MakeRoom: Adorable cozy diorama designer with endless creative potential

I love being creative. The problem is, outside of writing, I’m generally not very good at it. I studied art at A-Level, but my drawing skills are atrocious. While I always love doing something with my hands, doing that thing from scratch usually ends up with an abandoned project littering up the place. That’s why I love sandbox games, and why I’m so looking forward to MakeRoom. 

MakeRoom is an impossibly cozy sandbox design game that lets players create cozy diorama rooms and spaces. With the option to complete requests for NPCs or to design your own unique room (or even furniture) from scratch, there’s a lot to be excited for when it comes to MakeRoom. 

Full creativity and control

If you want to complete quests for NPCs in MakeRoom, you’ll need to fulfill their requirements and requests. That’s easily done, considering the fact that all items in MakeRoom can be recolored or resized to create truly unique environments. You can add effects to the room, like smoke or steam, and change the ambience to suit each environment. 

Every quest completed for NPCs will unlock new items of furniture or decor that can be used in future dioramas. In total, there are over 1,000 items that can be unlocked and used in your creations, which is a huge number of base items, let alone when you add in the customization options and everything else. 

No two rooms created in MakeRoom will ever be exactly the same, and not just because of the furniture and the options surrounding it. NPCs in MakeRoom range from a moody vampire to a fluffy cat looking for the ultimate cozy space, so you’ll need to stretch your design skills to suit each of them. 

Custom furniture designed by you (and Kenney)

One of the most exciting parts of MakeRoom is the built-in design feature that allows you to use furniture or parts of it to create your own designs. Not only can you then use those designs in future dioramas, but you’ll also be able to upload them to the Steam Workshop for others to download and use in theirs too. 

That means that, as well as the base 1,000+ items that come as standard with MakeRoom, there will also eventually be countless custom designs to download via Steam. When I said that no two rooms would ever be identical, I truly meant it, and that endless amount of customization is really special. 

All of the in-game assets are designed by developer Kenney, who is well-known for creating free assets to help give his fellow developers a leg up and a head start. The assets used in MakeRoom are entirely unique and made for the purpose of being in this particular game. Honestly, hats of to Kenney. I’m impressed.

For creative types like me who happen to be cursed into sucking at anything even remotely creative (sucks to be us, honestly), this drag-and-drop of pieces to make something that passes as furniture is even more exciting. Could I design a piece of furniture in Blender? Absolutely not. Give me the pieces and let me put them together like a virtual and incredibly satisfying version of LEGO? Hell yes, sign me up. 

MakeRoom is coming to Steam on August 7. Sadly, there isn’t a demo for the game available in the meantime. Still, with so much to look forward to, is there really a need for one?