Games worth discovering

Blooming Business: Casino has a lot of performance issues!

881 View2023-05-25

Blooming Business: Casino (Reviewed)

Developer: Homo Ludens

Publisher: Curve Games

Released: May 23rd, 2023

Price: $25 USD

Blooming Business: Casino is NOT a tycoon management based game, but rather a basic management game which puts you in the shoes of an aspiring business owner during the early ascent of the Las Venas(Vegas) casino bloom in the early 1980s. Unfortunately you are in severe debt to the local mobs.

Manage your casino, patron retention, and a variety of other variables as you progress through a story-based game mode, gaining more features along the way. It's not innovative, but it's a more cute & enjoyable take on the genre.

Issues

Corrupt files & Crashes

It seems like the longer you stay in a level or stage, the more likely you are to experience performance issues, when the game simply cannot keep up with the volume of patrons entering the casino and running around doing activities.

This causes the game to stall, eventually & crash/glitch, making it physically impossible to fulfill an objective. If you squandered an hour building up your assets, you won't be able to re-load into that save file, effectively ruining your progress and forcing you to restart from scratch. What a headache.

Some of the objectives set by the game are physically hard to complete at times.

You may need to get rid of a certain patron. Normally, you can hire a bouncer and prevent (x) type of character from entering the casino, but if you are not allowed to unlock the bouncer due to a tutorial or specific mission, you will have to annoy them into leaving by putting in things they dislike while removing things they like.

Missions

I'm not sure if it was just because the file was corrupted, but no matter what I put in or took out of the casino, the specific patron would not stop being 50% or higher happiness, and when I finally managed to get them to 30%, it just went back up for no reason, even after the entire casino was sold and shut down. I couldn't complete the mission, so I had to quit and restart, which ruined my file.

There were numerous visual flaws and defects, such as the bar restocking going from (1/1) to (319/319) repetitively, and even after the stocks were closed, patrons continued to acquire drinks, which is obviously a bug because the objective was completed, but the actual bars could still dispense beverages when they had 0.

I continued to finish these missions, but each time I lost my file and had to start over, I spent 2 hours of playtime. The frustrating aspect is that I can't continue the game because of these faults because it's a stage-by-stage progression, and you can't proceed if you haven't completed the preceding steps.

Vanishing Pitboss

A pitboss is someone you hire to help you perform things more efficiently. Instead of waiting for the VIP to complete the mission listed, you can command the pitboss to take care of the VIP and many other features if they are skilled.

However, something begins to happen if you gain an extra pitboss for another floor. They vanish from the user interface but reappear in front of their booths. If you employ another pitboss, they just start stacking up and disappearing.

Another thing to keep in mind is that they frequently stop working properly and must be ordered again and again until they perform the sequence you specified.

You may even encounter the problem of the pitboss completely disappearing and not being able to hire another until you remove the booth. This will not remove any of the piling pitbosses that has collected over time. You can see the pitboss is currently away on an order for over 900 hours, while not completing it.

Difficulty

So far, it's on the more casual side of management games. It's not inherently difficult, just extremely buggy. Even if you do manage to go into the red with your funds, you shouldn't be too concerned because there isn't really a option to fail.

You play until your objectives are met, then proceed to the next location, which continues to unlock more features that you will use in subsequent stages.

Other Bugs

They range in severity from extreme to mild, but there are numerous. This one, for example, leaves the game's opening blank, with no background photo and only a white blank canvas, not to serious and very easy to turn a blind eye to.

Story

A new start

You end up on the outskirts of Las Venas, poor and down on your luck. You walk into a casino, hoping that today will be your lucky day, but it isn't. You lose all of your earnings and are greeted by Owlner, the establishment's proprietor.

He makes you an enticing proposition. He is going to retire, he will give you the entire casino and all of its earnings. All you have to do is refurbish and transform it into a buzzing place that will undoubtedly blossom into a huge success.

Little do you know

It was all an elaborate scheme to shift all of his debt from local mobsters onto your shoulders. You're now stuck in this business, whether you want to be or not, with no way out but to follow the rules. A pretty straight forward introduction.

You will continue to execute tasks assigned to you by the mobsters while keeping their clientele pleased, or upset if they are members of a rival family.

25 Minute Gameplay

Unplayable

A few things make this game entertaining and pleasurable. The graphics and music are quite simple and do not require a lot of thought. That being said, I feel this game should be viewed as a very informal and basic management game that almost always plays itself. The amount of achievements in this game are low, giving the impulse to not bother playing it once you've gained 20 of the 25 achievements 4 hours in, if you managed to even progress that far.

Sandbox Mode

If you're tired of the main story campaign's progression pattern and just want to play the game, you can join sandbox mode, where you can fail because the story isn't holding your hand with loans and such. You can choose from a limited number of areas, but you can't build your own walls or anything of the type, which leaves a lot to be desired in a building / management game.

Concerns

Developers

I've attempted the same stage numerous times upwards to 4 hours. I've done everything I can to ensure the game is up to date and functioning properly, but if what they say is correct, I'm now running an outdated version of their game, making it physically impossible for me to proceed past the first three stages.

While they do indicate that a hotfix will be available within the next week or two, I have also noticed many other players complaining about bugs, crashes, and a variety of other aspects that make the game considerably less pleasurable to play in its current state. I think the game is very minimal while also not fitting the bill when it comes to a simulated management game. I don't really see the point.

The game literally holds your hand so tightly that if you get into debt or make a mistake, the boss will loan you even more money until the goal is completed.

With a significant lack of challenge and playable content, this isn't a game I can suggest as much as I think it's cute and fun for what it is in it's entirety.

Conclusion

I can't recommend it

Just as Anthony Barr isn't what he appears to be, this game is altogether new when you combine the concept of a casino with a management system.

You come in with the notion that you will be controlling everything, dealing with cheaters, mobsters, hecklers, and funds, but this is not the case. It truly doesn't matter where the things are because the game just plays itself. The game will play itself with little effort from you as the supervisor puppeteering the game's course.

Don't like a specific patron or maybe want to make more money? Ban the specific type of patron at the entrance with a bouncer and raise the prices on all slot machines and then rig them to lose. It's really not that hard.

There is so much polish that has to be done generously, as well as extra content that needs to be implemented, that there simply isn't enough here to justify the cost or time sink of attempting to finish things now.

Update 05/25: A recent update rolled through that fixed some of the issues.

This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

Twitch

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Steam Curation

- Pawkt

Blooming Business Casion (First Impressions)

Developer: Homo Ludens Publisher: Curve Games Released: May 23rd, 2023 Price: $25 USD Have you ever wished to sit back, relax, and manage your own business in a more effective and objective manner, rather than endlessly playing a Tycoon game? Personally, I dislike management games because they frequently repeat themselves. Load a game, begin managing, and watch the numbers slowly go up. Usually with only a handful of things to do besides fail and succeed, or succeed and play indefinitely, expanding over time into a big corporate chain.

Pawkt1K2023-05-23