Landlord’s Super
PC
The Getaway, GTA, Watch Dogs: Legion – Greg Pryjmachuk blames them all for contributing to a plastic, London-centric view of Britain. “Games are terrible at dealing with the British identity,” the co-developer of Landlord’s Super tells us. “I just want to try and back up from this perverse image of Britain as a shooting gallery in the capital.”
The backdrop of Minskworks’ construction simulator is a fictional northern town with a name seemingly glued together from the shards of UK road signs: Sheffingham. That’s fitting, since the town itself is an amalgam – a dying mining hub that could stand in for any forgotten hamlet north of London. Rather than Snatch or Bond, Landlord’s Super is inspired by a piece of legislation: the Housing Act of 1980. After it’s signed into law at the start of the game, you’re given the chance to buy your council house, fix it up, and rent it out to earn a passive income. In practical terms, that means taking a dodgy loan and ordering supplies – mixing cement and hammering nails to fix roof tiles into place.
Pryjmachuk, who cut his teeth on Codemasters’ F1 games, has a knack for making fiddly mechanics simple – bricks are flung into place with a peppy whoosh reminiscent of Minecraft’s sound design. Still, there’s a contrariness in the simulation of tasks which, in a bigger game, might be handled by one button and a nifty animation. This grounding in the ordinary gives Landlord’s Super a punk spirit, and links it to Pryjmachuk’s work on Jalopy, the Trabant driving simulator. Spotted on the tarmac of Sheffingham are fictionalised takes on the Reliant, Bedford, and Lambretta. But more than that, the games have in common a tactile connection between the player and the world. “Simulation is the area of games I’m most interested in,” Pryjmachuk says. “There really is something special about worlds that feel like they just exist without the player driving them. Especially when the actions the player is taking could be to the detriment of the games’ inhabitants.”
Pryjmachuk expects you to take pride in your fixer-upper, having screwed every door into its frame personally. He also expects that pride might blind you to who else you could be screwing. “Pride can be a poisonous thing, especially when it overrides empathy,” he says. The people of Sheffingham, bruised by the closure of the mines, face a scarcity in social housing driven by the Act. Landlord’s Super puts you on the front line of a housing crisis that still rages today – and then asks you to prop up the bar with the victims of that conflict. After work, you while away the hours at the pub, where you can bribe the locals with drinks and take their renovation advice. “I think having such an intimate connection to the inhabitants, and their willingness to help the player, is really interesting when you’ve got gameplay based around gentrifying an area,” Pryjmachuk says.
There’s a sociopolitical lesson in Landlord’s Super, then. Yet it’s also a game where your concrete is coloured by urine. Consumables, like beer, affect the shade of your waterworks – which can influence the palette of your property should you pee into the mixer. Pryjmachuk’s fixation with simulation makes Landlord’s Super as daft as it is deep. Just as life isn’t lived heavy with meaning, the rhythm of your routine lets serious themes slip into the background. “Due to the precarious nature of the town, some days you’ll be cleaning dishes, other days you’ll have a bit of extra cash to spend the day working on the house,” Pryjmachuk says. “The characters inhabiting Landlord’s are caught up in a rhythm too, but it won’t really be clear what impact the player has on them until after the fact.”
“Pride can be a poisonous thing, especially when it overrides empathy”