There are many things around the house I’d be willing to ‘have a go’ at, but not electrics. We don’t get on. While that elusive electrician’s apprenticeship was never on the cards, Electrician Simulator would be the go-to experience instead of that.
As with the Prologue, you haven’t inherited Grandpa’s business. Instead, you’ve moved out of your parent’s home and starting up as a sparky – the garage being your mission control, so to speak. Your old dad starts you off with some pocket money ($200!), and then it’s up to you to take on jobs and earn more, as well as your reputation.
Before you can get started in Take IT Studio’s Electrician Simulator, you have to study and gain your certification before you can meet and greet Johnny Public. There are about four in total, but you don’t need to do them all in one go. However, to proceed with the game, you have to unlock new skills via the VR option.
Electrician Simulator Review
The tutorials in the game take place through VR, meaning you won’t get electrocuted, but you may trip over the coffee table or put a ding in the TV. The VR is so detailed that you’ll see cars passing by outside. Wow, these VR devs have thought of everything. Nothing to do with the task at hand, but… ok, I digress: do the VR missions, get more jobs.
Jobs are taken via your laptop, as seen in most of these games – Garden Simulator being the same setup – and it’s here where you’ll receive emails from clients split into workshop-based and on-site tasks. The first is disassembling appliances within your garage, repairing or replacing components and then billing the customer. The second is accessing a client’s house, changing lightbulbs, rewiring… that sort of thing.
The former is easily my favourite of the two, and I ended up binging on one after the other. These start with a kid emailing you to fix their gamepad, then you’re fixing a DualShock equivalent, toasters and robot vacuums. These mini-games have you clicking on parts to unscrew, test the voltage, and use a pair of tweezers to replace burned-out transistors and whatnot. There’s no skill involved, but it’s a satisfying experience, breaking down appliances without watching an iFixit video. My only complaint is using a spray on rusty nails far too often, which feels like filler.
Wired
However, the core gameplay in Electrician Simulator is visiting customers’ homes and changing a lightbulb or rewiring the electrics in general. The mechanics are like House Flipper; click on a screw to unscrew it automatically, then place the other components together like an Ikea unit. Once again, there’s no skill involved, but as you progress, the objectives become a little complex, albeit repeated, where you have to use guides to check the current flow and see an x-ray of the existing cable layout.
I must admit, the controls aren’t intuitive, nor are some of the objectives. Because of this, I’d exit the odd job to return to my base purely because I couldn’t work out what to do. In short, if some of the guides are active, you can’t interact with some items, such as bulbs. It’s not obvious, so you may be in the same position. There could be a tooltip to help with this, as there are tips when you’re in the workshop – i.e. what part to solder/attach next.
Before long, Electrician Simulator plays out like most simulators, and each job feels like the next. This can be monotonous, but sometimes the repetition makes it more worthwhile and, dare I say – a chilled experience. It doesn’t take long until you see repeat customers still having issues with something you’ve already fixed or witnessing some cheesy tasks, such as removing all the bulbs and disconnecting the lights for a vampire. Yeah…
Electrician Simulator isn’t likely to blow you away (unless you forget to turn off the mains), but it ticks all the boxes in terms of expectations. Perhaps it could be a little more intricate and specialist, but then again, maybe you could learn the trade? As a game, it’s enjoyable once you know how to play it, and you don’t mind doing much of the same throughout. The workshop element was a highlight, and I’d like to see future DLC that tears down more electrical appliances that we can play with without voiding our warranties.
