Video Game / Max Gentlemen Sexy Business!

Max Gentlemen Sexy Business! is a Western Business Sim / Dating Sim by The Men Who Wear Many Hats, who also made Organ Trail and the original Max Gentlemen. There are some H-Game elements, but they can be completely censored, and the main focus is on witty, comedic writing.

You're a rich noble-person, whose vast inherited fortune gets stolen from you by your rival while you're on vacation. Though you've never worked a day in your life, the only way to win your rightful holdings back is to partner up with up to twelve wildly different (and, of course, sexy) executives and out-business all who stand in your way. What starts as a Riches-to-Rags-and-Back story quickly becomes much more complicated as the secrets of your family fortune, dashing good lucks, and incredibly diverse and impressive skillsets come to light.

Gameplay is largely a "business simulator" where you assign your executives to certain buildings to produce money, improve their skills, and improve their ability to have hostile takeovers via duking it out with other CEOs and their employees in the town square. On the side are dating sim elements, where you both play mini-games with your executives on lunch dates and also go out on dates with them, with your responses affecting their feelings toward you or what brand of hilarity you'll find yourself in.

The original game was released via Steam on February 25, 2020. A substantial content update called "The British are COMING" was initially announced for Fall of that year, but was delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The story has a happy ending, though, as "The British are COMING" eventually grew into a fully-fledged free expansion that was made available to all owners of the base game on October 12, 2021.

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Tropes:

• Affectionate Nickname: Bonbon refers to Business Maid as her "Rose Gold", ever since attending the same finishing school together. It's actually an abbreviation of her real name, Rosalina Ingold.
• Archnemesis Dad: In the penultimate date for Pip Whipple, it turns out their father was behind recent tragic events, with his motivation being to give his daughter a fun mystery to solve that kinda spiraled out of control when the actor playing the victim accidentally died for real.
• Bait-and-Switch Lesbians: Parodied. Summer Starling's route reveals that she was separated from her first love, Mercedes, when Mercedes's brother objected to their relationship and had Summer banished. Then it turns out that Mercedes was her next door neighbour's dog, and Summer was just sent to an expensive finishing school by her parents. Although technically Summer never actually backtracks on/clarifies her apparently very romantic feelings for Mercedes after the reveal...
• Big Bad: Initially, your customizable rival is the overarching villain, being a mirror of your protagonist's incredible skills, attractiveness, charisma, and business acumen, with Evil Twins of your executives, to boot. By the second run, however, you find out a much worse problem, with the rival Demoted to Dragon.
• Bloody Hilarious: As part of Vlad Nibblesome's research into the nature of love, he exhumes the body of a heartbroken man who recently poisoned himself in his grief. The resulting autopsy with the protagonist has so many potential avenues to get extremely messy, with the both of them being more bothered by their stained clothes and the lack of good data more than the corpse desecration and the gore.
• Brits Love Tea: Naturally enough for a game all about playing with traditional British stereotypes, one of the lunch date options has your character making tea for their date. The aim is to get the right combination of leaf (black, green, or herbal), strength (mild, average, or strong), and sweetener (milk, sugar, or unsweetened) through an iterative process of guessing and elimination. It can also make for some truly disgusting sounding cups of tea.
• Character Customization: You get to design both your "Gent-sona" and The Rival at the start of the game, and can re-customize them at any point. Options for gender include Sir, Madam, or "Boss".
• Cliffhanger: The first two victories of the game both end with one: the first with the reveal of the true villain, and the second with your loan shark betraying you, and the protagonist being arrested and put into Cashious' care.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: "Common" gear that can be worn by your executives has a grey background, "Uncommon" gear has a green background, "Rare" gear has a blue background, and "Legendary" gear has a yellow background.
• Comic-Book Time: Time actually does pass in-game, with years made up of four seasons of 28 days each, to allow you to take advantage of things like seasonal bonuses. However, your executives' ages (as given in their bios) will remain static.
