Haunted House Renovator

Introduction

Haunted House Renovator casts players as a paranormal handyman, restoring haunted properties room by room while catching and either banishing or adopting the ghosts causing the trouble. Developed by Image Power S.A. and published alongside PlayWay S.A., it launched on Steam on 30 April 2025 at NZ$28.99. Its 135 English-language reviews sit at 43% positive, Mixed. This review read all 77 negative reviews in that sample alongside a range of the positive side.

A genuinely likeable idea

The core hook draws real, repeated praise. "A chill game with the theme of catching ghosts and other apparitions," reads one review from launch week, and another calls it "a great way to unwind after a stressful workday" while noting "it's not completely mindless since you need to work around the scary elements." A reviewer who initially disliked the game at launch later credited the developer directly: "they have since fixed so many of these issues and they continue to do so," pointing to "hotfixes almost everyday" in the weeks after release. That responsiveness shows up across several early reviews, painting a genuine, if rocky, honeymoon period.

Severe, specific, and unresolved bugs

Set against that, this review's full read of the negative sample converges overwhelmingly on technical failure, not just first-week jitters. "Carpets spawning UNDER floors, tutorials out of order, no particular structure," reads one detailed review from launch day, adding that the release build was "not even at the quality and stability the demo was at." Task completion is the most repeated specific complaint: "I complete a task and it doesnt register as complete," reads one review, while another describes finishing a level at "100% but still have unfinished tasks, which would then softlock my game." A third reviewer with 46 hours logged reports "game-breaking glitches nearly every thirty minutes," bad enough to force new save files.

A quiet change of ownership

The most serious recurring claim in this sample is a specific, dated one this review could partly verify. "Game has been abandoned by developers and sold to another company. This information is only available via their Discord," reads one review from December 2025, a claim echoed independently by several later reviewers: "the new owners feel no need to let the platforms know that the game was transferred and abandoned," reads another, dated January 2026. This review checked the game's public Steam news feed directly and found a steady run of patches and hotfixes through 12 August 2025 — and then nothing at all in the year since, with no post of any kind announcing a change in ownership or support status. Steam's own achievement data adds independent weight to the picture: several story-completion achievements, including finishing the game without possession, sit under 1% completion, consistent with reviewers' accounts that late-game bugs block players from finishing runs at all.

Verdict

Haunted House Renovator has a genuinely good idea at its core, and this review's negative sample confirms real developer effort existed in its first months. But the same sample converges, in specific and repeated detail, on severe bugs that block basic progress, and this review's own check of the game's Steam news feed independently corroborates reviewers' claims of a year-long, publicly unannounced silence following the ownership change several describe. Worth keeping an eye on for a turnaround; not worth its full asking price today.