Do you enjoy playing video games as a form of escapism? As a place where you can leave the expected norms and rules of the real world behind and venture off into fantastical lands? If that’s you, then you might want to look into it The Tenants.
Recently released on PC, The Tenants is a management game where you play as a landlord, with the whole point being that you are constantly working on your buildings and interacting with tenant’s needs. Constructing improvements, fixing things, buying new furniture and just generally making sure everything is fine and everyone is OK.
As anyone who has ever rented a place to live in *checks civilization* most places these days would know, even Skyrim it is more realistic than this. In the US there is a “rental crisis”caused by everything from soaring income inequality to real estate speculation to AirBnB madness, while here in Australia there’s, uh, also a “rental crisis” causes by…soaring income inequality and real estate speculation.
A realistic game about being a landlord, then would involve you being the most disgusting piece of shit on the planet, someone more than happy to charge you over half your monthly pay for a roach-infested apartment with damp walls and mushrooms growing out of the bathroom floor. You’d be penalized for undertaking repairs, and answering a tenant’s phone call would result in instant death.
Thankfully, by taking a less realistic tone, The Tenants it’s pretty fun! Sitting somewhere between a building management game (ala the Two Points series) and The Simsyou not only have to spend loads of time placing furniture, making repairs and arranging stuff (for both residential and commercial properties), but also have to deal with neighbors, cops, loud music, drugs, neighborhood thugs and your actual tenants as well .
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There’s two game modes to play, one that’s just sandbox and the other a more campaign style experience, though like most of these games you’ll invariably spend more time in the former, agonizing for hours over where exactly you’re going to put that couch and what color tiles you’re putting in the bathroom.
My favorite things about the game are its item placement system, which is a joy to use (items squeeze and pop and slide around wonderfully), and the fact that it has two content filters on startup, one to remove drugs from the game, the other to remove bugs. Not software bugs actual bugs
My least favorite things are that you spend the entire time playing this game doing fun and cheerful tasks, two things that actual landlords absolutely do not deserve to be associated with, and that as cool as the renovations and building work can be, the tone of the game can sometimes still be a bit…off
The Tenants is out now on Steam.
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