"Nano Flat Owner looks and feels like the soulless AI created games anti-AI activists warn about, and if all AI games are like Nano Flat Owner, I can see why they are concerned."
We were supplied with a free key for the purposes of writing this review, however our opinions are entirely our own.
I must begin by saying that Vision Party does come clean and openly state that AI was used. And as someone who is not vehemently anti-AI, I’ve got to say… I can tell.
Everything about the game feels strangely hollow and lacking in human creativity.
The character design is sparse and awkward. While your supposed job is running an apartment block, you never actually see your tenants.
Instead, the tenants are reduced to little more than floating number effects, making the entire experience feel detached and lifeless, even simple 2D avatars or low poly character models would have gone a long way towards making my apartment block feel lived in.
You also never really see your own character outside of 2D artwork used in dialogue boxes and promotional key art. And even then, it is never entirely clear whether that character is supposed to be you, the player, or some other character teaching you how to play the game.
Ultimately, it just adds to the strange disconnected feeling the entire game has.
Another problem with the game is that I genuinely do not understand the message it is trying to portray.
Of course, I grasp the basic concept that “landlords are all evil” is the message the game appears to be trying to portray. But then the main character looks like some kind of cutesy devil vampire girl with little fangs and glowing red eyes, and I honestly have no idea what they were trying to get across with it.
I genuinely do not know.
The character never really comes across as evil. Or intimidating. Or even particularly memorable. She just sort of exists on-screen while you click through menus and watch numbers go up.
And that really sums up the entire game.
The act of purchasing and decorating rooms is no more impressive, despite being the best part of the game.
While there is some fun to be had dragging and dropping furniture into each apartment, ultimately there is very little sense of creativity, immersion, or progression, beyond clicking and dragging items into rooms, unlocking items, and watching your daily income increase.
As of the time of writing this review, the game is also horrendously broken. Double or triple clicking items in the store without dragging them into your current flat can actually result in the player gaining money instead of spending it.
For example, very early in the game you begin with around $600,000. Yet I was able to more than double that amount in less than 30 seconds simply by repeatedly clicking on an arcade machine in the shop menu.
Bugs aside, and I do believe Vision Party will likely attempt to fix this issue, everything about the game, from its design, music, and gameplay loop, feels like it was created by AI rather than by passionate developers with a clear creative vision.
Ultimately, Nano Flat Owner does not feel like a game made by people passionate about the medium. It feels like a project assembled by AI systems and then stitched together into something vaguely resembling a game, which is unsurprising considering Vision Party’s previous title, Inwoods, was equally unimpressive.
Inwoods did little to innovate on the survival genre and, in retrospect, also felt heavily AI-generated in both design philosophy and execution.
Ultimately, I cannot recommend Nano Flat Owner.
And without seeking to be harsh, because I genuinely never seek to be harsh, and I believe in the words of Jesus Christ and the principle of treating others how you yourself would wish to be treated.
I simply do not believe that Vision Party has yet demonstrated an ability to create games that are worth the player’s time or, more importantly, their money.
Nothing about Nano Flat Owner feels thought through. Nothing feels polished. Nothing feels meaningful. Every part of the game feels like the bare minimum amount of effort was put in simply to get something functional onto Steam.
Ultimately, Nano Flat Owner is a barely a game, and certainly not one I could ever recommend.
"Let's Talk" is a more relaxed review format used for games that we do not feel warrant a full in-depth review. While these articles still reflect our honest thoughts and experiences with a title, they are typically shorter, less structured, and more focused on delivering a direct overall impression rather than an extensive breakdown.
Because of this, "Let's Talk" articles should not be viewed as representative of the length, depth, or overall format of our traditional review coverage.
We found Nano Flat Owner to be barely playable, meaning it is severely flawed, broken, or dead, and not worth playing for most gamers.
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