Luck Be a Landlord Review (Xbox): Slow Burn for a Big Payout

Roguelike games have been making their presence known in recent years. As time goes on, we see more fun ideas be thrown into the mix as developers experiment more with what works. Games like Balatro have shown that taking something as simple as Poker and putting a roguelike formula can lead to hours of fun. Interestingly enough, the main inspiration for Balatro is Luck Be a Landlord, and it uses that idea on a slot machine to great effect.

Big money!

Luck Be a Landlord is incredibly simple. There are only a few screens you will see the entire time you play, and that’s all it needs. You are a tenant in an apartment that has to pay their rising rent within a matter of spins to avoid being evicted and getting a game over. After each spin, you choose more symbols that are added to the machine, and all of these have interactions with other symbols to help or hinder you. For example, a miner symbol would usually reward you with one coin when he appears on a spin. However, if he lands next to an ore symbol, not only does he get more coins, but he breaks that ore into a valuable gem symbol which then has more interactions with other symbols. 

Every run of Luck Be a Landlord is filled with choosing the best symbols that work together and give the biggest payouts. It feels so good when you get a spin that has a long chain of interactions that work together perfectly. In contrast, one dud of a spin can ruin your entire run and make you start praying for a miracle. Finding the best interactions to maximize your winnings is key to defeating the landlord on each floor and rising through the difficulty tiers.

The amount of symbols in the game is very impressive. Even the most tame of symbols has at least something that you can add to your game to take advantage of. When you get a good build going that pays out a lot, you feel unstoppable. Unfortunately, you’ll also run into quite a few runs where nothing you try to build for works. Sometimes, it can feel like you hit a brick wall when it comes to progressing through the floors until you finally get some of the RNG factors to go your way.

But wait, that’s not all!

While the symbols on your slot machine will be the main focus as you make your spins, there are other elements at play. Every time your landlord increases rent, you can choose an item to hold on the side of your slot machine. Having the chance to pick the right ones for your build is essential to your success. While there are some instances where what the game gives you is completely useless, I found most of these moments to be beneficial at least in some way. For example, if you have a bounty hunter, who usually only destroys thieves for a big payout, you can get Zaroff’s contract to let them destroy all human symbols for that same payment, making them much more useful and potentially helping clear up your slots with unwanted symbols. Making these decisions is always a game of give and take.

After you get to floor six or so, you unlock essences. Upon rent increases where you have essence symbols handed over to the landlord, you get to choose these special red-tinted versions of items. All of them are similar to regular items, but they can give bigger payouts in turn for being destroyed upon activation. I felt essences added a little more boom or bust mentality to the game. They definitely add another layer of strategy as you build your deck, but they push the sink or swim mentality further. Get a good essence that pays out big and you’re set. Have one not go your way and you’re likely going to be stuck starting over from scratch.

Does lady luck shine on you?

Many video games will try to hide the elements of luck being at play. They want to push that the player uses their skill to overcome obstacles. That is very much not the case in Luck Be a Landlord. While you could argue that your strategy when adding to the slots is the “skill,” everything comes down to whether RNG worked in your favor or not. One run, I would build up thousands of coins primarily by using rabbits and various essences and items to multiply their earnings, and the next, I would struggle to get anything from them. There is no perfect strategy to win, just hope things work out in your favor.

The biggest learning curve in this game came from me realizing that not every situation where I was offered a symbol or item was beneficial to me. In most games, you see a new item and want to add it to your inventory. Might as well have it there for later in case you need it, right? That is very much not the case in Luck Be a Landlord. Every spin on the slot machine can display up to 20 symbols at a time. You are actually hurting yourself in the long run if you try to be a jack-of-all-trades player because unwanted symbols take up space on your slots, while the things you need to score big are stuck in the background. This becomes even more important as you move higher into the apartment and start getting things like X’s that can’t be removed for dozens of turns and have no payouts.

Final verdict

Luck Be a Landlord may be entirely luck based, but it forces you to think carefully about the bets you make on it. The simple nature of it makes it something you can play for just a few minutes or get engrossed in for quite a bit longer. Learning the symbols and how they interact together is very rewarding when you get to work properly and I appreciate learning when it is best to keep a symbol and when you should get rid of it or skip it all together. The game coming to consoles is cool, and it plays completely fine on Xbox, but this does feel like something better suited for mobile. It’s a great game for wasting time, though maybe not great for someone who wants to feel they accomplished a great feat. Regardless, spinning these slots is a lot more healthy than going to a casino.

Luck Be a Landlord was reviewed on Xbox Series X with a code provided by TrampolineTales. It is also available on PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile.

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