Dude.... I've played a LOT of simulator games and I do mean a LOT. And this shot straight to the top of my list as the laziest, stupidest, simulator game I have EVER played. I am genuinely mad I spent money on this. I have NEVER seen so many corners being cut in a single video game. I am 99% sure the people that gave this a thumbs up were just like "oh cool I can gamble" and to hell with the rest. Because there is no way in hell this game should be sitting at very positive.
As I begin my rant...remember, THIS IS NOT EVEN EARLY ACCESS, THEY JUST RELEASED VERSION 1.2 WHICH INCLUDES A NEW DLC TO BUY. I have played freshly launched early access simulator games in a better state than The House Always Wins.
The overall theme here is EVERY SINGLE MECHANIC has been implemented in the laziest possible way, the goal of the dev was clearly, "I want to put in this game mechanic, whats the fastest and easiest way for me to do that?"
For starters, the bar system and buying and selling of products off the shelf is HILARIOUSLY dumb. Instead of ordering supplies from a supplier, having them delivered, stocking the shelves, etc. You walk across the street to a convenience store, buy water and chips and items directly off their shelves, then walk back across the street and place them on your own shelves to sell at the bar. In what universe does that make any sense? Do the devs actually think you can open a business and buy supplies off a competitor at full retail price, and then sell them across the street in your own store at a higher price? Again, it's purely just to be as easy and quick to develop as possible. Instead of actually making an order/delivery system, just copy and paste the shelf stock system into another store where you buy things just like your own customers would. Done and Done.
The gambling is completely fake, as in it exists on a superficial cosmetic level only. You set up the gambling machines, people sit down, they insert money, and that's the end of it. you come around and collect the money that's been put into it. Whether they win or lose is a figment of the game codes imagination. They don't get paid out from the actual money, they don't actually get anything at all. so in reality you aren't playing a game where you run a casino, you're running a vending machine store that doesn't even require items inside it to earn money. I know later you can unlock actual tables for more traditional gambling but if this is how they set up the slot machines, I don't even want to guess how the gambling tables work.
This applies to the player as well, you can sit down and gamble. However, you DO get payouts if you win, unlike the customers, which makes that whole thing even more baffling. BUT unlike customers.... the money you put into the machine, but DIDN'T win, disappears into the ether. And again, you put 100 bucks in, win 200 bucks, where did that extra 100 come from? If you didn't win, where did the money go that you put in? SsSssSpace MMmmMagic. Why? because instead of taking the time to create a system that actually makes sense, instead of having an actual economy based around the money, they just coded the game to delete/conjure money when you play. This way you can't just essentially print your own money, and then they don't actually have to code their video game. Again, this is the absolute laziest possible way you could have done this. There is absolutely no thought or creativity put into how any of that works, just insert some lines of code that kinda sorta make it seem like it works. Done and Done.
Performance wise this game runs pretty rough, I don't run an immaculate rig, but if I can play the latest resident evil remake at 1080p on high settings, there is no reason this game barely gets above 30 fps on low settings at the very beginning of the game when you have a tiny casino with only a few NPCs at a time. I can't imagine how bad that will get if I have a hundred people.
Glitches galore, people get stuck walking in place at machines and can't sit down. I had a trash bag turn into an infinite bouncy ball, I had someone lay a stick of dynamite on the floor and it too turned into an infinite bouncy ball, meaning there was no way you could catch it and disarm it.
Of course this glosses over the weirdness of, IN WHAT UNIVERSE DO PEOPLE WALK INTO A PLACE AND JUST SET BUNDLES OF TIMED DYNAMITE ON THE FLOOR. Then again a UFO will appear and aliens come in so I guess they saw how much money the Waterpark simulator people made off their game and hoped they could make it goofy and do the same. Just without any actual thought or effort put into it. "Just slap something goofy in there, people will LOVE it!"
There is a workbench and machine fixing mechanic that again highlights how lazy these devs are. A machine breaks down and you put it on the workbench, you then open the machine. replace broken parts, fix damaged mechanisms, etc... WAIT NOPE JUST KIDDING! You use what looks like a block of wood, and pour what looks like glue on it, then you rub the sides of the machine where it has scratches, and boom, you just repaired a slot machine. *FACEPALM* It would be humanly impossible to have made that any quicker and lazier than that. So if a slot machine gets scratches on the side... it stops functioning? MAN what a great product, lmao!
Even the damn objectives at the beginning aren't even REAL lmao. Early on it says get 50 visitors. My first three customers I've EVER had in the store walk in and boom, I've had 10 visitors now lmao. When you first get the workbench stuff it's like, buy the work bench upgrade and then go to the workbench, yet the "go to the workbench" objective got checked off at some point, even though I could not find or see a workbench literally anywhere. So this also made me think the workbench already exists, and im just buying an upgrade for it. Because clearly the objective is marked off that I have already visited the workbench...even though I have no idea where it is and how I interacted with it. Nope, I buy the upgrade for the bench, and THEN a bench appears in the basement I can use. How did it say I had gone to and used the workbench before ever actually having one? Don't know. Let's just not think about it "HEY LOOK! ALIENS! LOOK OVER THERE INSTEAD." *F.A.C.E.P.A.L.M.*
When a game starts off this stupid, there is no way in hell I'm going to keep wasting my time on it and hope it gets better. So who knows, maybe all the thought and effort went into the later game stuff and may be good, but I'm sure as hell not going to cross my fingers and waste my time hoping thats the case either.
I will give the game one credit though, I will never buy a game again unless I'm planning on playing it RIGHT THEN, because I picked this up on a sale and let it wait while I was finishing the game I was currently playing at the time, and now It's passed the two week refund limit. So... Thank you, The House Always Wins! You taught me a valuable lesson!
