I’m a huge fan of Tycoon-style games, having logged hundreds of hours into Tropico 6, Game Dev Tycoon, and anything I can get my hands on with an efficient economic mechanic. The fantasy of running a successful business or conglomerate runs high, and there is a unique kind of stress relief that comes from collecting massive amounts of virtual dough. I’ve always wanted to own a casino, so Blooming Business: Casino seemed like a great new title to me.
Unfortunately, Blooming Business: Casino is not a game tycoon. Although I feel like it’s trying to be, the aspects that really need to shine to function as a business management game aren’t focused on delivering a narrative experience. While it’s certainly not a bad thing, I can see a lot of players coming into the match with the same expectations I had and feeling disappointed.
I’ll start with what is Blooming Business: the casino; Blooming Business: Casino is a story-driven game about a rookie and ambitious criminal who discovers he has a knack for running casinos. When you inadvertently discover that you’ve inherited a lot of debt, it’s up to you to run through the struggling casinos of mob bosses and government officials in a Las Vegas game populated by animals.
The graphics in the game are nice and pleasant to look at. The world is presented as a kind of dull, run-down, dusty Vegas of the 1950s, with all the charm of Harry Reid Airport without the Fallout spice. Your casino patrons are voxel animals, with a surprising variety in appearance and species. My favorite is the mob head bear.
Blooming Business: The casino gives players a set amount of cash at each location with the goal of turning a vacant building into a profitable casino. This is done by marking out areas and filling them with slot machines, card tables, toilets, chip counters, and many other small goods that go into making a functioning casino. These areas then require staff to be recruited from a list of available animals, each with their own set of skills, salary, and needs.
In this aspect, Blooming Business: Casino has a billionaire-style game structure. It looks like spending money to make money through casino games, which you might assume are making a profit. The game leads you to believe that hiring the wrong employees or mismanaging your casino will lead to bankruptcy.
However, there is no real risk of failure at Blooming Business: Casino. You kind of generate income without any real worry of draining your generous initial capital. As long as you have a few casino games, everything seems to work.
Instead, Blooming Business: Casino is a slice of cake with a story mode for you to play through. The amount of decorations available is absolutely massive, and it is really convenient to fill your casino the way you want it. As a casual building experience, Blooming Business: Casino isn’t bad.
My biggest complaint with Blooming Business: Casino is the inability to build any new rooms, expand walls, or do anything to modify your casino structure at all. Even in sandbox mode, you are given a selection of pre-built casinos to work with. While there is a generous variety of these casinos available, it certainly takes away from player creativity being unable to build your casino to your liking.
Blooming Business: The casino has a huge number of menus to navigate and systems to track. Each piece of furniture has income tracking menus, production/interaction options, and an employee menu, which also has its own submenus. Nothing is really compact or easily accessible, and you’ll have to manually move through pieces of furniture to do something as simple as opening a casino.
There are many currencies and types of production to keep track of as well, from basic income to chips, to the power that keeps the casino running, to the overall cleanliness of the casino. Employee and customer happiness are also two systems that you will be expected to track. The number of coins offered to a player at once may sound intimidating, but I never had a moment where any of them really required my attention, and I managed to get by with just downing a few slot machines and garnishing them.
Blooming Business: Casino markets itself as a tycoon game with a narrative twist, but in reality it feels more like a narrative experience. As for the narration, it’s okay. Cute little story with cute animals and some light tension. It’s certainly not dramatic, it’s a bit contrived and weird, and full of bad translation and goofy characters. If I were rating the game solely according to the story, it would be average, but the failure to deliver on the promise of the casino tycoon makes it kind of a disappointment for me.
If you are looking for a casino mogul, you won’t get it here. With no economic difficulty, the game is at best made for a 1950s casino atmosphere decoration and short story and at worst a waste of time. Fans of economic games certainly won’t be impressed with this game, but I see more of the Animal Crossing crowd getting a bit of a kick start from it.
The last word
Although cute and harmless, Blooming Business: Casino will not be what many players are looking for in a casino game. If you are looking for a cool designer decorator or a simulation game with a short story, then this game is the perfect match for you.
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Blooming Business: PC casino reviewed. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the game reviews section of our website! Blooming Business: Casino is available on steam.