Games Where You Restore an Old Run-Down Place

The short answer

If you want the literal job, buy House Flipper 2: a filthy house, a set of tools, and nothing standing between you and the walls. If what you want is a wrecked place that becomes yours and stays yours, My Time at Portia holds the repair work at the centre for longest. And Cat Cafe Manager is the one I have never seen on a list like this: your grandmother leaves you a cafe in a sleepy village and you fix it up. If you only buy one, buy House Flipper 2. Everything below is a trade you make on purpose.

The roundups that rank for this answer with more first-person job sims: Gas Station Simulator, Garage Flipper, Hotel Renovator and their cousins. None of them sorts on whether you keep the place. The page doing the most work on the query is a ResetEra thread where people are swapping names with each other. So this page is sorted on exactly that: what happens to the place once you are finished with it.

Updated August 2026.

What a restoration game actually is

A restoration game is a game whose main loop is repair rather than construction: you start with a place that already exists and has fallen apart, and the progress you make is measured against what it used to be. That is the whole difference from a builder. A builder gives you an empty lot and asks what you want. A restoration game gives you a ruin that already had an answer, and asks you to find it again.

I am not going to relitigate why this feels so good here, because why restoring things in games feels good already does it properly. What matters for choosing one is narrower: some of these games take the place away from you at the end, and some hand it over for good.

Which kind of restoring do you mean

What you want out of “restore”	Start with	What it will not give you
The physical work: scrubbing, stripping, painting, hauling	House Flipper 2	Any attachment. You sell the house and never see it again
A wreck that turns into your business	Cat Cafe Manager	Hands-on repair. Renovation is a menu, not a job
A wreck that turns into where you live	My Time at Portia	A quick finish. The workshop upgrade track runs the length of the game
Something ruined that is not a building at all	Terra Nil	Ownership. You fix the land and then leave it

The sixteen, and what happens to the place

Game	The run-down place	What happens to it after	Runs on	Released
House Flipper 2	Bought-cheap houses, one after another	Sold at a profit. Gone	Windows	2023
House Flipper	The same, smaller and older	Sold at a profit. Gone	Windows, macOS	2018
PowerWash Simulator	Anything filthy, from a van to a fire station	Cleaned, then you move on	Windows	2022
Train Station Renovation	Ruined railway stations, rural to metropolitan	Handed back. You are the contractor	Windows	2020
Back to Hearth	Five abandoned houses in a Ukrainian village	Given back to the families who left	Windows, macOS	2025
The Tenants	Flats you buy, gut and re-let	Kept and rented out	Windows	2022
Landlord’s Super	A property in 1980s Britain, brick by brick	Kept, and filled with locals who complain	Windows	2023
Cat Cafe Manager	Your grandmother’s cafe in Caterwaul Way	Kept, and run as a business	Windows	2022
Hotel Renovator	An inherited hotel in bad condition	Kept, and rated by guests	Windows	2023
Gas Station Simulator	An abandoned desert gas station	Kept, expanded, and worked	Windows, macOS	2021
Bear and Breakfast	An abandoned shack in the woods	Kept, and grown into an inn	Windows	2022
Stardew Valley	Your grandfather’s overgrown farm	Yours to live on	Windows, macOS, Linux	2016
My Time at Portia	Your father’s neglected workshop	Yours to live on	Windows, macOS	2019
Ranch Simulator	The family homestead, fallen on hard times	Yours to live on	Windows	2023
Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge	A drained wetland from your childhood	Restored, then it belongs to the frogs	Windows, macOS, Linux	2024
Terra Nil	A barren, lifeless landscape	Revived, and then you leave without a trace	Windows, macOS, Linux	2023

Fix it, then let it go

House Flipper 2

House Flipper 2 is the best fit on this page if the appeal is the labour itself: a “relaxing renovation simulator” built on buy, fix, sell, with a sandbox mode and a free co-op add-on for two to four players, according to its store page. The catch is in the loop: you flip a property and it leaves your hands, so the satisfaction resets every job. At $39.99 regular (as of August 2026) it is the most expensive game in the figures table below.

