Evil Bank Manager

Review

Banks . . .  what can you say about banks and their practices? There would probably be a long and fiery argument from many of us. Sure, you need to deposit your well-earned cash, somewhere safe and sound with a view to making money babies and constantly growing your personal equity. The more you put in your bank account, the bigger it will become (well, allegedly). You see, these banks have very cunning employees known as bank managers, who are extremely good at finding new ways to put their smooth hands (due to robbing expensive hand cremes to make them look shiny and youthful) into your cash pit. They call this, taking fees and interest.  The more money they collect from us, the bigger their pay check will be! They don’t have to look too far to do it, as they have millions of customers on their books. A little fee here and there, and at the end of the equation you’ll have a big sum of mooley mooley dosh dosh. It’s devilishly clever! Oh . . . these evil bank managers!

Evil Bank Manger is a strategy / simulation game developed and published by Hamster Gaming, where you have to establish your own bank throughout Europe, North Africa and Asia. Your goal is to become the biggest bank in the world.  

So, are you ready to create the biggest bank in the world?  If yes, you’ll be prompted to choose one of eight nations where you will establish your first bank. Four of these nations will be from the west side of the world map (England, France, Castille and Austria) and four from the East (Min, Mongols, Japan and Korea) and each nation will have special bonuses attributed to them. After that, you decide which difficulty you’ll like to play, from beginning to ultra-hard (five in total). If it’s your first time at this genre of game, I strongly recommend playing your first game in the easy level of difficulty.

The game has three main screens of play: the capital, the exchange and the world map. When you start a game, you’ll have a certain sum of money allocated to you. You can follow the tutorial if you wish (recommended, about ten turns) or disregard it. What it will show you is how both screens work within each turn.  

After purchasing the right to open your first bank in your chosen country from the world map (single out a country that has only one region), you’ll be able to start purchasing assets from that specific country via your headquarters, which can be done via the capital screen. These assets are grouped in three categories: real estate, industries and luxuries. You’ll also be able to start lending money through your credit department or build up a guard squad to recover money that hasn’t been reimbursed on time. The other important objective is to build up your weaponry arsenal, but you’ll need resources such as wood, iron and coal to do so. There are other buildings which are related to farms, real estate and industries, which you can upgrade throughout the game to give you more productivity and return. Bear in mind that you also need to employ managers for each of these buildings in order to activate them. Also, you’ll need to make sure that you regularly upgrade your headquarters, so you can then upgrade the other buildings.

The map screen will basically show you how the world is progressing with each turn. For example, you’ll see which countries are at war. You can decide to support one or more countries by lending money or selling weapons to them. If you have a bank in a country that is at war, you won’t be able to collect any resources or gold from that region until the end of the conflict. As your bank starts to make serious amount of cash, choose the country in which you would like to open your next branch.

The exchange screen is where you’ll be able to sell or buy goods every single turn.

You’ll have four turns per year and in each of these turns, you will be able to buy one asset in total from each country in which you have a branch.  You can give up to four loans per turn, but be careful to whom you lend the money.  You can also upgrade the other buildings if you have enough resources and money. The other point to look at during each turn is the quality of your relationship with each of the countries in which you have an establishment; you may decide that you need to improve it. This can be achieved by using the espionage department.

Make sure to have the event window open all the time and you’ll be able to see where the conflicts are, as well as any special events, such as IMF (International Monetary Fund), where bidding will take place; you’ll need a serious amount of cash to buy a small portion of it!

If the country where your first bank was created has been annexed by another country, or if you run out of money, it will be game over.   

Nice graphics, soundtrack and the game runs well. This game is available in eight different languages, which is pretty good.  The tutorial could have been better, in my opinion, and there are a few spelling mistakes here and there.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

Evil Bank Manager Steam Store Page