Shakedown: Hawaii

Wow! I just finished the story mode and purchased all the property. It took about 12 hours and it was a blast! It's like playing a miniature GTA game with tons of references to how modern companies screw customers by lowering standards, charging extra fees, and using cost cutting alternatives at the expense of our health. If you've ever wanted to play the sleazy villain, this is a game you've got to try!

Missions are all pretty simple and there's instant retry's when something goes horribly wrong. I died more to bouncing off of enemies heads and into pits and blowing myself up with shooting explosives point-blank than the enemies gun-fire!

My only real complaint would be the lack of a comprehensive tutorial at the start. They only teach you one new thing a mission and they don't cover important things like how to take cover, teaching you that you can pick enemies up, and giving the tip to use vending machines to heal until literally half way through the campaign!

Overall I had a great time and I only started to get bored at the very end of the game. I took my time and did all the activities. You will need to look at the achievement list to figure out a lot of the wacky things you can get up to. For the price and the time played I'd give it a 9/10. Enjoy everyone!

AdVenture Capitalist 2.0

Very nice core mechanics but could have a bit more depth. Works well on Steam Deck. Good for light entertainment, if you can get it at a discount.

Seems to be inspired by classic GTA but includes a lot of mechanics that remind me more of Scarface - The World is Yours from 2006, especially the property management stuff. All the features are very well polished which is a breath of fresh air nowadays. I just wish there was a little more complexity to it.

It almost feels like the devs were paradoxically too well organized and knew exactly how much they could accomplish with reasonable effort, so they stopped juuust before a good game could turn into a great game. I hope they will build on top of this rock solid framework and build on it with some kind of expansion or another game.

I wish it had additional company management options, more organized crime stuff or perhaps the game world could respond more dynamically to you, with competitors messing with your businesses.

Not only is this game absolutely amazing and clever, the story while not top notch, tells a very interesting parody of something happening in the real world, corporate greed buying up everyone's livelihood. It's pretty wild how on point the game is about big corporations buying up markets and spiking prices trying to take every dollar from people, especially in the state of Hawaii (a crisis the state is facing today). The gameplay is simplistic making it an easy pick and play video game, and it pokes fun at the GTA series. Graphics are really cool 16-bit style and the cutscene match with it well.

Strongly recommend buying this game, it's on sale a lot so you'll more than likely see it on discount and get it cheap!

Cool game, like a spritual successor to Retro City Rampage. (Never beat that game propably never will) game is okay especially since I only got it for like 5 bucks, but man, does it get boring fast. Good game, just not as fun as other sandbox games, like GTA, Saints Row, Postal, etc. Combat is boring.

Holy shit this game is fucking amazing LOL I have no idea why I waited so long with it in my library, to play it!

I always wondered what the relation was between this and Retro City Rampage: DX (RCR:DX) was. I didn't know there was one; I had just always thought this game (Shakedown: Hawaii) was it's own game but like done in the same art and style of humor. However, I recently read something that tied it into RCR:DX. What I read went along the lines of, you're the character from RCR:DX and it's 30 years since the end of RCR:DX but need to come back out of retirement to save your empire / conglomerate from bankruptcy. (If this is the case, I really wish they kept it still named RCR because the name Shakedown: Hawaii seems less interesting.) Your character has led an extremely very hands off approach to his empire. In a cutscene of this game, it's depicted he wrote a book titled: "My company runs itself. I'm at the beach". Hmm... actually this kind've makes me think of Gabe Newell (with the one picture I normally see of him sitting and relaxing on his sailboat) and Steam lol Only, I think Gabe seems to have a company that is doing pretty well for itself :P

In any case, the artwork is FANTASTIC. It's retro but it's, what I guess I would refer to as, detailed retro. One character you come across is a bodybuilder that's "ripped" to inhuman levels. You can see the lines where the ripples of each of the bumps of his biceps meet the base part of his arm, etc. Many times the main character gets annoyed by something and you get a closeup cut-scene of a vein in his forehead pulsing lol