House Flipper

The original House Flipper is the cheaper way to test whether the renovation loop alone holds you. A “one-man renovation crew” buys, repairs and remodels devastated houses to sell at a profit, per its store page, with older tools and smaller houses than the sequel has. At $24.99 regular (as of August 2026) it undercuts that sequel by fifteen dollars, and unlike the sequel it runs on a Mac. I go further into that family in games like House Flipper.

PowerWash Simulator

PowerWash Simulator belongs here only if what you replay is the cleaning, stripped of every other job. There is no property to buy and no money pressure worth the name, just grime and a lance. At 96.4% positive across 58,576 reviews (as of August 2026) only Stardew Valley scores higher in the figures table below, which tells you how far one verb travels, and it costs $24.99 regular. Unpacking vs PowerWash Simulator compares it against the other famous one-verb game.

Train Station Renovation

Train Station Renovation earns its place if you want to work at the scale of a public building. You work through 15 maps that start rural and end metropolitan, cleaning, fixing and equipping each station, and its store page casts you as a contractor hired by the railway. You never keep one of them.

Back to Hearth

Back to Hearth is short, and repair is the whole of it: nothing is bought or sold. Five abandoned houses in a quiet Ukrainian village each need a hammer, a broom or a screwdriver, and residents come back once a house is clean and the stove is lit, per the store page. Buy it if you want the work without an economy wrapped around it.

Fix it, then run it

Cat Cafe Manager

Cat Cafe Manager is the closest match on Steam to the premise I think this query is usually reaching for. Your grandmother left you a small cafe in the sleepy village of Caterwaul Way, and it is on you to fix the place up, impress the locals and befriend the local cat population: that is the store page setup, in one line. You pick renovations off a menu and the tools never reach your hands, which is the trade. If the inherited-property part is the specific thing you are after, inheritance games collects the rest of them.

Hotel Renovator

Hotel Renovator is the pick if you want first-person tools plus a business that keeps score afterwards. An old, neglected hotel in terrible condition that others have given up on: the store page then asks you to strip it, redesign it and manage it toward five-star reviews. It sits between House Flipper and a management sim, and it stays shallow on both jobs.

Gas Station Simulator

Gas Station Simulator hands the restored place straight back to you as a workload, and that turn is what makes it worth buying. You buy an abandoned gas station in the middle of a desert and restore it, then renovate, expand and run it as customers keep arriving, and that arc is right there on the store page. The repair phase is the opening act; the rest is a business under pressure.

Bear and Breakfast

Bear and Breakfast puts the renovation inside a comedy: you play a well-meaning bear called Hank who finds an abandoned shack with his friends and turns it into a bed and breakfast for unsuspecting tourists, with guest rooms and parlours you furnish yourself (store page). The forest hides a plot underneath the management layer. Take it if you want the repair work to be an excuse for the writing.

The Tenants

The Tenants gives you the renovation and the people in one box. You buy flats, strip them, redress them and then deal with whoever moves in, which is three jobs at once. At 78.9% positive across 7,761 reviews (as of August 2026) it carries the lowest score in the figures table below, and it costs $19.99 regular. If that split appeals, games like The Tenants sorts the alternatives by which of the three jobs you liked.

Landlord’s Super

Landlord’s Super is the choice for anyone who wants the repair work to be slow and physical. You take “a dodgy loan, restore a property, move in the locals, attend to their grievances, then celebrate with a pint”, in the store page’s own words, across an open-world 1980s Britain where you order supplies, mix your own cement and assemble scaffolding. At 80.6% positive across 1,707 reviews (as of August 2026) it has the smallest audience of any game I have figures for, and that pace is the reason. It costs $19.99 regular.

Fix it, then live in it

Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is a loose fit for this query: restoration is the opening move and then the rest of the farm sim arrives. Your grandfather’s old farm plot, overgrown fields, hand-me-down tools and a few coins are what the store page hands you, and the town’s community center lies in shambles as a second restoration project. At 98.5% positive across 1,032,976 reviews (as of August 2026) it holds the best score in the figures table below and, by an order of magnitude, the largest audience in it. At $14.99 regular it is the cheapest there too.

