DesignHome
Design Home is just about the most addicting and least talked about game on iOS. Spending time in any home where HGTV is a staple of the family media diet, you pick up things about the nature of design, decor, and how to, as the Big Lebowski said ‘tie a room together’ – and the beauty of Design Home is how it makes these concepts accessible, challenging, fun, and social.
Design Home (which actually partners with HGTV) is one of the most popular games on iOS, with over 4,000 Appstore reviews, and a million plus players. Gandering at my own Facebook feed, a dozen of my friends play the game – and almost none of them are what you would call ‘gamers’.
Which is to say Design Home has a certain…curb appeal to casual audiences. But it *is* a game, and with a game comes challenges, and in the case of Design Home, the challenge is resources. It seems you never have enough cash or diamonds to do everything you want to do.
Thus, if you’re a Design Home player feeling a little left out in the cold when it comes to the brands you want buy to make that rustic dining room complete, read on to learn how to earn more cash and more furniture and more diamonds than you can count.
1. Play The Daily Challenge for Cash Every Day
You get 2500 dollars for completing the daily challenge. That’s not a ton of money if you’re trying to purchase some of the most expensive and luxury items in the game, but the important thing is you’re paid out upon completion.
So even if you don’t have the resources to design the room as you’d like, simply finishing earns you money – and like a real home owner, you’ll have to save it to purchase the items you want most – or to complete challenges that require decor from certain designers.
2.Make Friends, Borrow Their Stuff
The ‘borrow’ button is a shockingly helpful feature in a pinch. If you’re decorating a kitchen or a living room and don’t have an item that matches your scheme – and can’t yet afford to buy one – hit that handy borrow button. Odds are you have a Facebook friend that plays the game too, and may just have what you’re looking for.
You get one ‘borrow’ a day, so make good use of it!
3. Don’t Forget Your Daily Reward!
If you play Design Home with regularity, you’re likely eagerly anticipating contest results in the morning, and they’ll arrive in your inbox.
Also in…the inbox will be the daily login reward. Even if you’re busy or not feeling particularly creative on a given day, be *sure* to login and collect this reward (and at least do the daily challenge) to continue earning cash and diamonds.
Like many mobile titles, the folks behind Design Home want you to keep coming back. However, Design Home has the ‘Price is Right’ advantage where the items you want in-game match real-life products; the logic being if you like an item enough in-game, you might go out and buy it ‘irl’ as they say. Every day you login is another day you might find something you want.
Thus, they want you in the game playing as much possible, and therefore incentivize you to login every day for your rewards. It’s mutually beneficial too – the player gets rewards, the developers (and their partners) get to show you the newest and hottest in home decor items and everyone has a jolly ole’ time.
4. Use Diamonds To Buy Cash
It’s possible you’ve never hit the little ‘+’ next to the diamonds in-game. Most people who’ve ever played a mobile game know this is the button you hit when you want to spend real money on in-game currency.
However, Design Home does this right. You can spend real money, yes, but you can also exchange in-game currencies. So if you have a stockpile of diamonds, you can trade them for cash on a 1-to-1 basis. 1000 diamonds = 1000 cash. It’s a pretty fair system, but you have to look for it by clicking that + button.
This exchange feature becomes all the more important when you discover just how easy it is to earn diamonds via our last tip…
5. The ‘Offers’ are Ludicrously Easy, Give Tons Of Diamonds
Under the ‘+’ button mentioned above, if you scroll all the way down there’s a button to watch an advertisement for diamonds, and another button to complete offers.
Back in the day – and on other mobile games, these offers would be signing up for a credit-card, providing your personal information for a survey, and other associated businesses that want some part of you – be it your e-mail address or credit history.
Design Home’s offers by comparison are an amusement park you’re being *paid* to attend. 3k Diamonds to complete the tutorial in a cooking game. 6k Diamonds to play the *excellent* Fairway Solitaire. 10k to sign up for the *trial* of Apple Music.
…And 30k if you pay for Hulu. And…there are surveys and other offers trying to actively sell you something. No one’s perfect.
After spending time with Design Home, the number one complaint I got from fellow players (that they wanted me to address with the developers) is how to get more in-game money. After review, it seems this *is* the way to do it. If you complete all the offers that require no signup, you’re looking at nearly 100k gems you can earn just by playing other games you may enjoy.
Ultimately, Design Home is a free-to-play game that plays it fair. Its primary audience is non-traditional, but creative, competitive, and pretty addicted to the game overall. The developers are keen to keep them coming back, and hopefully with these tips, when you do go back, you’ll be armed with everything you need to make to win your next daily challenge.
Alas, movers are not included.