Published by Curve Games and developed by Homo Ludens, Blooming Business: Casino is a brand-new casino simulation game where you can create and manage your own casinos. Casino tycoons and simulation is one genre that is not very saturated at this point and while we have seen different gangster video games set in the 70s and 80s, very few have gone into detail about building and managing your very own casino. Thankfully, if you have been waiting for some time for one to arrive, Blooming Business: Casino is now available on PC, and in this review, we will discuss everything good and bad about it. This is our review of Blooming Business: Casino on PC via Steam in which we run multiple casinos and try our best to impress some VIPs.
Blooming Business: Casino is a little different from normal tycoon games because, in this game, you are presented with different scenarios to complete in different casinos. The core concept of each mission remains building and maintaining a casino, but you have a different goal for each casino. The game is set inside the city of Las Venas, the game’s own take on Las Vegas, and gives a really cool 70s vibe. Currently, the game offers two different modes Campaign Mode and Sandbox Mode. The main story of the game begins when you visit a casino, only to find it in really bad shape and the owner asks you to try and bring it back to its glory days. When you finally manage this, you find out that the previous owner was indebted to a powerful crime boss and now you are under his management.
The story picks from there as you now have to build and manage different casinos, starting from the outskirts of Las Venas and eventually moving to the main hub of the city. The initial missions serve as a tutorial, and they gradually introduce in-game mechanics while the later missions are just different challenges that you must complete before moving on to the next casino. The gameplay of each scenario remains pretty much the same where you start with nothing and a limited amount of money in your account. From there, you start adding new casino facilities, hiring staff for managing them and finally earning profits so that you can sustain the ongoing expenses of your casino.
The basement level of your casino is reserved for all official business and here you will have the delivery room, your locker, and other employee facilities such as your locker rooms, employee resting area, security area, engineer area, and more. You cannot create any entertainment facilities on this floor. From your ground floor and up, you have the freedom to create the casino of your dreams. The expansion is still limited even in the biggest casinos currently offered in the game. You do not build rooms as the basic casino structure is also made and you can only build the facilities inside the already built areas. Before placing down different a specific casino facility, you have to mark the area and then put down the items required for that particular area.
The game has a large selection of different betting and gambling games ranging in their types. You have a selection of card games, slot machines, dice games, and arcade games. Before placing down these games, you will mark the area to assign one particular game type to that area and then you can put down the tables and other requirements for the game you want and then hire employees to manage these tables. You can choose from young, middle-aged, and experienced employees but the more experienced the employees are, the more they will charge you in terms of monthly salaries. Apart from these game rooms, you will also create bars, sitting areas, lounges for VIPs, and other cool areas to decorate and make your casino attractive to guests. There are different themes that you can follow in your casino as well and for completing some missions and catering to VIPs, this will be a requirement. You can always mix and match the items when it comes to themes if it suits your taste.
Blooming Business: Casino is not a hard game in any way because the game is very generous when it comes to revenue and profits. I do not recall, even on the hard difficulty, a situation where I ran out of money, and I also did not adjust the default entry fees as well in any of my games. The clients that you receive at the casino are fairly rich and they love to spend their hard-earned money in your casino. That is if they like it first. You will receive different types of clients at your casino and each client type has their own likes and dislikes. They might be a particular type of game, a drink served at the bar, or even the general theme of your casino. Each location attracts a different type of client and suiting their needs makes sure that your bank account is always brimming with money. You can unlock new types of items, games, and even bonuses as well from your engineers who earn insight, and you can use this insight to purchase new items from the research tree.
If you get bored with the Campaign Mode and want more freedom in your game, you can head over to the Sandbox Mode and choose a blank space to create your very own casino from scratch without the government or any crime boss pushing you to the edge with their requirements and needs. One disappointing thing in the Sandbox mode is that there is no option to create custom casinos and you have the same casinos from the Campaign Mode but this time around, there are no missions so you can build the casinos however you like and keep running them however you like. There are no limitations in this mode and is a great time killer. The Campaign Mode allows you to re-visit completed casinos later as well but there are no new items to place or expand your casino making it useless so thankfully, the game has the Sandbox Mode.
I love the fact that there are little details here and there to note in the game which really makes you feel that the developers worked hard on the game. When you are in your basement, the music drops in the background, and you can only hear an echoed version of the soundtrack with some bass which is similar to a real basement and shows that action is happening on the floor above. The game also gives you the freedom to perform some meager tasks yourself like picking up trash from the floor or fixing broken arcade machines. Your employees work really hard in the game but if you can spot something yourself, you can perform these tasks yourself as well, opening up time for your employees to handle other tasks. Even with this, Blooming Business Casino is a real breeze to play as your employees are literally zero maintenance. Just pay their salary at the end of the month and you will be fine. You only have to interact with your pitbosses to encourage them to work otherwise, your whole crew is like a robot and does not require anything else from your side.
There are a few technical hiccups with the game, especially in terms of game design and some gameplay mechanics. The most annoying one is probably when you have to serve something specific to a VIP in the lounge areas and there is no particular way to assign a waiter or even the pitbosses to complete this task. You can assign what food is served on each table inside the lounge, but the staff never delivers this food to the table and the VIP just randomly sits and then goes with no idea when he will return to the lounge. This is a problem in the story mode because one of the missions requires you to serve your finest cheese to the VIP and it literally stops your progression in the story mode. The VIP never gets the cheese, and your waiter never delivers anything to the lounge. The game also crashed multiple times during my review phase which is yet another problem with the game’s technical state. The crashes are random and not tied to a specific task in the game. Since its release, the developer has released hotfixes and the game seems to be running in a fairly decent state since then, but the gameplay issues are still there.
If you are looking for a hardcore Casino tycoon game or something along the lines of a game that would really challenge you when it comes to running a casino then Blooming Business: Casino is not the right game for you. It is in fact a laid-back and fun little casino simulator where you can build your own casino in limited spaces and earn profits without any sort of real challenge while ensuring that the VIPs are taken care of when they choose your spot over other casinos in the city. After completing the main story of Blooming Business: Casino and spending a few hours messing around in the Sandbox Mode, I eventually came to the conclusion that the game lacks when it comes to content. The locations are not very big and there are a lot of limitations when it comes to casino expansions which limit your ability after you have built and placed down attractions in all of the available space. It is fun but not for prolonged hours but during the few hours that you do decide to spend on it, it is quite fun.
Final Verdict:
Calling Blooming Business: Casino a hardcore casino simulator would be unfair because it is definitely a casual casino builder and is more aimed at enjoying the game rather than strategizing and going into insane details about building and running a casino. Every aspect of Blooming Business: Casino is fairly simple to understand, whether it is building the casino part or running it according to the needs of its owner. The story mode does present a narrative experience in understanding various elements of the game and seeing how much you can cater to the specific needs of the owners, but the real fun of the game is in the sandbox mode where you can build the casino of your dreams. While the locations might be someone limiting in terms of expansion, they are fine for the number of options you have in the game. If you are looking for a decent casino simulator that does not go into a lot of detail and micro-management, Blooming Business: Casino is a great title to jump into before you find something more complicated. Excellent choice for casual players who just want to dump hours into a no-brainer, fun, management game.
Final Score: 7.5/10