My Time at Portia

My Time at Portia keeps the restoration front and centre for far longer than Stardew Valley does, which makes it my pick for anyone who wants to keep the place they fixed. Restore your Pa’s neglected workshop to its former glory by taking commissions, growing crops and befriending the town, in a post-apocalyptic land where the locals are rebuilding too: that is the opening of the store page, and the workshop upgrade track really is the spine of the whole game. It sits at 91.5% positive across 44,270 reviews (as of August 2026) and costs $29.99 regular.

Ranch Simulator

Ranch Simulator is worth it for the inherited-wreck premise at open-world scale, with a hammer in your hand the whole way through. You take on a dilapidated family homestead in a remote forested valley, once your grandfather’s pride and joy, and build, farm, hunt and trade it back to health; the store page adds that up to four players can do it together. It is rougher and more survival-flavoured than anything else in this group.

When the run-down place is not a building

Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge

Kamaeru suits you if the thing you want to see at the end is life coming back to a place. An old friend asks you to restore the wetlands of your childhood, and you do it by photographing and breeding frogs, planting native crops and decorating the habitat (store page). The place ends up belonging to the frogs, which is the point.

Terra Nil

Terra Nil is the only game here that dismantles the finished result on purpose. Purify the soil, clean the oceans, plant trees, reintroduce wildlife, then dismantle every machine you built and leave without a trace: the store page calls it an environmental strategy game, and running a city builder backwards is exactly what it is. Nothing you make stays standing, and the landscape is all you take away.

The one we are making

Our own debut, Grandma Left Me a Building, sits beside this list rather than on it, because the query is more or less its premise. It is a 2D apartment management sim with hand-drawn cartoon art: your grandmother leaves you a run-down building, and you find tenants, collect rent, hire staff and upgrade the place. It is in development for Windows and macOS, so there is nothing to score or compare yet, and its Steam page is the only place to follow it.

Prices and Steam scores

The seven games below are the ones I have Steam figures for, from a single pull checked in August 2026, and every “lowest”, “cheapest” or “best score” above is measured inside this table and nowhere wider. The other nine carry a store link and a release year, with no price and no score, because they were not in the same pull.

Game	Regular price	Steam reviews (as of August 2026)
Stardew Valley	$14.99	1,032,976 at 98.5% positive
The Tenants	$19.99	7,761 at 78.9% positive
Landlord’s Super	$19.99	1,707 at 80.6% positive
House Flipper	$24.99	111,340 at 94.0% positive
PowerWash Simulator	$24.99	58,576 at 96.4% positive
My Time at Portia	$29.99	44,270 at 91.5% positive
House Flipper 2	$39.99	19,797 at 87.2% positive

Quick answers

Is House Flipper 2 the best game about restoring an old house? Yes, if you mean the house itself and the hours you spend inside it. It is the wrong pick if you wanted to keep the house, since the loop is built on selling every property you finish.

Are there restoration games where the place stays yours forever? Yes. Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia and Ranch Simulator all hand you an inherited wreck that you then live on permanently, and Cat Cafe Manager, Hotel Renovator, Gas Station Simulator, Bear and Breakfast, The Tenants and Landlord’s Super keep the restored place as your business.

How many of these run on macOS? Seven of the sixteen listed a macOS build when I looked at their Steam pages in September 2026: Stardew Valley, House Flipper, My Time at Portia, Back to Hearth, Gas Station Simulator, Kamaeru and Terra Nil. The rest are Windows only.

Is there a restoration game where the thing you fix is not a building? Yes, two of them. Kamaeru turns a drained wetland back into a frog habitat, and Terra Nil revives a dead landscape and then makes you dismantle everything you built.

Where these numbers come from

Prices, review counts and score percentages for the seven games in the table above were pulled from Steam in August 2026 at US pricing, and so were their release years and platform lists. The release year and the platform list for the other nine were read off their Steam pages in September 2026. All of it moves: a macOS build can appear later, and a release year gets restamped when a game leaves Early Access. If you want the wider shelf, best apartment building management games is the nearest neighbour. Games set in ordinary places is the other one, and its sort key is the setting itself.