With The Sims 4 for Rent you become a landlord in a Southeast Asian-inspired city… full of zombies?
Turns out last week’s leaks were just what you were looking for: the next expansion pack for The Sims 4 is actually titled For rentand allows you to play as a landlord. Which is… definitely interesting.
This isn’t the first time rental properties have made their way into The Sims 4. Apartments introduced in the City Living and Eco Lifestyle expansion packs are rented by your characters rather than owned by them – meaning you can’t edit most of the building exteriors – and short-term vacation rentals were introduced in the very first add -on the game (the Outdoor Retreat game pack from 2015). However, this is the first time that your playable characters can act as both landlords and tenants, buying up multiple properties and using them to exert power over those who wish to indulge in the basic human right of housing.
While there admittedly wasn’t a huge demand for landlord-centric gameplay from the fan base, the For Rent package still seems poised to address several fan-favorite requests. The new world of Tomarang gives the series a nice touch of much-needed Southeast Asian representation as it continues its gradual move away from American centrism. But it’s the apartment buildings that Simmers has wanted for ages and that look like the real big draw. The cynic in me wonders if the landlord’s perspective wasn’t simply the only way to add properly editable apartment buildings as a full-priced add-on to a game that already includes several city-themed DLC packs.
Despite this questionable central premise, it looks like there’s a lot to be had in The Sims 4 for Rent, and hopefully we’ll hear more about the new systems soon. For example, if you can buy multiple residential properties without renting them out, your rich Sims could spend the winter in their beach house or maintain a second home in the city; and with apartment buildings, retirement homes could finally be implemented, which many Simmers have wanted for years. Completely unfounded speculation also suggests that this would be a great opportunity to reintroduce spiral staircases, and I have to admit that would make a lot of sense, although I’m not holding my breath since they weren’t in the trailer.
What we know from the trailer is that you have the opportunity to be an absolutely terrible landlord or tenant, with expanded social options that allow your Sims to do things like spy on their neighbors and even break into their apartments, if they are not there, go home. Is this the longed-for return of the opportunities for small-scale chaos that many players lamented as missing from The Sims 4?
And what’s more, the trailer showed a tantalizing hint that living in a moldy rental apartment could turn your Sims into some kind of Last Of Us-style zombies. As someone who is currently dealing with mold in my rental home, this has me a little worried, I’m not going to lie. Still: zombies! How we missed them!
The Sims 4 for Rent expansion pack is scheduled to release on December 7th for PC/Mac, current and last generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles. If you purchase the package before January 18, 2024, you will also receive the exclusive early bird Street-Eats Digital Content Pack, which consists of three unique items.