Needless to say the artwork is wonderful and the humor is juuuust the right level of absurd. It's not quite, Saints Row ( ex. coat the town in raw sewage, or run around beating people with certain kinds of "toys") absurd. It does come close, but knows to when to stop before getting just too ridiculous where it's not funny anymore. The humor is less pop culture, more capitalistic, and absolutely hysterical (if not depressing for how close to home it hits for our current societal acceptances of typical corporate practices of today). Two of my favorites, are when your character has to buy image generating software and is presented with like 6 different purchasing options, but all 6 are a monthly and an annual subscription cost. So he goes to find someone, on Craigslist (or eBay, or whatever the equivalent would be), to find an older version that works just fine but doesn't require the subscription model usage. It's like the game is standing up for us consumers by making a point :)

One of my other favorites so far is when your character has to buy a printer to print something out and it runs out of ink. He comes to find out that the ink cartridge costs three times more than the printer!

In both cases, the image generating software, and the printer cartridge situation, he sees the potential for making money by implementing similar things into the various businesses that he owns.

The sound is spot on for what you would expect the artistic style of the game is trying to hit. They're low-fi bleeps, bloops, etc. There are some screams by pedestrians depending on your actions, and you can definitely tell they're screams but they're in a style that would be reminiscent of older video game consoles that were pushing the envelope for what they could do.

As for the music -- I'd say it's ok. It's not that it's terrible, it's just there aren't really any serious bangers and it does kind've get tiring hearing the same music all the time so I eventually (hours into the game -- mind you) muted the music.

The game loop is essentially plays like GTA 1 (the original baby). Top-down view, with chaos and mayhem (just like RCR:DX), you do missions and make money. But you use that money to buy or upgrade properties and businesses around the island.

Most of the missions, even on normal difficulty, seem appropriately challenging where nothing is too difficult. There was one mission (I think it was the 3rd taping of Death cam or something) that had a spinning quad-cannon in the center with sentries spawning in and shooting at you that felt a little too challenging until I realized I could use a move I had learned before from the game, just jump on their heads. The jumping helped me avoid their bullets and get in close enough to stun them with the jump and then wail on them with my fists to take them out. But overall, the missions seem very fair. I'd say, they seem almost more fair then GTA's reputation. GTAs reputation, to me at least, would be like go to this gang land, steal this car from them (meaning survive getting to the car and getting into it in the first place), then drive it to a Pay 'N Spray to lose their tail chasing you for miles until you get to one of those shops and hop you make it into the garage of that shop before you get blown up by them shooting and banging into you. This game is more like, ok get to the car and manage to get into it, and once you're in it, just drive it back to the final place you need to take it to (without being chased and the whole losing of a tail, etc.). In other words, it's "asks" don't constantly keep growing as a mission unfolds.

I don't think you'd go wrong buying this game, or if you have it in your library and just haven't been motivated to try it (like I was), I'd say, definitely give a try!

This is something closest to OG GTA. Maybe even more GTA than GTA itself (without gang war). I enjoy doing stuff in this game. We shall need a sequel or spin-off (or maybe a DLC is fine for me).

A simple yet fun experience that's a blast from start to finish. There's always something to do whether it be missions, challenges, or blowing up an amazon delivery truck. The business aspect of this game is a cool addition and it's super satisfying to buy new buildings and watch your daily revenue grow. While it's not perfect experience (the side content is a little lacking) I still think it's a great time especially if you are a fan of GTA or similar open world games.

One of the best top-down GTA clones out there.

Is a game that follows this idea of building your empire, something that has been explored quite a bit in other games, but this one is made by the same folk that developed Retro City Rampage, which was a very chaotic, very arcadey homage to a lot of games with a lot of humour.

This one is a lot more focused, but it still gathers individuality by not taking itself too seriously; the humour is good though, it's handled in a subtle and balanced way, it's never obnoxious or loud, it's more like there's a silliness to everything you do, but there's an innocence to it, it's not annoying, it's charming more than anything.

The gameplay revolves in shaking down -no pun intended- businesses in order to get their owners to pay you a daily fee, or sometimes unlock the ability to buy the businesses in case their owners don't want to sell them. The game isn't grindy though, it focuses more in presenting a story and this aspect as a side element to the game, more than attempting to built the entire game around you shaking down every single building out there.

