How to play

A quick guide to moving in, getting around and making friends (or rivals) in The Building.

1. Create your character

Choose a name, a skin tone, a hair style and color, an outfit with its colors, and two or three personality traits: romantic, grumpy, party animal, neat, shy, artsy, sporty or geeky. You are then given a free apartment in the building. Frank, the doorman, greets you in the lobby with a few tips.

2. Controls

3. Getting around the building

The building has a ground floor, five residential floors with four apartments each (20 units in total) and a rooftop terrace. The ground floor holds the lobby with the doorman desk, the mailboxes and the laundry room.

• Stairs: stand on the stair landing and use the on-screen Up / Down buttons.
• Elevator: stand in front of the elevator door and press a floor button: G, 1–5 or R for the roof.
• Doors: you can enter common areas freely. Apartments can be entered only when their door allows it.

The neighborhood

Walk out of the front door onto Main Street: the city is a grid of blocks around the Town Square, with streets and avenues in every direction, cafés, parks, plazas, shops and more apartment buildings. When you walk behind a building, the buildings between you and the camera are lowered so you can always see yourself. You get an apartment automatically in the first building with a free one; when a building is almost full, a new one rises on the next block around the square, where the Mega Store stands today. Apartments of players who have not played for 30 days are given to newcomers.

Public places have things to do: when you walk into the café, a shop, the park or the plaza a small card appears with actions like Order a coffee, Buy a bouquet or Sit on a bench. Walking into a shop, a café, the gym, the cinema or the library switches to the room view on its own (and back when you walk out). Newer blocks also have a gym (treadmills and weights), a cinema (popcorn and a movie) and a library (borrow a book, read quietly). What you buy goes into your bag; the next time you choose Give gift on a neighbor, you hand them the latest thing you bought.

4. Your apartment

When you are inside your own apartment, click your character (or 👤 Me) and press Edit home to open the editor:

• Pick one of 27 furniture items from the catalog – beds, sofas, tables, chairs, a kitchen, fridge, TV, lamps, plants, rugs, bookshelves, a desk and computer, a bathtub, a shower and more.
• Click a tile to place it, as many times as you like. Press R to rotate and Esc (or Stop placing) when you are done.
• Select tool: click a piece of furniture to rotate, move or remove it (Delete / Backspace).
• Delete tool: every piece you click disappears. On a computer you can also right-click any piece to remove it.
• Undo (Ctrl+Z) brings back your last change, Clear room empties the apartment, and the ready-made layouts at the bottom of the catalog let you start over in one click.
• Choose the color and material of your floor and walls.

When you walk into a room (your home, a neighbor's apartment, a shop, the laundry...) the camera moves closer and the floors above are hidden on their own; when you walk out you see the whole building again. The editor always opens in this room view.

Your door has three states: Open (anyone may come in), Friends only and Locked.

5. Meet the residents

Characters with a Resident badge are automated characters who live in the building:

Click or tap any character to open the interaction menu: Say hi, Chat, Compliment, Give gift, Complain, Flirt and Invite to my place. Every interaction changes your friendship, romance or rivalry with that person, and the residents' reactions depend on their personality and mood.

6. The clock and daily events

The game clock is the same for everyone in the world: one game day lasts 60 real minutes and is computed from universal time. You will see the sun rise and set, and windows light up in the evening. A notice warns you shortly before each event starts.

7. Chat

Messages appear as speech bubbles above your character and are visible only to characters who are nearby or in the same room. A profanity filter and a message rate limit keep the building friendly.

8. Playing with other people

When multiplayer is available, everyone in the same part of the city plays together (updates arrive every second or two): players far away appear as you walk toward them. The pill next to the clock shows Online and how many players are around (or Offline mode if you are playing on your own). Other players have a teal name tag and no Resident badge. Click them to say hi, chat, compliment, give a gift, complain, flirt or invite them to your apartment, and visit their homes when their door lets you in. A gift bought in a shop really ends up in their bag. Use Emote to wave, dance, laugh, send a heart or clap (everyone nearby sees it), and choose Follow on anyone to walk along with them until you walk somewhere else. Choose Add friend on a player: when they accept, you can enter each other's homes when the door is set to Friends only. Click an apartment number plate to knock, or to leave a note or a gift from your bag on the door: the owner gets it even if they are offline, the next time they play. You can also do things together: Dance together, a game of Rock paper scissors or Roll dice (with players or Residents), and Sit together when someone is sitting in the café, the cinema or the park. Some places add their own: a game of chess in the library, a treadmill race at the gym, cooking together at the restaurant and a karaoke duet when it turns into a bar in the evening. Residents behave exactly the same for everyone, because their lives follow the shared world clock.

9. The Building Gazette

Friendships, arguments, new couples, breakups and parties are all recorded. Open the Gazette panel to read them as short newspaper-style headlines.

10. Sleeping and coming back

Press Go to sleep in the 👤 Me panel – or simply close the tab – and your character goes to bed while the door locks automatically. Residents may still knock, leave a note or drop off a gift. When you return, a While you were asleep… summary lists visits and gifts before your character wakes up.

Doing things

What you order really happens: the coffee arrives in a cup and you drink it, plates arrive at your table at the restaurant, you pick a book from the shelf at the library, you run on the treadmill, swim laps in the pool, watch the movie at the cinema and the washing machines spin when you do your laundry in the lobby. Click any chair, sofa, armchair or bench to sit on it. Other players see all of it.

Your own house

Press 🏡 House to buy a family house for 1000 coins: a one-room home with its own garden on a new block of the city, with streets all around. Pick the colors of the walls, the roof and the door (you can repaint it any time for free). You give up your apartment and your furniture moves with you; furnish the house with Edit home like an apartment. Neighbors can knock, leave notes and gifts and visit when your door lets them.

Coins

You start with 1500 coins and get a daily bonus of 50. You also earn coins the first time each day you visit a place, when you chat or interact with neighbors, play games and do things together (with a daily limit). Spend them in shops, cafés and the restaurant, and to unlock special furniture for your home (unlocked once, then free to place). Your coins are shown next to the clock.

11. Saving

Your character, apartment and relationships are saved automatically in this browser. Clearing your browser data, or playing on another device or browser, starts a fresh game.

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