Worst of times Housing crisis prompts artistic critique of life, Dickens style

When invasive mould is the new way to die in one of the world's most popular video games, you know the housing crisis has hit the cultural mainstream.

- Robert Booth

The new For Rent version of the Sims game allows players to role play as tenants at the mercy of killer mushrooms. Fungus sprouts from damp bathrooms, carpets and eventually the avatars' heads. It is just one example of rent forming the backdrop to popular culture.

More writers, musicians and TV producers are grappling with the subject in a new wave of rent-inspired art that ranges from the furious to the farcical. A Manchester record label has put out songs including one entitled A Guillotine for My Landlord, novelists are tackling the subject, and with one in five households now renting from a private landlord in England, the theme is likely to be increasingly popular.

The mouldy new version of Sims may be in response to the reality that more and more gamers are living as renters, but it has proven too much for some. A trailer for the game showed a player retching from multiplying mould in a shower and sprouting luminescent mushrooms impervious to blasts with anti-mould spray, leading another to ask its creators on social media: "Can we turn off the mould? Sorry, it just grosses me out."