Gangster Empire: Vendetta

IN A WORD: MAYBE
IN SHORT:
WHAT TO EXPECT: Crime enterprise simulator. Mature themes. Low budget production. Basic graphics and audio. Simplistic, limited gameplay. Good range of random dynamic events provide core strategy depth. Minimal supplemental gameplay mechanics. Very repetitive. Clicker like tempo. Played on fixed-resolution window. No settings apart from muting audio. Singleplayer only.
ACHIEVEMENTS: NONE.
STATUS: COMPLETE. A FEW BUGS. ONE CTD.
WHEN TO BUY: ONLY FOR FANS OF CASUAL, CLICKER OR CRIME TYPE GAMES.
More info below....
THE LOWDOWN:
Gangster Empire: Vendetta is a criminal enterprise simulator set in a fictional contemporary city. Players take on the role of a budding criminal mastermind leading a crew of crooks to become the best underworld boss in town. It is singleplayer with turn-based action, each one representing a month in game time.
Setup involves choosing a syndicate name, an endgame goal (1 of 8), a difficulty setting (1 of 3) and preferred dynamic event types (up to 6). After a few quick-start hints, the player begins to issue orders to their crew. Gameplay takes place on a single fixed-resolution window consisting of a twelve block city map and supplimentary action buttons. Each street block contains a Law Enforcement (LE) strength, a plunder rating (I think) and a Heat bar that rises as the level of LE activity increases.
A total of eight crew members can be recruited. Each one can perform any of six types of crime: petty, violent, operations, hacking, drug dealing or legit enterprises. Success depends on corresponding stats (and other factors)and reward the player with cash and Reputation points. The location and activity of each individual can be changed every turn. Poorly performing crew can be replaced. Three new candidates are always available for recruitment. Though only one recruitment or replacement can be made per turn.
There is a chance crew members can be arrested every turn depending on the Heat level of a block. Once arrested they face trial. A lawyer (1 of 3) can be hired to defend them. Judges (up to 3) can be bribed to further mitigate verdicts. If found guilty crew members face time in jail, losing their availabilty to work for the player. Once in jail they can be released from the player's service or Reputation points and cash can be spent in an attempt to liberate them from incarceration.
A large number of dynamic events take place every turn. These affect virually every element of gameplay. Apart from the judicial aspects and managing the crew, these are the main drivers for strategy and providing a challenge. A rival faction exists affecting certain events. Reputation points can be used to target this faction to limit its activities. At the end of every year every crew member get paid salaries and there is the chance that certain stats are increased. All feedback is shown via pop-up windows that need confirmation or a decision. Playing continues endlessly until any mission objective(s) have been completed.
THE GOOD:
+ Good number of user definable endgame goals.
+ Easy to pick up and play. And play.
+ A great ranage of dynamically occurring random events.
+ It has a scratchpad. More games should have these.
+ Customisable goals, gameplay options and diff.
THE BAD:
- Very, very repetitive.
- Not enough immersion. Needs visible tactical and strategic elements on screen.
- Looks like a mobile port or flash game. Alot of the time it can feel like playing a clicker.
- No customisation settings.
- Only one savegame slot per game. Hope it never ever gets corrupted.
- A few minor bugs; operations options not being populated, new hire started in prison.
- One CTD error encountered. From playing a game that lasted 40x12+ turns. Reported to dev.
- Auto-quits on winning notification. Would have liked to have seen a detailed breakdown of my game.
- Like to have seen more rival interactions with the rival faction. And more rivals. Possibly a gang war.
- No losing conditions.
AND THE REST:
* Needs more criminal activities. Would like more complex ones.
* Casual look and feel. Limited albeit fast paced gameplay.
* Enough tooltips to get play started quickly.
* Can turn off the music and sound.
* Has some replayability but becomes very repetitive.
ANALYSIS:
Playing Gangster Empire: Vendetta proved to be a mixed affair. It delivers on some of the promises of its Steam Store page but falls short on what I hoped the game would be. Ultimately as it stands its possesses only a limited appeal.
Despite its low budget visuals and audio the game is well-made with a compact design. Gameplay focuses on a small set of theme-centric features keeping the experience simple. Limited strategy elements help retain a fast and fluid feel where the main challenge is managing your crew, periodically changing their location and activities. The use of a large pool of random, dynamic events adds a welcome layer of challenge. There are alot of them. They are diverse and collectively add a sense of playing in an ever-changing world. These are the game's strongest feature. Supplemental concerns such as hiring lawyers, bribing judges and imprisoned crew add to this. If only there were more of these.
I managed to play two games. My first was short and fun. Over in two and half hours. Leaving me wanting to play some more. My second game revealed a number of shortcomings. Gameplay became repetitive. Very repetitive. Turns began to blur together building a feeling of playing the 'same turn' more or less for 40x12 turns. I would recruit criminals with high stats and place them in a handful of blocks and just click the turn button over and over. Watching my cash reserves go up and then down. Then back up again. At times it came to feel as though I was playing a clicker game. Most of the time I would not bother moving the crew until they either got thrown in jail, died, retired, or left to go work for a better paying boss. The supplemental options became insignificant, only rarely requring attention. Unless a lawyer or judge died, I hardly viewed those screens. Perhaps there is supposed to be a race against the rival organization but this did not materialise. If it had it would have an added another dimension to gameplay.
There is a good core to this game. One that could do with expanding for a better experience. Visuals and audio would be the most noticeable and appealling changes to make. The map needs more territories. Maybe having LE represented as individuals with their own characteristics. Allowing certain buildings to be owned or taken over within each area would add a criminal monopoly aspect to gameplay. I.e. safehouses, stashes, drug factories etc. I would have enjoyed the game more if there was more depth to the strategy. A larger scope to the action.
VERDICT:
GE:V proved to be unmemorable. I do like it. Its simple, basic entry-level stuff. Non-taxing to play. The very definition of a casual game. There are just enough strategy elements to keep the brain engaged but it mostly feels inconsequential. The replayability there is through the game events, isn't enough to ensure long-term engagement. In the end I came away feeling that this game would only appeal to fans of a certain genre; strategy-lite, casual, low budget, mobile and maybe even clicker games. Therefore its a soft recommendation. Just be sure you know what you are getting. There are better games of this type available. (Oh I almost forgot - did I say this game has a scratchpad? More games need such a feature!!)
Thank you for reading. | Find my reviews here. | Key provided by Turn-Based Tactics

