Design Home by Crowdstar

Design Home (available on iOS and Google Play) is Crowdstar's new, super-fun, highly addictive game made in association with HGTV. You are the designer and you shop from actual gorgeous furniture and accessories you can buy in real life, in order to compete in design challenges, to win more furniture and accessories, to decorate more rooms in more challenges.

You are also a judge for the challenges, for the designs of others playing the game.

OMG SO FUN! Where has this game been all my life?!

Here's an article about it at HGTV.

I've been playing a little over a week, and as cool as it is, in-game money is a limitation. There just isn't enough to do what you really want to do.

Can we just take a moment and pay our respects to the dying breed of game which gives you everything for your one-time purchase cost? $79.99 for Super Mario Galaxy and I never had to pay another penny to finish that sucker. Not. Another. Penny. Everything I needed was provided (except the skills to complete the Lava Spire Daredevil Run). No nag screens or annoying ads. Just game playing awesomeness.

Ahhhhh.

Anyhoo.. the money supply problems:

1) Items are expensive compared to the amount of game money available to you. Or, game money is scarce, compared to the cost of furniture and accessories. It's an imbalance.

2) The maximum number of uses (in my play so far) is only 1-5 for any furniture and accessory piece you purchase.

3) Purchasing game currency isn't a good value. For instance, $1.99 real cash buys you 3000 diamonds, which gets you a couch. Not necessarily the one you want, but it will get you a couch. That's a lot of real cash for a couch that can only be used 5 times. $100 real cash gets you 187,500 diamonds, which will buy you a lot of pretty things... that can be used 1-5 times before you need to pony up again.

To fix the widely perceived income/expense inequity (bloggers agree!), they could make items cheaper or raise the amount of game cash players get for challenges. I just feel the biggest drain of the tight game budget is the limited use of items. This is the one simple change I would make, to make the game infinitely more enjoyable, while maintaining cash flow for Crowdstar. If I could keep the items I bought, those in-app purchases look a lot more fairly priced.

It would also be nice to build up your personal inventory with no maximum number of uses, to be able to, say, remember that one orange chair you liked that would go perfectly with this new turquoise couch.

Another benefit of making a little more cash available for players: There are a bajillion items for sale in the game, but I haven't even glanced at anything over $2500, because I never have more than that to spend. Most of the time, I'm more in the $1100 range, because I need to get two things, like a chaise and a side table. I would enjoy looking through the store to see the supercool, expensive stuff I could save up for, or spend actual money to purchase game money for. Or even something I might buy in the real world.

Every day there are new items added to the store. I would love to look at the new things available each day and plan to buy them, by saving or spending real life cash.

That all being said, I'm obviously enjoying the game a lot. Here are some tips to maximize your in-game cash:

1) Don't squander your initial in-game cash and diamonds when you first start playing. I can't remember how much I got, but I paid no attention to how much my items cost. I just bought what I liked. You should purchase your first items with flexibility and budget in mind. Colors that go together or match lots of things. Styles that are not too "out there" so they match more things. Items that are cheaper, so you have lots of them.

2) Also on your first room... I read somewhere that you should take any items they give you for free. I can't remember what was available to me for free, but if they offer it, take it. Don't need to use it right away? Doesn't matter. Take it in whatever manner you can during that first room you decorate.

3) Do the daily challenge every day. There is $2500 in it for you upon completion. This is the biggest lump of game cash you can get, as far as I've played. If your daily challenge room isn't your best design, but it meets the requirements, that's ok. Submit and receive that $2500. Then go buy a couch or whatever you need.

4) Buy couches. I ran out of couches once and had to sit out (ha!) an entire day of challenges because you need a couch in almost every single living room challenge. The vast majority of challenges are living rooms.

5) If you can only create some lame-o mismatched garbage room for a challenge (other than the daily) with the pieces you own or have money to purchase, skip it. You may win a piece or two later in the day that you can use to make a great room. Most of the regular challenges only pay $500, so I'm really only doing those to try to win the item up for grabs. Those rooms should WOW, so you can win the prizes.

6) Buy items that go with things you already own, so you have some cohesive looks to put together.