The Sims 4 For Rent will make you a landlord in a Southeast Asian inspired city… overrun with zombies?
Multi-unit dwellings are coming to The Sims 4 at last, but who could have foreseen this…?
Turns out that last week's leaks were bang on the money: the next expansion pack for The Sims 4 will indeed be titled For Rent, and will allow you to play as a landlord. Which is… certainly interesting.
This isn't the first time that rental properties have come to The Sims 4. Apartments introduced in the City Living and Eco Lifestyle expansion packs are rented rather than owned by your characters — meaning, for the most part, that you can't edit the building shells — and short-term holiday lets were introduced as far back as the game's very first add-on (2015's Outdoor Retreat game pack). This is, however, the first time that your playable characters will be able to act as the landlord as well as the tenant, buying up multiple properties and using them to exert power over those keen to indulge themselves in the fundamental human right of housing.
While admittedly there hasn't been a huge amount of demand for landlord-centric gameplay among the fandom, the For Rent pack nevertheless looks poised to deliver on several fan-favourite requests. The new world of Tomarang adds a nice touch of much-needed Southeast Asian representation to the series as it continues its gradual move away from American-centrism. But it's multi-unit housing, which Simmers have wanted for ages, that looks like the actual big draw. The cynic in me is wondering if the landlord angle wasn't just the only way to add proper editable apartment buildings as a full-priced add-on to a game that already has multiple city-themed DLC packs.
Despite that questionable central premise, it looks like there could be plenty of fun to be had with The Sims 4 For Rent, and hopefully we'll learn about the new systems in more detail soon. If you can buy multiple residential properties without renting them out, for example, then your rich Sims could winter at their beach house or maintain a pied-a-terre in the city; and multi-unit housing could be used to finally implement set-ups like retirement homes, which many Simmers have been wanting for years. Completely unfounded speculation has also pointed out that this would be a great opportunity to reintroduce spiral staircases, and I have to agree that'd make a lot of sense, although I'm not holding my breath since they didn't appear in the trailer.
What we do know from the trailer is that you'll have the opportunity to be an absolutely terrible landlord or tenant, with expanded social options allowing your Sims to do things like spy on their neighbours and even break into their apartments when they're not home. Is this the longed-for return of opportunities for petty chaos that many players have lamented as lacking in The Sims 4?
And what's more, the trailer showed a tantalising hint that living in a mouldy rental might turn your Sims into some kind of Last Of Us style zombies. Which, as someone battling the mould in her IRL rental home right now, has me a bit worried, I'm not gonna lie. Still: zombies, though! How we've missed them!
The Sims 4 For Rent expansion pack is expected to release on December 7th for PC/Mac and current- and last-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Buying the pack before January 18th, 2024 nets you the early-bird exclusive Street-Eats Digital Content Pack too, consisting of three unique items.