I keep coming back to this, such a simple idea yet compelling because each run builds in complexity. Yes, it's actually a deckbuilder but it still relies more heavily on luck of the draw than anything else. If slot machines really were this complex they'd be much more addicting. I love how adjustable the base colors are, a really appreciated detail for visual impairment that has allowed me to play longer than I would have. Love obliterating landlords too.

Edit: Still obsessed with this and the more I play it the more I like it. I'm up to building 16 and still discovering new items and strategies. When you get a powerful run it's nearly as thrilling as winning real money. Bumping up my score because this is really a perfect little gem that rewards exploration and experimentation much more than you suspect it will.
Just to be goofy I recently tried an eggs-and-pearls-focused run that ended up being my best run ever after I landed the diver, frying pan, essence frying pan, chef, and two golden arrows. I sometimes had omelettes paying off at 120+ per spin, absolutely nuts.

It costs to live. You didn’t choose to live but you will pay your landlord. Here is such a brilliant and concisely defined game: your ability to pay a rapidly increasingly cost to live is based on building a deck through spinning a slot machine.

The game builds in complexity with every spin. The symbols you choose in the deckbuilding parts pay off against each other. If you’ve played your cards right, you might end up with more money then you need to live.

I’ve occasionally looked for a game that’s simply a slot machine plus a compelling mechanic that is not just a microtransaction feeder and this is such a pure example of how that can work, while imbuing these themes with evident commentary.

Sometimes the best idea is the most simple idea. Here, the mechanics are compelling because while there is this overriding aspect of chance, there is also a thrill in building a foolproof deck, knowing when to hold ‘em and when to go for more productive symbols. It’s such a smart little design and is a good and fulfilling bite-sized time sink.

Addictive little roguelike deckbuilder based around manipulating the symbols that appear on a slot machine. Add symbols that increase the income of your other symbols, add symbols that destroy other symbols for big one-time payouts, and prune away symbols that bring down your average payout. Once you play enough to recognize all the different symbols and items, it’s easy enough to just start picking good ones at a glance and more or less play on autopilot, juggling a few different potential builds until either one of them starts taking off or the whole thing stalls out and the rent payments catch up to you. I didn’t mind the mindlessness of it though, it makes for a really chill zone-out-or-listen-to-a-podcast sort of game.

I do find the slot machine theming kinda funny though, because unlike a real slot machine, the machine payouts are relatively consistent; even if you are reliant on specific arrangements/combinations, they tend to simply require having a couple specific symbols show up in adjacent spots, which you can count on happening every few spins unless you’ve really bloated your machine with too much junk. Instead, it’s the selection of new symbols and items between spins where most of the run-deciding RNG resides.

And in the ever-growing list of roguelike/roguelites I've played comes Luck Be A Landlord, possibly one of the most interesting takes on the genre that I've seen. The whole idea even on paper of a deckbuilding slot machine game is a pretty interesting one, but it's really the way in which this concept gets translated over to gameplay that makes it so intriguing to me. This is a roguelike without any traditional gameplay attached to it, only meta-gameplay, by picking items and trying to spin the odds in your favour, rather than having any direct influence over the utilisation of the symbols you add to your deck. While this initially can seem like something that could majorly detract from the experience, it ends up working remarkably well here due to multiple reasons.

The most significant way in which this works is due to each individual item's own uses providing a distinct sense of variation even when all you're doing is spinning a slot machine and hoping to gain enough money to progress through a rent cycle. Many of the items on their own may seem weak, but can easily be comboed together with a bit of foresight and strategy in which items are picked in order to reap massive rewards. This dynamic is extremely conducive to the player deeply understanding the potential use cases of every item the game has to offer in order to know which of 3 possible choices given at a time would be most potentially beneficial, encouraging players to make an effort to fundamentally understand the game. This also puts additional focus on carefully considering your options with each choice presented in order to maximise the potential of victory, but also knowing when to pivot if the cards aren't stacked in your favour down a certain path, keeping your options open, but simultaneously having a general understanding of the path you want to pursue in order to not just be picking unrelated items that don't benefit each other at all.

It's these layers of deceptive complexity that Luck Be A Landlord such a fascinating game, especially on the higher difficulty "floors" which stack things further against you to require an even more impressive set of items to be able to succeed. All of this makes the game very easy to get into, but ends up being a massive time sink if you get that tiny bit deeper into things and realise the potential synergies you can create as you progressively learn how to make the absolute most out of whatever luck you receive. I've been throwing the word "luck" around a lot, and that's because an inescapable shortcoming of this is the fact that there definitely always is that element of luck to keep in mind, with the lack of traditional gameplay making particularly bad strings of luck practically impossible. That said, it actually comes up surprisingly infrequently, with the broad nature of many weaker options allowing the player to get some sort of foothold to build their run up from there.

This depth and opportunity for a player to further tune their run and luck closer to what they want is further improved by the addition of reroll and removal capsules. These limited resources provide yet another layer of decision making by making players further consider their current situation and the optimal way to improve it. This can be in the form of whether they want to wait for a guaranteed better outcome a bit later down the track or use some of these now in order to more comfortably progress with the chances of bad spins ruining everything being less likely as a result, it's all a balancing act that keeps getting tweaked and retweaked. A final point strongly in favour of this game is the way visual and audio feedback is implemented so perfectly to essentially be a constant dopamine release while playing. This comes especially from the rising audio tones when the game is displaying a progressively higher amount of earnings from a spin, and the clever way the game displays a number at a time on the board, starting with the lowest and working its way up to the symbol that gave the player the most money that turn. This builds a constant sense of anticipation as the player awaits their highest payout of the round and goes a long way to make each individual spin maintain a sense of excitement even after you've had 20 - 30 runs of it.

