Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
Blooming Business: Casino has been on my radar as a business sim fan since I first learned of it in 2021. Homo Ludens has a very interesting ecosystem in play for this game in which you play a casino boss running everything from the rundown dumps on the edge of town to the illustrious resorts in the heart of the city. There are mob bosses, police and city authorities, and all sorts of other, less-organized demographics to keep happy. Oh, and everyone’s an animal person. I got some hands-on time in with an early version of the game and was happy to find it has depth and some twists on the business sim that make its gameplay very interesting.
During my time with Blooming Business: Casino, I was introduced to its premise and a few levels of management. The story goes that you’re a down-on-your-luck drifter that finds their way to a rundown casino on the edge of town. You throw the last of your money into a bet and lose, but the casino boss takes notice of your moxie and offers you a chance to turn your luck around by taking over his business for him. What he doesn’t tell you is that you’re also taking over his outstanding debt to the city and his under-the-table debt to the mob. Ha ha, you rotten scoundrel, you.
Nonetheless, you play the cards you’re dealt. Each mission has you taking over a shabby dump and turning it into a functional casino that people can enjoy. Blooming Business: Casino’s main beat plays out in levels where you usually have to satisfy multiple objectives, whether it be simply getting things up and running, raising a certain amount of money, or even raising the overall happiness of your clientele over certain thresholds.
To this end, you have to make game rooms, rest rooms, bars, and employee facilities that will make your casino run like a well-oiled machine. You also have to staff your floor with the most dependable and competent employees you can afford. I only got to play about four missions, but Blooming Business: Casino showed me solid variety in casino design, as well as depth in keeping track of my employees, how they act, and whether they’re staying on the level. For one mission, I had to do a Greek theme with fancy drinks to appeal to mobsters while keeping blue collar visitors coming off their shifts happy as well. Each group of customers have different wants and likes and trying to make sure you have the variety to appease all of them is key to running a successful business.
Blooming Business: Casino also gives you a wide variety of trackers, stat sheets, and a notification system to keep track of how things are going. For instance, you might find an employee is a drunkard in their stats, even if they take low pay and have good abilities for their job. That might mean they sneak off to have a nip and don’t come back to staff a card table the way they should. You might also have employees who need frequent bathroom breaks or a certain clientele that gets stabby when they lose. All of it is, of course, presented through the charming and chipper style of animal folks just going about their business. Sure, an Old Fashioned is probably not healthy for Koala, but you’d do well to keep the whisky flowing if you want your bar to remain in one piece, capiche?
I think one of my favorite aspects of Blooming Business: Casino in my short time with it was the appearance of VIP characters. Every character in the game can be checked to see what kind of wants they have, but the VIPs are of utmost importance. Take Ant’ny Barr for instance: The grizzly bear leader of the Mob faction. There’s a mission where you’re sprucing up a place for his associates and if you do well enough, he’ll make a personal appearance. VIP characters have more cash to spend by far than any other patron, but they also have unique wants and temperaments. Where much of the mob prefers Greek themes, Barr is a sci-fi nerd. He loves space stuff, and getting some of your casino themed around that is key to keeping him happy. If he's happy enough, he’ll use his “Make it rain” special event to throw his chips out to other patrons, making everyone at the table spend more.
VIP patrons made for an extremely interesting twist in Blooming Business: Casino’s usual business sim gameplay. You might actually have to repurpose a whole room or quickly get rid of some things and add others to make these high-caliber folk happy. You just also have to make sure the usual clients also have the things they need, and that doesn't even account for missions where there could be multiple opposing VIPs in play. It all became a very interesting on-the-fly balancing act I’m excited to see more of in the full game.
My time with this early version of Blooming Business: Casino was brief, but exciting, and validating of why we have it on our 2023 Most Anticipated Indies list. It’s an in-depth business sim full of fun building variety to make your casino attractive, varied clients and employees to keep in line, and plenty of stats to track it all. The twist of VIP clients also spices up the game by throwing a wrench into your usual flow that you’ll have to work out if you want to keep the dice rolling and the drinks flowing. With such a delightful look at the game, we’ll look forward to playing the full game when it launches this year.
This hands-on preview is based on an early PC version supplied by the publishers. Blooming Business: Casino is set to launch on PC sometime in 2023.