Brilliant idea or terrible idea? A video game where you build Ikea furniture

Ikea furniture instructions are kiiiiiiiiiind of notorious for being difficult. If you’ve ever tried to furnish an apartment on the cheap, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The instructions are all pictures — no words, just images. And while, yes, it’s awesome because that means the instructions are universal, it also means they are often impossible to understand. And we’re talking about assembling your bed frame correctly, which shouldn’t be taken lightly. If the idea of assembling furniture IRL doesn’t sound like enough excitement for you, how about an Ikea video game where you can virtually assemble virtual furniture? Thrilling, right?

Well guess what? There’s now a brand new video game — for both Macs and PCs — that allows you to do just that. Really. It’s called Höme Improvisåtion, and it bills itself as “the world’s most fun & accurate cooperative furniture assembly experience!” You know, aside from the ACTUAL process of assembling ACTUAL furniture.

The game encourages you to invite friends over to share in the assembly experience — yes, because my friends are always willing to come over and help me assemble furniture IRL (I love you, friends, but you’ve never followed through with that EVER). Or, if you’re brave enough to go at it alone, you have the choice but the game assumes that you’ll “slowly descend into madness!” Which, yes, has happened to me a few times over the MALM dresser. It looks so simple. But it’s a trap.

The game play appears to be pretty basic, and without proper instructions you just connect the pegs and pieces together as you see fit. Basically, you guess, kinda like when you’re assembling real life Ikea furniture. (“I think the peg goes into the fourth hole on the back leg . . . but I’m really not sure.”) And, if you ever don’t know what goes where, “just try to think like a Scandinavian industrial designer!” Honestly the “game” hits a little too close to home and I kind of need to open a bottle of wine just thinking about it.

But it’s free to download, and kind of looks like the furniture equivalent of playing the Sims. So get ready to be addicted to building faux lamps and stools. You can check out the trailer for the game here but be warned there are sadly no Ikea Swedish Meatballs involved. Which, let’s be honest, is usually why I’m going to Ikea in the first place.

[Images via here and here.]

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