Don Duality

Game has basically zero agency for what purports to be a management game. Almost everything else feels like window dressing to let you pretend you're playing a game. Randomness is supposed to keep the game fresh, not remove all meaningful decision-making from the player. The only, and I do mean ONLY, meaningful decision that the player is able to make, is to decide how "fast" to go through the cards of the deck. Burning through lots of cards quickly (rather than playing them) earns small amounts of cash and lets you dig for very important police-attention-reducing VIP cards to show up, but also is a death sentence if you have a bad event card in hand since drawing cards will inevitably activate bad events. When an event card shows up you have to judge whether you can or have to tank its specific negative effects when it pops (and it WILL pop if you keep playing the deck) or tank the negative effect of "skipping" it using another card you might (randomly) draw into, which pushes the run closer to ending in the form of police attention. If you can't afford to tank the negative effects, can't afford or aren't able to negate it, you stop playing cards for the rest of the in-game day, after which you get a new hand (getting rid of the negative event). So your only meaningful decision in this game, is to decide when to stop playing the game... to avoid losing the game... great. Just great. The game over screen features a "last chance" system in the form of... a literal slot machine. I couldn't make this farce up if I tried, there's seriously a random element to whether or not you lose a run for real, too. I'm not joking, it's even one of this game's featured screenshots, the one with the courtroom and the slot machine on the side. Just randomness stuck into the game at every turn. The only people who will find this game fun are the people who fail to understand that their actions (should) have consequences. Otherwise, this is just watching the wheels spin on a slot machine with a few extra bells and whistles. There are actual slot-machine-themed games with more gameplay than this (Luck be a Landlord). I want to know who was sitting on the review boards for the game's "awards" listed on the side (Devgamm Awards, Guerilla Collective, MiX) because there is literally no game in this game. Just cute graphics, easygoing music, and jingling sound effects, but basically zero thought.

Removing the ability to adjust how much money is laundered was a mistake (and make no sense, given the theme of the game). If you ever get to a point where you're back down to a single gangster, it's nearly impossible to make enough dirty money to hire another. Too many missions keep coming in only for multiple gangsters and any dirty money earned is immediately swept up by the restaurant. Needs further changes before it's enjoyable for more than 15 minutes at a time.

Was excited for the full release of this since playing the demo sadly the bugs are making in unplayable. Not being able to adjust laundered money rate and my cards disappearing locking me in a never ending day makes it hard to recommend. Since you cant save any bug makes you have to reset a whole run with no benefit from your progress.