It’s not always easy these days to find a game that is truly unique but Luck Be A Landlord can certainly make that claim. My personal best genre description would be Roquelite-Deck Building-Slot Machine, but you won’t find that particular category on Steam. This should be stated upfront for you gambling addict slot junkies: This is not a gambling game! There is no money to be won here, only good times and occasional bouts of frustration.
The premise of the game is that you just moved into your new apartment and it comes with a built-in slot machine which you can use to pay your rent. Handy!
When you first start your slot machine up (and each new run thereafter) you start with a very basic amount of symbols on your reels. Each object has a dollar value with the initial objects having a simple value of one or two coins per spot. It gets more interesting with each new spin of the reels as you are rewarded with the option to add one of three new objects to the possible results. These new objects have rarities assigned to them from Common to Very Rare.
The escalating rarity of a symbol could simply mean an increased coin value, but more often it lies in its interaction with other surrounding symbols. Some symbols increase in value based on their proximity or the number of similar objects. Other symbols consume certain types of surrounding objects to increase their value or give giant one-time combo rewards permanently. Of course, like any good “deck builder” (though in this case there are no cards!) combos can stack with other combos and have their effects increased or altered by passive rewards you collect every so many rounds, creating a near-infinite pool of potential strategies and endless replayability to test different combinations, as long as you don’t get bored with the main thematic style.
Herein lies the crux of what may be the only downside I’ve found in Luck Be A Landlord: the 20-celled, 4×5 layout slot machine style of the game never really changes (at least as far as I’ve played at the time of writing) and I feel there is a missed opportunity here. The game is fully enjoyable as-is with countless combinations of symbols, including some ingenious and not-so-obvious ones, and I highly recommend it to any deck-building strategy fans, but I think the replayability could have been even higher with some changes to the slot machine layout as you progress.
Also, unlike most roguelikes, your actions don’t seem to have any effect on future runs. Each run is a fresh start. This format makes new runs interesting in that you never know what you’ll get in those first few crucial spins that determine your strategy for the rest of the run. I also hear that there are some great community additions to the game to expand on replayability which I have not tried yet.
Overall, I love this plucky little diamond. In an ever-increasing mountain of deck builders, it stands out as something in its own class. With the 9.99 price tag, you can’t go wrong giving it a spin. Or a few thousand spins!
For two more days, the ROGUELIKE DECKBUILDER BUNDLE on Humble Bundle includes Luck Be A Landlord as well as Fights In Tight Spaces, Beneath Oresa, Alina of the Arena, Tainted Grail Conquest (a personal favorite), Chrono Ark and Dicey Dungeons for $20 USD or you can get Luck Be A Landlord in the base package for $7.80 in the base donation which is cheaper than retail for the Luck Be A Landlord on its own AND you get to support the “Save The Children” charity. Check it out here!
