HomeNewsLuck be a Landlord
A roguelike slot machine game makes perfect sense, in a weird wayLuck Be A Landlord is a curious game!
Luck Be A Landlord is a curious game!
Luck be a Landlord - Steam Early Access TrailerWatch on YouTube
Luck be a Landlord - Steam Early Access Trailer
Luck Be A Landlord’s premise is that your new flat has a fruity you’ll use to pay rent. It starts mostly blank then after each spin you can add a new symbol from a random selection of three. After every rent payment you get to pick an item which boosts symbols or adds new rules. It starts simple, then gets trickier as rent payments increase and more complicated as synergies develop.
Flowers get so strong that Rain is hard to pass up.
In that roguelikelike way, luck is part of it (and a bigger part than usual here) but growing your knowledge of items and how different elements interact lets you build runs that bend random chance in your favour. Perhaps you’ll simply build a deck of symbols which pay out big. Maybe you’ll craft a complicated deck running a mechanism of symbols creating and destroying each other. Or perhaps you’ll half-arse it to victory with a hodge-podge of ideas that are just good enough.
Rolling the reels to pay my rent in Luck Be A LandlordWatch on YouTube
Rolling the reels to pay my rent in Luck Be A Landlord
It works! I enjoy it. I do feel it’s a bit too random, which I realise is a ludicrious criticism to have of a fruit machine. But with so many symbols and items, too often I end up waiting for synergies which never come. And it doesn’t feel very playful because when it’s so easy to lose. Too often, a run is slow enough to take shape that it ends in failure just when it feels like it’s starting to come together. Trying weaker or chancier builds feels a waste of time more than an opportunity to muck about.
Luck Be A Landlord is available for Windows, Mac, and Linuxon Steam, priced at £7.19/€8.19/$9.99. The plan is to leave early access and launch properly later this year. That Steam page has a demo, so you can see for yourself.