• Common Place Rare: In spite of the game's gleeful absurdity most of the time, attempting to acquire a banana for an occult ritual of Vicki Lestrange's is much more difficult than it sounds. As she explains herself, if this were the modern age with global supply chains, it would be easy as going to the store, but the game is set in Victorian-era London where bananas could take months to get to the mainland from the tropics, and its only your character's unusually high luck that you get an opportunity to acquire one.
• Crapsaccharine World: Much as the game is colourful, witty, and absurdly comic, it has a number of openly dark and terrible elements. To name some: business executives will recruit countless members of the working class and unflinchingly sacrifice them by the droves for profit or make them fight each other to the death in public; much of the world and societies are completely at the whim and mercy of absurdly rich capitalists, as shown in the court battle at the end of your second victorious run; and even if someone is feeling unquestionably charitable, their ideas involve air-dropping sweets from several hundred feet in the air, turning them into painful, sometimes lethal projectiles raining down on you like a carpet bombing, but made of sugar.
• Crossover: The 2021 Halloween event added free new costumes that make all of your executives look like characters from the Monster Prom series.
• Dynamic Difficulty: The number of opposing businesses and Arc Villains you have to deal with is increased after the first and second victorious runs.
• Easter Egg: As demonstrated by producer Jesse Cox, typing in certain names in the Character Customization screen can change your Gent-sona into various Youtube personalities.
• Equipment Upgrade: One feature added in "The British are Coming" is Dandy Ravenscroft, an associate of Vlad who can convert spare Affection from events into a way to upgrade your "assets" and improve their effects, such as making it cheaper to upgrade stats or keeping track of everyone's preferences in the tea time event.
• Eternal Sexual Freedom: Despite the game's nominal setting in Victorian Britain, Everyone Is Bi (and very open about the fact that they're actively sleeping with a dozen people of both sexes) and women have equal opportunities to men — in addition to half your executive line-up being female, it's revealed that Pip's mother is the chief of London's police force. Justified in that it's deliberately written as a fun and empowering game with plenty of fantasy and supernatural elements thrown in, and only a loose connection to its nominal historical setting.
• Evil Twin: The Rival organizes a team of these whenever you enter their territory, such as "Jenny Farting" instead of Penny Farthing. The first time this happens, your executives mention the shocking similarities between them. Amusingly, Bonbon is absolutely ecstatic at the opportunity to have intimate times with her look-a-like.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The protagonist's gender (and their rival's) is decided by the player (including non-binary options), they have both a Butler and a Maid, and there's an equal number of male and female Executives that can be hired (including the two exclusive to the final storyline).
• Girls with Moustaches: Played with, in that one free update added unlockable facial hair for any executive that reaches 100 Moustache (one of the stats), but the ones for women are obviously fake (such as Penny making a steam-powered beard). However, the player can still choose to make a "Gent-sona" that has facial hair but identifies as a Madam.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: At the end of the game, Cashious attempts to apologize for all his antagonizing and scheming, only to end up dragged to what appears to be Hell by mysterious forces. This can be averted in the 2.0 "The British Are Coming" expansion, but only if you've unlocked the Golden Ending.
• Hostage MacGuffin: Cashious Villionaire kidnaps Business Maid and Battle Butler over the Sanctus Lapis Fortunum.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Your protagonist is always accompanied by two: the incredibly strong Battle Butler, and incredibly intelligent Business Maid.
• Interface Spoiler: In the second arc of the game, the player gains access to "Legendary" gear, which can only be worn by a specific executive; ex. "Legendary Monocle/Boxing Gloves/Moustache Wax/Bread/Walking Cane/Snake Oil of Law" for Antoine. However, there's a chance that you'll get gear for the Art and Rubber industries, whose respective executives are Sixth Rangers only recruitable in the third arc.
• Kid Detective: Pip Whipple was one in her youth, and still maintains the same energy and curiosity even though she's now an adult and business-owner. Most of her dates focus on a mysterious murder and your protagonist trying to help her figure out "whodunnit".
• Limited Loadout: Each executive can hold a single piece of gear when they're first recruited, which can grant them bonuses such as earning more money from the Bank or spending less money to generate Gold. By going on Dates with them, this limitation is increased to a maximum of four slots.
