Home’s Box Estates
by Kassadee_Marie, HSM team writer
Sony sells quite a few “box” estates on Home, and you may be wondering what to do with yours.
In case you’re curious about that label, box estates are those block-shaped spaces that we used to see for sale from Sony every so often. The original box estate was the Summer House, and the latest is the Crystal Seashores Apartment. They are usually two-story spaces (though not always) with a smaller upper story, sometimes styled as a “loft”; they also are usually two-rooms, though they might have additional features such as partial walls, multi-level floors, grand staircases, hallways, patios or balconies. Sometimes they even have larger outdoor areas, such as a garden or pool area.
What’s great and interesting about them is that they can be very versatile. Although some of them are already theme-specific, if you own any of the more generic spaces, I have some suggestions for you. Some of my ideas are also still space-specific and some can be used in more than one estate.
My first suggestion is that these estates can make great spaces for holiday decorating and partying, especially if you add RadioIO and pick a themed radio station. Almost any box estate can be made to look festive with the right decorations, and Sony has been selling and giving away free holiday themed items for years.
Of course, more and more third-party developers are offering themed items for sale, too. These items are getting better and more innovative every year. Just look at the animated Christmas and Halloween windows, for example. I keep my “snowy” Winter Villa decorated for Christmas and my dark Gothic Mansion decorated for Halloween all year round. The Moon Forest space makes a fantastic Independence Day estate by adding all those fireworks from Lockwood to the outdoors area. Look through your rewards and other holiday items for inspiration. How about Easter at the French Chateau? Or Thanksgiving at the Lakeside Cabin?
If you’re already pleased with the way you have decorated your box estate, you might just need to change things up a bit. It’s always fun to add games to play — for instance darts, pool, checkers or chess, such as the active-item games from VEEMEE and Sony. There are also the less common games, such as Spin the Bottle” or life-sized chess, also offered by Sony. The Games store has all of these items grouped together for the most part, but you might want to check places such as Furniture Originals for additional items such as the Enchanted Cauldron or the Fortune Cookie, or Shandor, to create social games of your own.
The “write-on” director’s chairs from Game Mechanics can make a fun game, too. Most, but not all of these items, will eat into your furniture slots allotment substantially, so you may have to make a few decorating sacrifices if you usually keep your slot count at or near the maximum 100.
Another way to change your box estate and how you think of it, is to add items that change the weather or scenery. Juggernaut has been the leader of this innovation, offering four free lamps, two of which make weather or scenery changes. The Lamp of the Deluge makes it rain, while the Lamp of the Terra adds plants that come and go. One of the other two lamps, the Lamp of the Zephyr, adds interest with four or five floating genies, who bump around box estates and into you in funny ways. They also offer “essences” that can change your spaces in amazing ways, such as the Essence of Winter, which makes it snow, the Essence of the Seven Winds ($2.99), which allows you to fly in the air, the Essence of the Tides ($2.99), which adds a water effect and allows you to swim in the air, and the Essence of the Emerald Isle ($1.99), which adds little hills of clover all over your estates.
Just recently. nDreams has come out with a line of similar products, called Weather Cubes. These come in three seasonal effects, such as snow for Winter, a rainstorm for Spring and blowing leaves for Autumn. These effects are limited to smaller areas, instead of covering the whole estate, so you could easily use more than one in any space, or just “change the weather” in the outdoor portion of any box estate.
Because of the recent addition of so many game cabinets to the Home store, you can turn most of these box estates into great game arcades. Konami, Atari, Intellivision, nDreams, VEEMEE, Sony and others all offer arcade cabinets. Some of these games come with additional items or in bundles, and some have owner and guest rewards. You’ll want to check them all to see which appeal to you. Most of these games cost $2.49, but some are as much as $4.99 each. Also, be sure to check the furniture slot count on each; most games are only one slot, which is wonderful, but some take up quite a few slots. If you have slots left over after placing your games, consider picking up some of Intellivision’s game-themed furniture, such as the animated Astrosmash chair, the animated Shark!Shark! Couch, or the animated aquarium table for $1.99 each. Not only are these great items to own, but we can let game designers know we appreciate theme-related furnishings.
I hope these ideas make you take another look at some of the older spaces you may already own and that you can use some of these suggestions to return then to life and usefulness. There are many ways to enjoy your estates, and one of the best is to invite good friends to share them with you.
March 28th, 2013 by Kassadee Marie | 1 comment
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.
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Good read Kass. Your article has a lot of good ideas, I guess the turn off for me though is the boxy design they had. For a while there, seemed some of the homes were just like you said: boxes with lofts. I would see the public preview space and say to myself that I’d pass, especially when it comes to the fact that other places both old and new are so much better in design. You have great ideas and they’d be worth looking into if my next property purchase wasn’t going to be the new nDreans complex elements or the Tardis which offers so much of what makes a space great.