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.

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.

Review Don Duality ---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☑ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☐ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☑ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☑ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☑ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10

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.

Just want to chime in and put emphasis on the fact that the cash mechanics have been very bad and not changed by the devs for a long time. Great idea but execution so bad that you should not buy. Changing the mechanic should not take too much time, which makes me believe that this game has been abandoned by the devs.

I really love the game, but i should have read the reviews about the game. The economy in this game concerning the dirty money and clean money is really broken. (unbalanced)

Once you have a successful restaurant, you're screwed. That's insane that in August 2023, the devs said they'd fix this and still haven't. You CANNOT play past an hour bc making a good restaurant is too easy and you'll collect no black coins. (Something needed in the game). DON'T BUY

Game technical state is awful. It keeps contantly crashing. No patches since 2023. Do NOT buy this game. Also, game economic is totally broken(balance between clean and dirty money).

I liked the demo version that I played. The dirty money/clean money balance had needed some fixing, but they completely reworked the demo version system for the full release. It's honestly been a while since I bothered to play this because each update made it harder and harder to succeed. I struggled through clearing the map to get a choice. I picked one and suddenly the game was completely over. All of the cards and gold I had earned stayed, but my next play had a fresh map back to the starting territory. There was no warning or I would not have chosen to finish clearing the map. I tried not bothering with expanding territory, but that didn't work out at all. You basically have to struggle and fight your way through the map... To have it all get reset again if you take that final territory. Be prepared for constant fighting that takes away from the restaurant/gang management part of the game and increased police attention until you're constantly just watching fights and court and getting kicked back to day 1. I wasn't going to post a thumbs down review, I was going to see what direction the game ended up taking and give it another try before posting a review. Apparently there was a Halloween event that was tied to a number of real life days and also added an Achievement. Discussions about the event seemed like at least one bug fix was going to be needed and I didn't have time. It doesn't seem like those fixes ever happened. Achievements that are tied to just a few calendar days a year are really off putting. I have the feeling that the regular Achievements I was missing will no longer be possible and I do know I won't have time next year during the limited time event (if it's activated again). I will keep an eye on things and check back, but it's not a priority. The game wasn't fun the last time I played. I really liked the demo. It felt like yes, you're not going to do well at first, it's going to be a grind, but eventually you're going to have this amazing restaurant going. It's a shame, but the full version feels like a giant step back from the demo.

I really wanted to like this game, I remember playing the Demo and enjoying it. It SHOULD be a really good game, but unfortunately, it is broken due to unbalancing. The launder rate from dirty money to clean money means you can't progress or manage it in any way because you have to pay for illegal stuff using dirty money but that quickly disappears and you can't make any more. I would hope the developers will fix this but from what I can see it has been a problem for a long time and the Devs are seemingly ignoring and not doing any updates anymore.