Blooming Business Casino review: Chaotic management sim has teething issues
Blooming Business: Casino is adorably chaotic fun, but teething problems with the game's tutorial make it harder to dig into than expected.
Blooming Business: Casino is adorably chaotic fun, but teething problems with the game's tutorial makes it harder to dig into than expected.
Image courtesy of Curve Games
Platform(s)
PC
Released
23/05/2023
Developer
Homo Ludens
Publisher
Homo Ludens, Curve Games
Blooming Business Casino is a cute and chaotic business management simulator with a narrative, created by Homo Ludens. This game introduces many adorable characters, such as Nat Kiddin and Athena Overquill, fantastic names that I absolutely adored from the jump.
Sadly, though, running a casino is anything but easy - but the real challenge here comes from an undercooked tutorial.
GGRecon Verdict
Blooming Business: Casino is adorably chaotic fun, but teething problems with the game's tutorial makes it harder to dig into than expected.
Adorably Animated
Jumping into Blooming Business Casino, the first thing I noticed was the art style. I really loved the cartoonish style of both the environment and the characters, and the colours all melded together nicely.
The art style helped lend a hand to the ‘cosy’ aspect of the game, despite the fact that chaos was at the forefront, and making sure that you were running a decent Casino, even if you did just inherit a significant amount of debt from the previous owner.
Still, it hasn't stopped VIPs from lining up, and getting to know each and ensuring they enjoy their time at your establishment is an additional layer to the core management experience.
Corruption or Honesty? You decide
I love that within your casino running, Blooming Business Casino gives a choice of whether you want to be a law-abiding citizen and run the casino and make money the correct way, or play dirty and rig the games for ill-gotten gains. I really enjoyed that the game gave me the option to play in whatever style I wanted, whether I wanted to be the good guy or Mr Moneybags.
Naturally, there are pros and cons to each - as a crook, you'll earn more cash, but you'll also be under the watchful eye of the authorities.
This is no ordinary casino, however. I enjoyed watching chaos play out as patrons fought each other for their winnings, with the pendulum swinging the opposite way as I felt panic over a jackpot winner requesting a payout.
You can even rig games in favour of the customer, meaning short-term losses can become long-term gains and repeat business.
It's undeniably morally iffy, and character traits that factor into gambling propensity add more than a thin layer of sleaze to the adorable anthropomorphized models.
Rough business
Blooming Business Casino is a laid-back business sim once you’ve gotten into it, but it gets off on the wrong foot (or paw) because the tutorial instructions are hard to follow. Even tasks as basic as manoeuvring the camera felt more like trial and error because of inverted controls.
At one point, one button prompt simply showed as a question mark, leaving me completely unsure how to proceed without a small degree of trial, error, and frustration.
After that, there were prompts for me to follow that showed how to set up Slot Machines, employee Custodians and the like, but I also found myself struggling with these seemingly simple instructions because of the way they're presented within the game's UI.
Whilst they were simple in hindsight (and having spent more time playing), the lack of clear prompting made the early hours more tedious than I'd expected.
The Verdict
3/5
Reviewed on PC. Code provided by the publisher.
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