Every so often you’ll hear of someone with a fruit machine (or slot machine, if you prefer) in their home. While it’s easy to recognise the allure of the lights and sounds, along with the desire to beat the odds and hit the jackpot, owning a gambling device is an odd proposition as you’ll only ever win back your own money. Luck Be a Landlord makes sense of the situation, forcing an unlucky soul to win enough money to pay off their rent using a slot machine found in their apartment. No, wait – that still doesn’t make much sense. As you were.
Said slot machine isn’t your typical kind, in that matching identical symbols in a row is no longer a winning condition. In fact, the majority of reels start blank, and it’s up to you to choose how to populate them. Matching certain symbols adjacently will trigger all manner of multipliers and evolutions, with every spin generating a random assortment.
The titular landlord is an abrupt fellow, sending emails often informing that rent has gone up, forcing you to think more strategically to boost winnings. If you haven’t won enough to cover rent, then it’s Game Over. There’s a little bit of narrative to drive things along, with local residents chucking a few reroll tokens your way to help beat the landlord.
Working towards maximizing payout potential is the focus, requiring some enjoyable experimentation. That, and a bit of luck and advanced planning. Every game starts with the same five symbols, and after every spin more can be added from a choice of three. Items are regularly doled out too, including a piggy bank and a swear jar that fill gradually. A multitude of ‘paths’ can be taken to grow multipliers, filling the reels with animals and their corresponding foodstuffs, or with ore and miners who will eventually unearth precious gems to add to the reels. Some symbols serve multiple purposes; both billionaires and mice love cheese and will give a multiplier. Dogs give multipliers if they appear next to humans, and every animal will boost a payout if adjacent to a Beastmaster. Three and five-sided dies give random payouts, while any safes/lockboxes added need to be adjacent to a key to open.
It’s possible to play ‘the long game’ and plan for a beefy payout, such as selecting coal that’ll turn into a diamond after twenty spins – with most rent milestones only being 6-8 spins apart. Presents open after 12 spins but can be opened early if a toddler is introduced, while the game’s variety of birds will add incremental amounts, such as magpies that’ll grant a large payout every four spins. Anchors meanwhile will only payout if they appear in a corner, meaning not all symbols must be adjacent. The more rent milestones beaten, the more options become available, holding back rarer symbols for the late game.
Over time you’ll be able to strategize more, removing symbols that have amounted to loose ends – a key without anything to unlock is ineffective, for instance – as well as dabble with the hex curses offered midway through. Games last 10-15 minutes, making it ideal for a quick blast, and you’ll start to spot ways to extend chains – bees, flowers, beehives, and bears make for a lucrative combo – so within most rounds you’ll learn or discover something new.
Reaching the last milestone will take a lot of practice, eventually making every spin count. Luck does play a small part though, especially when it comes to things like the five sided die. Often you’ll choose a safe, only for no key to appear for ages, or add a target to the reel and never see an arrow as an option. Sometimes you’ll be torn between two symbols you need to maximise a payout, forcing you to choose carefully.
The presentation is a bit of a mixed bag. The screenshots on this page are what you’re going to be seeing for 99% of the experience, chunky Teletext-esque pixel art and all. There are no cut-scenes or anything of the sort; just a periodical email from the landlord informing of a rent increase. The options menu has some thoughtful touches though, allowing you to change both the font and its size, alter the size of the reels, and change colour schemes as you desire using hex codes. The music is best described as ‘chilled beats’ and it changes often, minimising repetition. While some still images to help set the scene would’ve been appreciated, chances are they’ll soon be skipped and slow the pace, removing the immediacy of it all.
Luck Be a Landlord definitely has that ‘one more go’ factor, fuelled by a desire to see best-laid plans come to fruition. It serves as a reminder that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover – or in this case, a game by its simplistic visuals – but you should definitely judge a landlord by the frequency of rent increases. Those who enjoyed Balatro will likely relish the chance to smash capitalism here. I’m hoping developer TrampolineTales has more ideas rattling around in their noggin, as I’m keen to see what similarly addictive endeavours they come up with next.
TrampolineTales’ Luck Be a Landlord is out 6th Feb on consoles. Mobile and PC versions also available.