Have you ever wanted to own and operate a casino in a desert where your anthropomorphic guests and mob boss shake you down for everything you’re worth? No? Well, I have. Welcome to the retro charm of Blooming Business: Casino. It’s probably not a secret at this point for anyone who reads my reviews, but I love to gamble. So much so that I uninstalled GTA when I learned that I couldn’t participate in the online casino because my state of residence blocked me due to online gambling laws. It’s not a problem. I don’t have a problem. You’ve driven me to do this GTA. Now, I have to get my kicks from Blooming Business: Casino and spend hours out of my day designing new casinos for the mafia.
A Tale of Fluff and Fortune
Blooming Business: Casino is a cozy, casino tycoon game where you’ll manage multiple casinos and build them from the ground up in order to pay back all the debt you owe Antony Barr, the mafia boss of Las Venas. He’s also a bear. However, Antony isn’t the only anthropomorphic VIP who has the casinos of Las Venas in their lenses. There are plenty of other opportunities to ally with cute animals to make some sweet, sweet moolah in 11 unique story missions.
There are two core modes in Blooming Business: Casino: Story missions, or Sandbox. In Sandbox, you get all the monies, power, and decorations. However, I opted to spend most of my time taking on the story missions because I wanted to learn more about this strange and adorable world. The aesthetics of Blooming Business: Casino are retro heaven. I found myself falling in love with the muted color palettes and cheesy retro patterns. Per the time at the top of the screen, we’re somewhere mid 1950’s and the graphics definitely communicated that vibe flawlessly.
Managing Madness
The first casino I managed was pretty simple. I threw up some decorations here and there to make the mafia and Antony Barr happy, and I was golden. Funnily enough, they loved the Greek theme, so I got a little white column and marble statue-happy. However, as I progressed through the story I began to unlock more floors and the race to appease the masses was on. Once you open those floodgates and the chips start flying, there’s no stopping the stampede of animals that frequent your floors. Literally. In order to organize some of the chaos, you need to hire on employees for every station: cashiers, bouncers, bartenders, table dealers, and maintenance.
Maintenance and custodians might be the absolutely most important role in the casino because of how filthy guests can be. Two steps away, TWO STEPS AWAY from a trash can – and they just leave their beer bottles on the floor! Ridiculous. Anyway, your custodians are extremely important, but they can have their vices, too. Some have incontinent bladders, some are drunkards; but when you need all hands on deck sometimes you can’t be very picky.
Delicious Design
What’s one of the easiest ways to attract customers and keep them? Environment! I’ve walked into plenty of casinos only to turn around and walk right back out because it wasn’t kept up or looked kind of sketchy. If you can’t be bothered to take care of your guests and your building, then I can’t be bothered to spend my time there. Blooming Business: Casino has plenty of opportunities to customize your casino exactly how you like it with themes like Space, Frontier, Greek, and others to choose from in decor.
You can also build and break down walls, and construct entire floors if you want to section off your casino and organize your games more efficiently. Unfortunately, when you’re playing in Story Mode, you might not always get to use the designs that you like. Different styles and décor attract different customers so you’ll have to pay close attention to the goals of your mission or risk losing money and upsetting the VIP.
There is also a Research Tree where you can unlock nodes over time after your mad scientist (who you also have to employ) has spent ample amount of time researching trends in the basement. This way, you can earn bonuses and items that help you deal with those vicious platypus miners that keep breaking your slot machines. Never thought I’d write that sentence, but here we are.
VIP Drama
I’ve also mentioned VIPs a few times, but these are the Very Important Peacocks (only one of them is actually a peacock) that come strutting into your casino to assess your business halfway through your mission. Each of these high rollers come with their own unique backstories, motives, skills, and pet peeves. If you want to beat the mission and please the VIPs, you’re gonna have to cater to their every whim. That might mean for one day you sacrifice all your geeky Space decor in favor of building Caesar’s Palace. Another day, you might be looking to trade out your tiki torches for western benches. It all really just depends on the clientele you want to attract and please.
Personally, I think my favorite VIP is officer Nat Kiddin. Not only is her name incredibly punny, but she actually has a great personality once you get to know her better. She is definitely the type of VIP that wants you to run a squeaky clean business though, so no letting those cheaters through under her watch.
Jackpots to Jawdrops
Unfortunately, one caveat of Blooming Business: Casino is that it still has a lot of bugs here and there to work out. I’ve encountered issues of not being able to place down decor because it was registered incorrectly as another item, NPCs getting stuck while trying to run grab a drink, and some objects not being placeable at all. In addition to mechanical bugs, I think I’ve seen a few typos slip into translation here and there.
Typos aren’t a dealbreaker, but as a technical writer they definitely throw up a small red flag for me and make the product not feel polished because they fell through testing. All in all, there are just a lot of small bugs here and there that still need to be sorted out, but the developers are well aware of the fixes since a lot of their feedback is posted on the Blooming Business: Casino Discord.
Farewell Las Venas
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed playing Blooming Business: Casino, and would suggest it to any of my friends looking for a cozy, casual time. It has its fair share of bugs, but I think makes up for it with fantastic theming, colorful characters, and overall fun gameplay. If I could suggest one improvement for this game, it would be to add an eyedropper tool similar to The Sims that lets you quickly copy and paste furniture as it can get a little tedious at times to go back and forth between decor when you’re making multiple changes. If you’re interested in trying out Blooming Business: Casino, you can snag a copy on Steam for $24.99!
