Rent Please! – Landlord Sim Review

Be the Landlord Beloved by All

Tired of dealing with lousy landlords that only want to take advantage of you? Do you want to know what’s on the other side of the balance? Lucky for you, Rent Please! – Landlord Sim by Shimmer Games lets you live the dream of landowning without the investment. In this simulation game, you’ll collect rent, buy apartments and buildings, and give your tenants the best life possible. And why not get stupidly rich while at it?

Wealth Equals Patience

The gameplay is straightforward. You acquire an apartment, you rent it, you upgrade it, build another apartment, rent it and upgrade it until you have upgraded absolutely everything, and your tenant has nothing to complain about. You can also place buildings and public spaces to improve the quality of life, make more money, and ensure everyone is happy. As you progress through the game, you unlock more stores, other types of housing and public spaces so you can slowly, but steadily control the city and begin your expansion to the next. This game is all about conquering the world one house at a time, just like any billionaire would.

There’s not much more to it. Besides decorating the houses your father gives you after reaching a certain level, the game revolves around making money and upgrading buildings. Despite that, sometimes it feels like there’s too much to do, while other times all you will do is sit and wait, patiently. Very patiently. Like, a spiritual level of patience. The main reason for this is that things get expensive very quickly. The pace at which you get money is fine, but after a few upgrades, the prices escalate a lot. This makes the progress sluggish. It feels painstakingly slow at times you’ll be crying tears of joy every time Cashdaddy, a random dude that gifts money in exchange for watching an ad graces you with his presence.

Give Me the Ads, I Beg You

As we know, most free-to-play games resort to in-game ads to make them sustainable. A necessary evil, but not as annoying as other games in this genre. Rent Please! – Landlord Sim knows how to spoon-feed you the ads in a non-bothersome way, probably because of how essential they are. There are three main ways you can watch ads in exchange for cash. The first and most important one is Cashdaddy. The amount of money you get from him is proportional to how much you make. The second is the Speed Up button, which makes time pass three times as fast. The third is when you leave the game and come back. You can watch an ad to double whatever you made. However, while you’re not playing, you’ll only be able to collect 4 hours of rent at most. This is so irritating because the cash flow is so slow, yet it kept me praying for ads, so touché.

You may say, “Every free-to-play simulation game has ads”, well, yes, but the way Rent Please! – Landlord Sim incorporates ads that feel so integral to the gameplay you don’t get annoyed by them. On the contrary, there are times when Cashdaddy shows, or you get back to the game, and you won’t be able to watch ads. When that happened, I felt so devastated I sat there, in shock, trying to understand what I did wrong. This fate is inescapable. But it’s important to remember you did nothing wrong. It’s not your fault. Sometimes the ads need to take a break. They get tired too, you know?

Of course, you can always pay in-game currency to claim the rewards and skip the ads. They’re rarely long and not as invasive or often as other games of the same style, which makes them easier to swallow. You can purchase a 30-day ad-free pack for $10, but once the 30 days run out, you’ll have to buy it again. Another purchase to keep in mind is the 30-day offline manager, which increases the hours of rent collected off-game from four to twelve hours.

Anything Else?

The last criticism is that it’s tedious to move around, especially when your tenants have complaints about a business or public space. When you click on those, it sends you to their apartment and not to the place they’re complaining about, and it won’t always be clear what they’re expecting. They’ll complain about the staff not smiling or how they weren’t able to buy meat even though the market has meat, and you won’t know how much you must upgrade to get what they want because you don’t know what the next upgrades are, which will upset your tenants.

Besides that, Rent Please! – Landlord Sim is a good game overall. It’s easy to understand, keeps you entertained, the ads are not invasive at all, and you’ll always feel like you’re moving towards something. However, there will be times when all you can do is watch ads and get money, and sometimes not even watch ads. If you’re only playing this game and not doing anything else, most likely it will bore you. If you play while doing something else simultaneously that doesn’t require as much of your attention, then Rent Please! – Landlord Sim works wonders.