be on the other side of that transaction, you can do it inRecettear: An Item Shop’s Tale. One of the main mechanics of this game is decorating the interior of your item shop and altering the layout of your product displays.
Part of this is for the aesthetic, but the precise type and placement of decorations you use will also affect customer engagement.
Placing high-value items near the store’s front window, for instance, will make passersby see them and think, “oh snap, I want that!” Additionally, fancier decorations may attract more affluent clientele, who are more willing to open their wallets.
4The Sims 4
You’ll Live There And Like It
The Sims 4
For those of you too young to know, when the originalSimslaunched in 2000, it was quite possibly one of the biggest hits EA ever had.
This is why, add-ons and tweaks notwithstanding, the baseline formula of the game has remained the same up to and includingThe Sims 4.
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From the moment you start the game, the world of your little Sims is completely at your command, particularly in terms of where and how they live.
With the game’s tools, you can freely build and shape their domicile, then fill every room with furniture, appliances, and miscellaneous knick-knacks.
you’re able to even reshape the nearby terrain to better match your home’s aesthetic. Granted, that’s not really a matter of interior design, but could it not be said that the view from your bedroom window is just as important as the window itself?
3Dragon Quest Builders 2
It’s Not A Home Until You Make It One
Dragon Quest Builders 2
In bothDragon Quest Buildersgames, all the citizens of the world canonically either do not know how to build things or choose to remain wilfully ignorant of it. Mildly silly as this premise is, it does make a good excuse to get a little more in-depth with your decorating procedures.
In the original game, any house you build will have no explicit purpose unless you fill the inside with the right emplacements and decorations.
For example, if you want to build a restaurant, your village’s people won’t recognize it as suchuntil it has relevant utilities and decorlike stoves and tables.
Dragon Quest Builders 2goes further with this concept with the introduction of Gratitude. Every NPC has their own unique tastes, and by tailoring your buildings and their interiors to those tastes, you’ll gain more resources you can use to develop your village further.
2Final Fantasy XIV
The Only Limit Is Imagination (And Funds)
Final Fantasy 14
As with pretty much any MMORPG, player experience is a sizable component of theFinal Fantasy XIVexperience. You could be a wandering adventurer, with no home to call your own but the open road, but you can also invest in various degrees of real estate.
Once you’vepurchased land and a housing permit, you can build a little cottage, a modest home, or an opulent manor.
In addition to the materials that make up the exterior, the interior is your canvas; you may start basic with the flooring, wallpaper, and lighting options, before moving onto the nitty-gritty elements.
There are plenty of sensible decorations available, like desks and bookshelves, as well as some mildly off-kilter options like arcade machines straight from Gold Saucer, pirate treasure chests, and dancer poles. Hey, you bought the land, we’re not judging.
1Unpacking
Compact Redecorating
The unfortunate truth about having your own living space is that, more often than not, you don’t actually get to decide what the dimensions or capacity of that space are going to be.
Sometimes you just need to be able to do more with less, and that’s the lessonUnpackingteaches us.
Thiscozy puzzle gametakes you through a series of move-in scenarios, from setting up your childhood bedroom to starting in college to moving into your first apartment.
In every case, the space is generally pretty limited, so you need to finagle all of your possessions into whatever tasteful configuration you may still manage.
In spite of this limitation, there’s still a good amount of customization potential, and the game even takes a picture of the finished area when you’re done for you to share. Even if it’s small, it’s still yours.
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