About the only two negatives I've really found are that the game can be a bit guided at times, and the other is that the game has some slight annoyances, like accidentally you can block some of the entrances to the buildings with vehicles, which can be easily fix by simply moving the vehicles or jumping over them, but still... for some reason here it seems like an issue that shouldn't be there; there's also the fact the game lacks key rebinding, although the base controls were surprisingly comfortable and the game has multiple presets, it's not really a game that requires fast movements or anything like that, it has action, but it isn't demanding.

Overall though, I'm really, really enjoying it, I love how many businesses there are, and how each of the stores can be interacted with in a way, you can go to a veterinarian's office and get a knee replacement for your character so you can double jump, or you can go to a loan office and get a pen as a weapon that you can throw at enemies.

I also like the characters a lot, and the art style is extremely colourful and charming, none of the characters are voiced, but the dialog, expressions, and music, more than compensate for the lack of voice acting; the characters are extremely charming, you play as a retired business man trying to rebuild his empire against another mogul -a pretty snarky cartoony one at that-, you can also play as his son, a 32 year old DJ that isn't really doing that well in his career. Throughout the game both people commit numerous crimes in order to expand their businesses, but it's all done in jest and good fun; picture Vice City but without half of the violence or the mature subject matters, whilst keeping the fun.

The developers are also supporting the game to this day with the most recent patch happening earlier this month, the game runs great, but there are some transitions in some of the bonus activities that take a while to load, even on an NVME, I'm talking like 15 seconds, but still... I've been spoiled by quick load times, and I think a game that isn't that demanding should load a lot faster; but still...

I'm very pleased with it, recommended it.

I had fun with it, so get it when it comes on sale

Man this game is dope I have no idea how its not more popular.
Proves once again graphics don't mean shit next to good mechanics.

Mini-Games

Shakedowns

Businesses

Missions

Cons or Suggestions

GUD

It's like a mini GTA that has subpar gameplay but makes up for it with tons of novel minigames and a good sense of humor. The map is small, but since you're on a Hawaiian island, it makes sense. You complete missions, buy properties and collect revenue until you eventually control the whole island. The story takes about five hours to complete, but there are a lot of other things like side missions and shakedowns (Taking over buildings).

Unfortunately the combat mostly consists of jumping around and avoiding enemies since combat gets you killed most of the time. You can't dodge shots since the game is so poorly designed you either need to just exchange health or run away and maybe get a shot off at a distance. Later on you get a water gun that's one of the most deadly weapons in the game and has almost infinite ammo since you can recharge it with water. You can also stomp on enemies heads which I found more funny than anything in a game like this.

A lot of the missions are just pointless and after a while I started skipping the dialogue. Each takes 1-2 minutes to complete and doesn't really expand on its idea to create any challenge. With that said, the game succeeds with its extra stuff. The shakedowns are highly varied, with some having you fight gang members or drive a vehicle around a building to damage it. You can pick up objects and put them in the trunk of a car to steal and sell at a pawn shop. There's so much excess in creativity on this front that it makes up for the dull general run and game game play.

Also, the income generation system is interesting, if not complex. You buy properties to increase revenue, but can withdraw money from the total revenue to set your own salary. You can also buy multipliers to bring the total amount of money you earn each day. 100% completion of the game takes 10-12 hours and for a budget game I would say it's worth it. While not as well designed as a game like Grand Theft Auto or Driver, the game does have charming graphics, great music and makes up for its shortcomings in combat with a variety of comedic sequences that almost border on parody.

A modern take on the old top-down GTA games, and it's really fun!

Fun game, lots of things to do, good music, funny dialogue, it's in ways like Retro Rampage but a bit different as here you work your way to be the best in town, business wise.

Not very deep story wise, but the gameplay is fun and reminiscent of the original overhead viewpoint GTA games. There are a bunch of miniquests in the game, as well as shakedowns and purchasing of property to boost your monthly income. Worth buying if on sale.

Right out the gate, Shakedown: Hawaii is a great but flawed game.
Mainly a callback to classic top-down GTA with a business management sim aspect added in. These two different gameplay formulas create a fun game loop but unfortunately both have flaws to 'em that hurt the overall experience.

The Classic GTA aspect is hurt by the controls (On mouse & keyboard), they just don't feel as refined as they should be making for some frustrating moments and there's no remap feature for some reason.
On the business sim side, while this aspect of the game is downright addicting there's not much too it outside of the dopamine rush of "rising numbers", eventually you hit a wall and it get tedious.