• Love Potion: The affection tonic that makes an executive you use it on fall more in love with you.
• MacGuffin: The Sanctus Lapis Fortunum, introduced at the start of the second run. Its two effects are giving the wielder supernaturally good luck and also controlling minds and forcing people to act against their wills.
• Macrogame: In the short-term, you worry about your cash/gold reserves, your executives' fisticuffs and mustache refinement, your employees, and gradually taking over districts via hostile takeovers. In the long-term, you try to do as many achievements as possible to unlock "assets" which provide valuable upgrades and conveniences to make the exponentially increasing values more manageable.
• The Man Behind the Man: Up until your first victory against them, The Rival is presented as the sole antagonist responsible for your situation at the start of the game, with absolutely no indication that they had outside help. However, your first victory against them reveals that they were working for Cashious Villionaire all along, and all future runs involve confronting the mastermind directly.
• Mood Whiplash: The scene where Cashious has captured Business Maid and Battle Butler and is forcing you to decide which one will be dropped to their death is played 100% seriously and is darker than most of the game up to that point until Cashious reveals that the victim has been dropped onto some rubber cliffs, and is being attacked by sharks with rubber dentures.
• Multiple-Choice Past: You discuss how your antagonism with The Rival first began this way, with possibilities such as having them take the fall for murder, and/or being ex-lovers that broke up amicably but were peer pressured out of just being friends. Much of the humour comes from the fact that said murder attempt could have been when they were children.
• Multiple Endings: One of the features added in the Version 2.0 "The British Are Coming" expansion is a "Secret Ending! Shhhh.", separate from the hardest difficulty's regular ending (or the Cliffhanger endings for the first two difficulties).
• Mushroom Samba: On Vicki's third date, she offers you "a drop of potentially lethal hallucinogenic potion" to pass the time during the carriage ride. If you accept (or even sniff the vial), the effects are equal parts hilarious and disturbing.
• Only Six Faces: The models of all the rival CEOs (Cashious excluded) and minor characters in the date events are constructed from the same Character Customisation parts the player uses. This extends to the Evil Twin team your primary rival recruits, resulting in a full roster of Captain Ersatz-es.
• Optional Sexual Encounter: The final date for every character can result in a moment of passion, but you could also choose to be platonic partners instead. Additionally, in Bonbon's penultimate date, you and Business Maid can potentially have enough sex that it starts to seem boring, in order to resist Bonbon's charms when confronting her about recent misdeeds.
• Power Equals Rarity: The rarer the gear you obtain through district takeovers and business trips, the more powerful it is, with "Legendary" gear usually offering 40% bonuses compared to the 10% of "Common".
• Production Throwback: Max Gentlemen's first date involves him trying to liven up a party by wearing a stack of hats, which was the gameplay of the original Max Gentlemen game.
• Polyamory: It's pretty clear that relationship exclusivity isn't a big deal in this world, and indeed if anything it's harder to play your character as monogamous. The 2.0 update removes any ambiguity by making it clear that each of your execs is involved with at least a couple of your other board members as well as with you, and would be open to dating just about any other named character under the right circumstances. Furthermore, the closest thing to an endgame date on the "true ending" path actively requires you to pick two characters to bring along with you (although how you select them is up to you, and you can just as easily pick characters you're platonic with if you prefer).
• The Power of Friendship: Your character is rescued by all their executives/friends in the grand finale of Cashious Story. Reinforced by your having to rely on their help and expertise, as the Sanctus Lapis Fortunum you are carrying is a fake.
• Relationship Values: Every executive the player can hire has a Heart Meter that's raised through events and gift-giving. It has a maximum of six levels, with each requiring more points than the last, but each level rewards the player with a Date scene, a new outfit, and occasionally a new Inventory slot.
• The Rival: You get to create one at the beginning of the game, using the same create-a-character options as your protagonist.
  • Friendly Rival: A possibility, depending on your Multiple-Choice Past and whether you decide to flirt instead of punish them.
• Sadistic Choice: Cashious kidnaps Business Maid and Battle Butler and has them suspended in cages, forcing you to decide which one will be dropped to the cliffs far below. Subverted when the victim survives, and it turns out Cashious just wanted to psych you.
