As I sit here writing this, I’m still struggling to wrap my head around the fact that The Sims 4 is almost a decade old already. It’s not every day I get to jump into a review of a franchise that has grown alongside me, but that’s precisely what The Sims 4 has done.
I can still remember, like it was yesterday, the excitement I felt loading into The Sims 4 for the first time and the feelings of butterflies in my stomach I would feel when my Sim went through many of the firsts I was currently experiencing for myself, it was nothing short of magic – a magic that has seemingly never run out.
Over the years, I’ve gotten to experience the thrill of living through my Sims high school years, sending them to university, getting their first big job, moving them to the city, watching them play in the snow with their first pet and now, now they’re ready to take that next step right alongside me – my sims are finally ready to become landlords! And not just a landlord, but the landlord of my dreams and renters’ nightmares – mwahaha!
Last year, I started renting in real life for the first time and can finally understand many of the struggles that only those who rent can. From that neighbour with the baby who never seems to stop crying to the roof that leaks and the landlord who is seemingly only available when it’s time to collect the rent. These are universal issues, and now my Sims will experience them, too!
In a nutshell, The Sims 4: For Rent is an expansion to the wildly popular game that manages to hit home in a way no expansion has before. Players will be taking control over custom-built rentals to become landlords or renters, and it’s hard to say who will have a worse time.
As in life, it’s always easier to be bad at something than good, and it’s this universal truth that The Sims has always leaned into with overwhelming success. As much as we’d like to pretend it isn’t so, humanity, as great as it can be, can also be dark and despicable, which is why being a landlord makes so much sense.
Over the years, The Sims 4 has been used for evil as much as for good. The body count of Sims who have suddenly and mysteriously died in their pools is too high a number to even type. The option of being a career criminal or evil villain has always been there, but now, another player is at the table, thanks to the addition of the landlord.
This time, players will get an entirely new world to explore, the Southeast Asian-inspired world of Tomarang, where small rental communities will be built. Players can have up to six houses or apartments on one lot, giving plenty of room for creativity to players and builders alike.
Most of the systems remain the same between this expansion and the ones that have come before with the addition of a little more freedom. For the first time in Sims 4 history, players can now jump from one apartment to another without exiting to the world map – making the whole game feel that much more open and accessible.
Because The Sims 4: For Rent lets players have up to six rentals on a single lot, with up to eight sims in each, there is a massive push behind building up small communities and working through these restrictions to create homes and apartments that don’t exist anywhere else in the game.
Any space at all can be designated as a rental. For the first time, players can build a house with a single room to rent, create bungalows, apartment blocks or even garden flats – and options are endless.
The addition of shared spaces in the game also means that Sims come together a lot more, which does wonders for storytelling and creating a neighbourhood that truly feels alive.
The Sims 4: For Rent also adds new community events to bring the Sims together, including a charity gift drive, pool party, and potluck. And I don’t need to tell any renters that community events like these are powerful tools for bringing communities together and tearing them apart.
Players wanting to dabble in the dark side now have the power to eavesdrop and spy on their neighbours and even store juicy gossip to be used for blackmail later – nothing quite like the thrill of getting your house cleaned for free so that you don’t tell your neighbour’s husband about the incident with the pool boy. Ah, the joys of close-quarter living!
But if being the resident nosy neighbour isn’t enough of a rush for you, you can opt to be a nosy landlord instead – oh, the power you can wield!
Much like in real life, things can and will go wrong with rentals, and as a landlord, it’s in your control how and when these problems get resolved, while the poor tenants have to deal with the fallout.
You also have the power to make things interesting around the building by putting in rules where tenants get fined for breakages and then watching as the renters start to turn on each other and snitch – never has being evil in a game felt quite this good.
But as in real life, not everyone leans towards the dark side, and every so often, you’ll see renters band together to fight back against the landlord’s tyranny. In those moments, the game becomes the life simulator it strives to be, with resounding success.
The Sims 4: For Rent is the culmination of all the high points throughout the last decade of The Sims, and the more time I spent exploring all it has to offer, the deeper the rabbit hole goes, and the more excited I am to follow its elusive white rabbit.
