REVIEW: A Corner of Relaxation in MakeRoom

If you ever dabble in Blender, you’ll eventually want to make those cute isometric rooms—or at least I do. A little slice of heaven with a rounded, friendly feel. Well, now you can skip the program’s tutorial and quickly fill a little dream abode. MakeRoom, by developer Kenney, lets you curate your own slice—or in this case, corner—of life. And by decorating such a small space, you gain an appreciation for what you have.

Starting out with an optional tutorial is a nice change of pace. The controls themselves are fairly easy to navigate, so even a first-time interior designer could go in without a guide. To the left is a list of furniture and objects we can place, and to the right are some cleaning options for puddles and stains. Clicking a tile in the furniture list—desks, for example—will give the player various desks to choose from. Once that’s selected, the item can be placed in the room, and we can customize the size, colour, and orientation. When there are multiple colours on a piece, I appreciated that the randomizer could choose for me. Zooming in with the scroll and turning the room with the right mouse button works well, but I do wish there was a way to pan my view point across while I’m placing objects.

The game’s main journey is decorating little houses on an island. As of writing, there’s only one location but it looks possible that there will be more islands in the future. Each house has a certain theme—such as “cat’s paradise” or “meditation space”—that the player can follow. A cute little house mascot in the bottom right corner (that you can pet, by the way) guides us through the decorating. All of the requirements are quite short, meaning levels are never a huge time commitment. Even after completing a level, we can keep decorating as we see fit. There are no monetary gains or losses and no time limit. Completing a house just nets you a new unlocked item for sandbox mode, and the devs are adding more items all the time.

In sandbox mode, we can create from a blank slate, choosing a base of room, camper, or garden. There’s even an option to change the time of day and background at the bottom. There are a myriad of basic blocks, poles, and planks to allow alteration to the landscape of the room and furniture. In custom mode we can create our own unique furniture. Using primitive shapes and imagination, there’s a lot of freedom in the customization. All of those IKEA hack videos I watch come in handy. Finally, there are effects that animate, such as fires and glow lights. Doing all of this does feel like a pared-down version of Blender, allowing both an accessible entry point to thinking about shapes, and reconnecting to the days we played with blocks in kindergarten.

Throughout the decorating, a calm, slightly melancholy piano medley plays in the background. All of the objects have a friendly, toy-like feel, and the areas are very forgiving in regards to crowding pieces together, allowing a cozy, cluttered vibe. If you’ve ever seen the house decorators in FFXIV you’ll know that perspective is key in these creations. You can push objects into the wall or attach them to other pieces to alter their look. Combining the custom objects, the sky—well, the top of the room—is the limit. By limiting our focus to these dioramas, there’s little worry of becoming lost in the weeds of a larger project. At any point we can save and exit the area to work on it another time.

While I appreciate the large amount of items, the list of them can be hard to navigate. The images are small and are only visible larger when placed in the scene. A search function or better headers of what I’m selecting would be helpful. Also, once selected, objects can’t be clicked away by, for example, right-clicking. I have to place and remove them or left-click outside the room (which can be difficult if zoomed in). Items can’t be moved together, so if there’s a lamp on a side table and the side table is moved, the lamp will stay where it is in the air. To be fair, the dev team is hard at work on updates. An undo button has been implemented recently—as of my playthrough, it still needs some tweaking, but this is proof they’re readily listening to feedback.

The home decorating jobs on the island are fairly simple, with the entirety being completable in a couple hours. A few extra steps towards goals would be nice, but I’ve come to feel this is a feature rather than an oversight. As mentioned earlier, we’re free to decorate as we see fit, especially as previous tasks are removed after completion. The game isn’t interested in railroading you to a particular layout. Recently I’ve been playing House Flipper 2, which gives a lot more options for decorating, but can be restricting on some fronts. In community content—houses and jobs created by players—even highly rated jobs will have pictures giving the suggested layout, instead of letting you enjoy the exploration. The hands-off approach MakeRoom takes is refreshing. It hands you the colouring book along with blank sheets of paper, never judging or forcing you to choose certain colours or furniture.

During my usual obsession with shoving several plants and books into a scene, while the piano softly played in the background, the gameplay lulled me into a peaceful frame of mind. At one point I was chatting with a friend and plodding along, planting greenery as I went. It felt easy to talk, even to recall farther-off memories. Sitting with the game like that put me into a zen-like state. I have often struggled to sit with my thoughts. Having something to do with no timers or points is relaxing, and it felt safe to engage with feelings of anxiety too. This feels like the intention of MakeRoom: a realm of creativity just for oneself. But if you feel like sharing, there’s a Polaroid-like photo mode available to share each creation with friends.

MakeRoom allows a freedom of creative expression in a tight space. There could potentially be more houses to decorate as content is added, but I would argue it succeeds well where other games in the sim life genre fall short. Its focus on smaller scenes, with options of alteration on its assets, sparks innovation through limitation. Ignoring money and any pressure of expectation makes this a perfect game for anyone to just relax. Also, any game that allows me to place cats all over is already winning in my book. Brew a cup of tea, get cozy, and make time for yourself to just create.

Cress

When I’m not co-oping in a FromSoft game or trying to convince someone how good the Venom movie was; I usually enjoy crafting, drawing and hanging out with cats.

Find my silly takes and NSFW art (if I ever get around to drawing some) on twitter @justthecress and bluesky @justthecress.bsky.social