Model Builder – Build, paint, and sell minis, but don’t play with them!

Great. Now my pile of unpainted minis includes unpainted digital minis too. Thanks, Model Builder.

Ah, simulator games. They’re everywhere these days, and whilst Model Builder doesn’t include that particular naming convention, it is absolutely a simulator game. You can simulate everything in video games these days apparently, from building PCs, to repairing mechs, and even stealing things if you fancy it. It doesn’t come as a massive surprise to me that one of my favourite hobbies of building and painting miniatures now how its own simulator game, and I was more than happy to have a go at it and see if it’s as enjoyable as reality.

You begin by taking over your grandfather’s model business, inheriting his workshop and tools, with the goal of continuing its success and discovering the historical figures he made. You’ll buy miniatures to build and sell at a profit, take commissions, and grow your range of equipment as you uncover more of what your grandfather did throughout his career. Who knows, maybe you’ll even reach the same status that he did.

Model Builder closely resembles PC Building Simulator, with you having a workshop with a small work area, a computer for communication and purchases, and a few storage spaces. You’ll be sent emails with jobs to complete and competitions to enter, then head to your workbench to build and paint based on the instructions for that piece plus any additional orders from the customer. Completing an order to a decent standard will earn you more money and level you up, allowing you access to more products in the online store.

The meat of the game is the actual building and painting, and this is actually quite simple for the most part. Each model has instructions that tell you which pieces to use and what colours to paint them. You’ll use clippers to cut out parts from the sprue, drag and drop them into place, and click the appropriate colours onto each piece. There’s potentially a lot of depth here though, as Model Builder mimics actual painting techniques, including airbrushing, washing, and dry brushing, amongst others. It’s nice that there are so many options for painting, as this is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the hobby.

That said, the actual act of painting in-game isn’t fantastic. It’s certainly enjoyable enough with the fill tool allowing you to make a model look fairly nice quite quickly, but using the paintbrushes and airbrushes felt very imprecise with a mouse. Maybe that’s just my ability with a mouse, but the lack of feeling behind a model and brush made it hard to get a decent result. Thankfully, the star ratings and payments you get are fairly generous, even if your personal opinion of the paint job isn’t all that high. If you’re so inclined you can even get through most of the jobs by doing a pretty sloppy job and just slapping paint on the spots the game wants you to, although that would be somewhat missing the point.

It’s not that Model Builder doesn’t provide a swathe of tools to help you, it’s just that there are so many available in the shop, and it isn’t always clear what each one does. I understand that a dry brush is used to highlight raised surfaces, but what’s the difference between dry brush tip 12 and 15? There isn’t really enough explanation given here, and without spending a lot of time experimenting with each one, you’re unlikely to ever tell the difference. 

On the plus side, there are quite a lot of models to buy, build, and paint, either through a commission, to sell at auction, or simply because you want to put it in your display case. You’ve got plenty of WW2 vehicles, fantasy warriors, mechs, and a number of other options to choose from, with a promise of more to be added in later content updates. Each one has its own instructions as well as a choice of suggested paint schemes if you don’t fancy experimenting for yourself. It’s rather satisfying to put together a piece for the first time and have a look at all the little details on it. I particularly liked the addition of a few pieces from Frostpunk. It can be a bit monotonous if you need to build the same piece for multiple commissions, but the process has something of a zen quality, and I would find myself spending a long time building and painting simple models simply because of how relaxing it was.

The models themselves look very good, which is kind of essential considering the theme, with lots of little details, and the paint jobs you can get on them are certainly nice if you know what you’re doing. The amount of detail doesn’t tax your system too much though, which is certainly a good thing when you’re trying to paint or manoeuvre the model — I am still a touch perplexed by how slow the panning speed is though. The sounds are perfunctory if I’m honest, with a simple snipping sound for clippers or spray for the airbrush, and the music was an odd array of different genres. I would have liked a radio option like in PC Building Simulator, but it isn’t too much effort to switch on a Spotify playlist.

Model Builder is a very relaxing game themed around miniature building and painting. A game of this type isn’t likely to have an enormous audience due to its niche subject matter, but the developers have made something that could be enjoyed quite easily by someone who isn’t all that interested in the hobby. Whilst it won’t teach you much about painting and building, it will provide you with a nice enough experience, with an array of models to play with without the risk of super glueing your fingers together or breaking the bank on a plastic addiction. I’ll be checking in periodically to see what’s been added, and I’m looking forward to seeing some really interesting pieces.

Model Builder is out now on PC.