Overview
If anyone seeks out REXCurse for an opinion about a gang-themed game (especially a gang-themed game involving management) you know ol' Il Pallino is on the job. With no sort of backstory and a mostly casual experience, Gangster Empire: Vendetta doesn't have anything in the way of a "vendetta" against anyone or anything. Instead, there's just turn-based strategy gaming in which the player controls a gang with a maximum of eight people and looks to complete the game by either satisfying requirements for money or reputation. Crimes involve petty theft, violent assaults, hacking, drug dealing, long-term schemes (which can be either violent or non-violent), and good old fashioned legitimate businesses. Sometimes the player may be asked to assign gang members to complete various tasks for outside bosses who provide large amounts of money upon completion and an increase in reputation the player can either hoard in hopes of reaching their overall goal or spend on attacking a rival crime boss who occasionally schemes against the main character's gang.
Graphics and Sound
Graphics are mostly limited to a basic single screen of the areas of town where the player can send their gang members to commit crimes with menus to navigate in order to hire one of three randomized attorneys and one of three randomized judges to bribe.
Between turns (which are one month long) the player is treated to a ledger that says what a gang member did, if they were successful, and how much money they made.
The sounds are almost limited to a single loop of Blues music which strangely sets the mood of the game. (Though not as much compared to the player muting the music and playing some N.W.A. in the background.)
Positives
In the spirit of Slumlord Simulator, the evil nature of Gangster Empire: Vendetta makes for great fun. otherwise, exactly what makes this game fun cannot be explained.
The game is helped by the fact that the differences in crime types are also different in regards to amount of money the crimes earn and how much trouble a gang member can get into if they're caught in the act. Long-term schemes take anywhere between two and five months to resolve, require some up-front payment, and can possibly return no money at all. Legitimate businesses require lots of up-front money, and can take a long time before the player turns a profit off of said business.
Negatives
Where to start? Gangster Empire: Vendetta isn't helped by the fact that the game doesn't support the Steam overlay, so the player needs to be one of the chosen few people who have the power to take and upload screenshots to such games implanted in their brains by Marion Dale. (Not that screenshots in this sort of game are overly interesting to look at, but ol' Il Pallino needs to take them for the sake of providing an informative review.)
JUDGES! Regardless of difficulty, there's three judges that preside over criminal cases involving the player's gang members, and there's always one that cannot be reasoned with that's the most logical to bribe, because the other two judges are considerably more... Fair. And as a result, can be disregarded with skillful legal representation. But no matter how long the "mean judge" is on the player's payroll, bribery has next to no effect.
While Gangster Empire: Vendetta allows the player to name their gang, gang members, however, cannot be renamed, and how messed-up is it that two gang members can very well end up with the same nickname?! (At least have my two "Clowns" named "Big Clown" and "Lil' Clown" or "Clown" and "Clown Jr."
While gang members do increase their skills through the course of the game, which skills that are increased are purely random, so if the player has a hacker exclusively plying their trade, expect the skill gain to be in something other than Hacking!
The percentage of success for long-term schemes are a case of lies, damned lies, and statistics... And statistics are the worst! Ol' Il Pallino had a skillful gang member fail at a scheme in which the chance of success was inferred to be 75%. Then this same gang member went on a long streak of successfully carrying-out schemes in which the chance of success was inferred to be under 50%.
An area's economic value has no correlation on how successful legitimate businesses will be, so a business in a poor community can make just as much money (and even more) than a business in a rich community, and as for legitimate businesses, ol' Il Pallino had gang members get arrested for running legal businesses!
Conclusion
A diamond in the rough. Hopefully the developers will provide enough fine-tuning to realize Gangster Empire: Vendetta's full potential, because there's a lot of things right with the game... But also, a lot of things wrong with the game! Perhaps Gangster Empire: Vendetta can work as a deterrent to juvenile delinquents by showing the kids how much money the gang members make and say "now you see how much money criminals make. Do you wanna risk going to jail to make less than a thousand dollars a year? Get on welfare instead"!
The honest word of Il Pallino... OR ELSE!
This review made possible through the generosity, consideration, and contribution of REXCurse (REXnetwork) and the developer/publisher.
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Fun little idle clicker, but it's about as deep as a kiddie pool

I am really looking forward to watching how this title will evolve. At the moment, it's a fun turn-based game with great flavor that is right up this humble reviewer's alley. I love crime games and there is not enough gritty, tactical, management based games steeped in realism. The game's mechanics are similar to a game I really enjoy on my phone called "Respect" and its sequel. Yet, Gangster Empire: Vendetta has quite a few more options for expanding your criminal empire.
As of now, the title is a little rough around the edges, but the game's heart is there and can provide any aspiring crime kingpin a healthy distraction. I am happy to support a developer that is thinking outside of the box and offering a different spin on the turn-based genre and cannot wait to see what blossoms.