The story is a pretty amusing sass at modern culture and consumerism but mercifully the game doesn't take itself serious.
Ironically enough some of the "modernisms" depicted in this game have since then become outdated making it clear what time this game came out. Really the only truly bad thing about the plot is the ending, past the halfway point the plot starts to drag and than it just abruptly ends.

Overall, Shakedown: Hawaii is worth it, especially on sale.

very fun game, reminded me of old GTA, but better, loved that i could buy businesses etc., very fun sidestories and quests.

Great game very talented developer much better than the first game. Amazing how much content is crammed in here with coop destructible environments varied weapons and cars.

cheap version of saints row 3 and up. fun

SH can best be described as a funny mini-GTA indie game focused on business management. There is a small city you can explore where you’re mainly doing the story missions. You can also do a couple of challenges (high scores with weapon kills etc), force stores to be bought by intimidating them (this can mean different things), buy companies/houses/public sectors and find 30 cables as the collectible in this game. You can steal any car, start a fight with anyone and be chased by the cops. The business side gives you the option of buying over 400 buildings, increase their revenue through multipliers you unlock slowly through missions and get more money when you monopolise sectors. Your income is increased and paid to you once a day to expand your empire further. The game focuses on story more than expected. It usually shows the CEO’s reckless behaviour and funny logic as he’s trying to keep up with the times. His son wants to be famous and gets in all sorts of trouble for it and there is a foreign employee who does the dirty work. You’ll eventually be able to switch between all these characters. You can also purchase upgrades to make them stronger and all can wield at least 10-20 different weapons.

It’s an addictive loop of waiting for the payment to go on a buying spree. The story is very amusing and fun to follow. The gameplay is simple and very easy to get into. The devs succeeded at making you feel powerful, I usually always go for the ‘good guy’ role but the game made me enjoy being the ‘evil guy’ and mowing anyone in my way. The graphics are charming, there are some catchy 80s tunes and the achievements are fine. There are a couple of miscellaneous ones but they’re fun and easy to get. The rest is doing and buying everything basically. It took me over 17 hours to get 100% with a bit of help (read below).

The game has 2 main flaws. First, finding the collectibles is a very painful process. There isn’t a single tool to track them or narrow down the hunt, the game doesn’t show you if you’ve entered buildings before and it doesn’t show you if you collected the cables from spots. The only stat you get is x out of 30 collected, that’s just not enough for a city that has a couple of buildings too. Luckily, the community has an incredibly handy map with all the collectibles online. Definitely make use of it if you don’t want to waste time. The second flaw is a bit hard to pin down. The game feels a bit repetitive. There isn’t a lot of variety with the gameplay. There is also a lot of asset re-use, the buildings, objects, environments don’t feel unique. It’s as if they’re randomly generated a bit. I don’t think they are but it’s hard to shake that feeling.

Regardless though, the game is a lot of fun. It was always time to relax every time I played SH. I got it on the recent sale for €3 and it’s definitely worth it.

I recommend this game with one BIG and PULSING "IF".
You will probably enjoy it IF you played Retro City Rampage and liked it.

When compared to RCR, this game is rather boring.
Gone are the references to other games and their mechanics, and in place we have... late stage capitalism.
Instead of the player using Sonic shoes to press a trafic light button, we have a guy going to the store and learning about shrinkflation and targeted ads.

The story is about a guy stuck in the 80s, who discovers that all his business are losing revenue to other businesses, so he has to rebuild his empire by learning about capitalism strategies like MLMs, targeted ads, sponsored content, store credit cards, accumulating points that expire too quickily, ingredient replacements and pro-enviromental choices that so happen to reduce his costs.
The story is supposed to be comical, but its all stuff that actually happens today, right now.
There are two other characters that you control, but it feels they are there just to parody GTA 5.
The ending is kinda meh, as you "defeat" other main villains over the game, and the final boss if a guy that shows up from nowhere. Then you get a prize and the game ends.

The gameplay is mostly the same as RCR, but missing a few features like powerups. For some reason, stomping and the spread shot from Contra are still there.
There are several weapons, but most of the time you will only use two or three of them, because they are either too weak or too dangerous to use due self-damage.
Either way, eventually enemies start to get bulletproof and you have to melee them or use explosive weapons.

