In a world more cautious around games in Early Access, quite a few still eek through and make a big splash.

Luck be a Landlord is definitely one of the more recent examples. And in case of LBAL, actually inspire a whole new genre of video games, becoming influences for the likes of mega hit Balatro and Ballionaire.

It’s a fairly simple premise. You owe rent that keeps on going up and up. – quite a mood in our capitalist driven world. And if you can’t pay up, you get evicted and its game over. Great!

And conveniently, in this house where you owe rent, there’s a slot machine. So with your last dime, you put some money in and begin earning money from the machine by matching symbols with one another, building combos and doubling your winnings.

You have a certain amount of spins you need to roll to hit your target and will roll everything from pieces of fruit to jewels to angry dwarves with pickaxes. Each symbol has their own unique property and after each spin you’ll get the opportunity to add another to the rotation.

Choosing carefully is all part and parcel of the game’s strategy. You need to find ways to maximise your profits as much as humanly possible, and some symbols might seem obvious bets like a safe that gives you one gold immediately but 30 when it’s destroyed. And the only way to destroy it is to get a corresponding key symbol that will unlock and open it.

Of course, it’s all related to chance as to whether you’ll roll both things and in a way where they land next to each other.

Others are more risky and might not seem like safe bets, but naturally offer higher rewards. Like converting certain symbols into jewels or increasing your percentage of rarer items.

You start out simple, generally with one fruit, a pearl, flower and a common symbol like a cat which will destroy adjacent milk bottles and give you 9 gold for doing so. Each symbol will you net you a gold piece back and immediately quadruple your money earned. But to make your rent, you’ll need a lot more than that.

After each time you pay rent, you can also get a permanent upgrade payment which offers more rare options that can be more gamechanging at higher amounts of gold, like symbols that can 3 more symbols to the game or ones that generate gold at a more frequent rate.

And fortunately you can also get some help from a local aid network who will provide some interesting bonuses, like allowing you to skip and shuffle the three symbols offered to you at the end of each roll in case any offered aren’t really tickling your fancy.

As you play through the game, you can see what symbols you’ve earned, what’s been destroyed and how many payments you’ve made. It helps you keep track of your activities and makes it easier to see where you’re up to on certain symbols that change properties after x amount of turns or what you want to avoid getting a duplication of.

One of the things that impressed me most of all, though, is the amount of options available. Specifically on features like Font, UI Scaling, even color scheme of letters, the types of soundtrack you want to listen to (and what you don’t) but even customising things like spin speed, counting and scientific notation. It’s a rare a game goes into such granular detail on some may feel trivial features but it’s very much appreciated.

But yes, for the most part, the game is pretty simple to look at and listen to. The menu screen is about as uninspiring as any you’ve ever seen and the music in the background is repetitive enough that you’ll probably switch it off and rather listen to your own tunes. That’s the point, LBAL is just designed as a simple, easy to pick up and play game you can throw on in the background when watching a show or talking to some friends.

It probably doesn’t stand out to you as an immediate must buy on a PS5, playing on a big 4K TV, but it’s absolutely the perfect game for your PS Portal or Switch/Steam Deck. This is a game that’s a natural fit for the palm of your hands.

And genuinely it is fun to play in very short blasts. I’ve lost hours to LBAL for this review and will lost many more after I’m done with it. That said, it does feel like a game you can see in its entirety after a few successful runs and it doesn’t offer too many surprises beyond that. In a post Balatro world, LBAL feels a bit limited by design and lacking that same quality and style, but you can quite clearly see it has a core loop that is enriches and engages.

One to play between titles and if you’re looking for that dopamine hit to take your mind off the world woes – and pay one back to the crappy landlords who overcharge us just for existing.

Verdict

Luck be a Landlord is an enjoyable roguelite to play in waves and blasts but it’s not necessarily the best use of a PS5. More a natural fit for handheld devices, LBAL has a core loop you’ll find yourself keeping coming back to, even when the odds keep stacking against you and the RNG is never in your favor. With ways to customise the experience and a variety of symbols at your disposal, the game has bountiful possibilities, but you’ll feel like it’s stretched to its limits after a while and it no longer enchants so much as it feeds a short term fix.