Along with my previous issue with there being a bit too much focus on just getting lucky occasionally, I also believe that the visuals need a bit of a touch up, as looking at the game for long periods of time genuinely hurts my eyes. I feel like there should be an option to change the background to a less glaring, aggressive shade of orange in particular, as it just would make the game a far more pleasant one to look at. Some option to also reduce the stark contrast in colours would also probably be useful in order to make it generally easier to look at for longer periods of time, because for as appealing as I find the simple pixel artstyle to be, the colours are definitely a bit much. Even with these complaints along with being a bit light on content currently, I still think that this is a very interesting game that has a lot of potential and has already been able to demonstrate how much fun this concept can be. Even in its current early access state I'd undoubtedly recommend this to people who enjoy this sort of game in what's essentially an extremely complex, convoluted and satisfying dice roll. Looking very forward to seeing how this game will progress from here.

It's literally pulling a slot machine. It's good enough to compel the brain to kill time on it, but it's a literally a slot machine.

There is a fair amount of "deckbuilding" in picking the symbols that appear in the slots. The build variety is fair and there are constant adjustments to make most builds viable. It's compelling but all of it is service of pulling a slot machine.

Personally the game kills time, but doesn't do much more than that for me. Just pulling slots is not active enough for me.

No matter how you slice it, if you're not into "Slots" then I don't think this is for you. The Roguelike & Deckbuilding aspects are redeeming, but they're not enough to and keep me coming back. Generic-Brand

I really wanted to enjoy Luck be a Landlord. After all, it's marketed with some of my most enjoyed genres as of late: Roguelike, and deckbuilder. And, at a price that's relatively low, I figured that I might get my money's worth, but I'm surprised that I probably won't be getting my money's worth.

You have a slot machine and it's your job to fill it with symbols that synergize and give you big payouts. The selection they give you is random and at the end of each spin, and there's a remarkable variety of ways you can synergize things and make certain combinations work for you. After [x] turns, your "landlord" comes around and collects rent, and that continues to increase after each payment. Spin, collect symbols, sometimes collect items (which further augment symbols, or your overall experience), and eventually pay up. That's the gameplay loop.

I get hopelessly addicted to my roguelikes and roguelites. It's a problem. I also really enjoy my deckbuilder games. When I initially cracked into Luck be a Landlord, I did get some of the rush I'm familiar to. Figuring out a symbol synergy that works (and having the ludicrous amount of luck to pull it off) is really satisfying. But I found myself in a rut after beating the game once. I really didn't want to put in the work again to get another game winning setup going.

But I pushed through, and I completed the game a few more times (each time it gets slightly more difficult in one way or another). It gets so monotonous so fast. And on higher difficulties, you have to get even luckier to pull off the right combinations to win the game, which take a lot of the fun out of it.

To an extent, I think a portion of my distaste does come from not really enjoying slots to begin with, and I was really hoping for those other genres to kick in and override the boredom I feel from that, and to its credit it does go a bit deeper, but still... If you're not into slots from jump, I definitely do not recommend this game to you.

It's in early access, so of course everything is subject to change in time, right? Well, here's my hopes:

I hope that the background gets a little more interesting. Even something as simple as a random color change after [x] payments. That would help visually break up the game so it doesn't necessarily look the same all the time. I would even take smaller item icons in place of a visually appealing and changing background. Maybe in my apartment even??? Why do I care about paying rent? Is the apartment I'm in even cool? Lol.

I really really hope the final game has something to break up the slots. Even if there was some kind of pachinko or plinko or some other gambling based game every so often, I think it would go a long way in making each attempt feel unique if there was a bonus game thrown in there. I think the roguelike designation is a mistake here. Would love to be able to decorate my apartment or do something meaningful, have some kind of alternative goal to work towards, as the base game sits now it's kinda one trick, kinda hollow. There are SO MANY missed opportunities for cool gameplay things by relegating this to a roguelike.

I would really like to see a "test" machine... There really are a ton of synergy combinations, so many that I think it would be impossible to know all of them from any point. I wish there was just a machine I could go to, where I could put on symbols at will, and see how much the payouts would be with certain combinations. I understand part of the gameplay loop is learning as you play, but because you can be mega unlucky and never see some symbols, having a compendium plus a playground would go a long way.

Again, I can't reiterate how detrimental I think the Roguelike designation is for this game. I think it would really benefit from a RogueLITE mode... maybe where you do gradually get some tertiary upgrades over time to your machine with a light and meaningless story. As it currently stands, the progression exists in mind only and that's kinda tiresome. I'd love to be able to grow my machine and see the progress in game, rather than in my brain with a few decent synergies memorized.

Overall, it's a well done game that works, but I just feel like it doesn't stray far enough away from the base of slots to make it a compelling experience for the masses. This tied with its price tag that is clearly a bit too high makes it quite a hard sell. BUT if you're into slots from jump, this will probably captivate you for many many hours, even in its alpha state, and with its built in steam workshop support, you'll always be able to spice things up even if nothing is changed about it ever again.

Finally, you can experience the exhilaration of obliterating your landlord. All you have to do is play a LOT of rogue-like randomly generated slots. It's purposefully repetitive and designed so you can stretch your legs a little by trying new builds. And that's where the fun is, in trying new builds and experimenting with near limitless interactions. But you will quickly find that certain builds have slight advantages over others. Often time, I'd try a new build only to get so many ore and gem items and symbols that I had to fall back into that playstyle to survive. If that kind of imbalance bothers you, you might not have as much fun, but overall I can promise that at the low price, this little RNG slot machine will give you enough fun to recoup its cost.