You can say the "main" gameplay is the business management, but there isn't much to it. You get money daily, then you use that money to buy more businesses or to add multipliers to existing ones like MLM, credit cards, gift cards, stealth ads and more, so you get more money to buy more businesses.
As long you buy stuff everytime you get paid, you will finish the game with all businesses.
And no idea how "daily" works in this game. Sometimes it only paid after missions, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it paid after a few minutes of running around, sometimes it didn't pay after several minutes of standing still.

All minigames from RCR are gone. The only thing left is glutes workout session, where you press a button at the right time and don't get anything if you pass.

Graphicaly, the game looks very nice. There isn't much to add to it.

To sum it up, the game is good, but rather boring when compared to RCR. By removing the gaming parody, it becomes a basic GTA demake.
Looks good, plays ok, still prefer RCR. Buy RCR.

For me, having just 100% Retro City Rampage I was immediately impressed by all the quality of life changes they made to their second game. You feel the weight of all the vehicles while turning or avoiding collisions. Environments inside and out are also quite destructive, something the first game lacked. And while I could list particular pros and cons what I will say instead is this. Whatever critiques I had for Retro City Rampage were resolved and fine tuned in their second game. It is satisfying to see how much they've improved and how certain I am that any critiques will be acknowledged prior to whatever they decide their third release will be. I can't recommend this game enough when it goes on sale. Apparently it was also the last game released on Wii.

Did not expect to like this so much. A couple years ago I finally played GTA5 and hated it, so I can firmly say that this is better than GTA in my book, lol. The social commentary was really good and kinda simplified and streamlined, while still casting a wide net for it's audience, not getting too political but still criticizing modern economics. I think it nails the concept of playing as a bad guy, you're rooting for him but it's clear that he's a bastard from the get-go. A lot of games get that wrong. Otherwise the gameplay is also streamlined and stripped down, unencumbered, there's nothing on the map that doesn't come into play at some point, there's nothing added that slows the game's pace down, there's no frustrating missions, everything feels succinct, like it's absolutely what you want from a 2D GTAlike, nothing more. i can't wait to go through it again as fast as I can. I really hope you make a sequel, maybe 32 bit but still 2D, and like you could totally just tell the same basic story over again in a different setting, and you could get a lot of content out of incorporating the AI boom into the businesses and their multipliers. I'd say my favorite part was the shakedowns, they're random, but none of them are ever a slog or a hassle. And my favorite mission was the banana one because it literally explained the concept of a banana republic. I made all the characters wear white jacket, white pants, white headband, so they looked like a karate class.

Very entertaining!
The game is very straightforward.
You do missions and collect enough money to invest in new adventures (Housing, Factories, Stores) and then via missions you learn new ways of boosting how much money you make.
Very much recommended at a deal that brings the total price to about 3-5$

If Saints Row was made in the 32 bit era it would be this game.

it's pretty swag

Basically an art portfolio. Like this feels like a project for a digital design class, rather than a game.

I don't regret the three bucks I spent on sale. Finished it in about 12 hours, no replay value, but it was fun while it lasted.

Solid GTA 2 style gameplay. If you liked that, you'll like this, not much more to add there.

The humor isn't going to hit for some people but 'out-of-touch-boomer deals with modern world' works for me. The arc with the wanna-be-rapper/failson has been done better elsewhere, but it was minor enough it didn't break anything.

The property buying mechanics are mostly a progress bar. You need to engage enough to buy the plot relevant properties, but it doesn't really do anything beyond that. I never needed to visit a gun store with the ambient pickups available and I think that's the only business that does something. I'm not mad about it, it was fun to watch the map turn bought, and I did 100% the property buying, but I felt disappointed there was no in-game acknowledgement beyond the achievement popping. But that was really my only disappointment with it, other than that it landed pretty much exactly on expectations as advertised.

I didn't know I needed this in my life until I tried this game out. I'm actually having fun and this is much more than can be said of most modern games.

This game is such a pleasure to play! It never gets old! There's so much humour with a fun and intriguing story. Highly recommend!

Fun and addictive gameplay, nice retro soundtrack as you build your empire. could not stop myself playing all day.