• Santa Ambiguity: One of your potential executives to hire/romance is Sinterklaas, who's got a Santa-esque look and enjoys charity, but denies living for hundreds of years or owning a flying sleigh.
• Shipper on Deck: Business Maid is openly excited when the player gets visits from Bonbon Von Valentine and Max Gentlemen in particular. Partly because she also has a crush on both of them (see Ship Tease, below), but she's genuinely happy to see them hook up with her beloved employer — in large part because she's got some very voyeuristic tendencies of her own.
• Ship Tease: In addition to the player character potentially attracting and optionally reciprocating the affections of everyone in sight, there are several hints at attraction between the non-player characters too:
  • Business Maid and Bonbon Von Valentine were roommates in finishing school, and it's made fairly explicit that they were lovers as well. The Optional Sexual Encounter at the end of Bonbon's final date can include Business Maid too, if the player so chooses.
  • Business Maid is also pretty open about her crush on Max Gentlemen, blushing and practically swooning whenever he visits the player's home.
  • Fanny Shufflebottom's lack of social filter means that she makes no attempt to hide her attraction to Battle Butler, who she can serenade with a stream of frankly filthy (but all very well-meaning) propositions every time he's in the room, even as she romances the player character at the same time. On her final date with the Optional Sexual Encounter, the player has the option to invite Battle Butler along too, though he will refuse.
  • Antoine Hardmeat has a tendency to throw himself into Battle Butler's arms during moments of distress. Unlike most of the other instances on this list it's never explicitly made into a sexual thing, but considering the nature of the game you don't have to squint too hard to make out the implications. As with Fanny above, you can invite Battle Butler to your Optional Sexual Encounter with Antoine; unlike with Fanny, he'll actually accept this time.
• Shout-Out: The name of the all-seeing Panoptipus is a clever reference to Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, a theoretical prison where the inmates are or are led to believe they are in constant surveillance at all times by a tower with a view of every cell in the facility.
• Steampunk: Downplayed for the most part. Traveling cross-country is done via trains, which are a little bit Steampunk but not as outlandishly so as, say, steam-powered dirigibles; some characters have steam-powered cars; and the Futurist Society is absolutely certain Steampunk will dominate the world. But quite a lot of characters still travel primarily via horse-drawn carriage, servants are still flesh-and-blood and many other technologies are relatively accurate to the Victorian period, such as wood-and-sail ships for large-scale cargo transport.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: In the 3rd and final run of the game, Angel immediately joins your pool of executives while giving you the Bottled Synergy asset, reducing much of the micromanaging of recruiting employees and having to train both your executives' Fisticuffs and Moustache for hostile takeovers. You also get Cashious for free after you beat the 1st district. After these three perks, you will be immediately assaulted by the run's new difficulty mechanics, such as the Taxes mechanic, buildings that require you to sacrifice your executive's stats, "Traits" for business rivals that add an element of strategy and challenge aside from raw numbers, and of course, ghosts and having to banish them with the use of the new Temple building.
• True Final Boss: In the 2.0 "The British Are Coming" version, if the player has unlocked the Golden Ending by maxing out everyone's Relationship Values, then the final boss of the hardest difficulty is followed by a Timed Mission in which spirits from Hell have to be fought.
• We Have Reserves: By the end-game, the players will be sacrificing hundreds of thousands of their and rival businesses employees every second during hostile takeovers, yet the slums will never run out of fresh labour willing to be used as human resources in the most extreme sense. Gets even more ridiculous when you start training Kingsmen, where tens of thousands die from the screening process alone, until one highly trained, educated, and skilled elite employee remains.
• Wham Episode: Several.
  • The end of the first victorious run where it's revealed that your rival is working for Cashious Villionaire, who both bankrupts you again and reveals a secret ploy to steal the MacGuffin from your family estate.
  • Near the climax of your second victorious run, you discover the truth about your and the Villionaire's family history: the Sanctus Lapis Fortunum was discovered by the player character's grandmother and his grandfather, they were lovers, but eventually the power of supernatural fortune and mind control went to the elder Villionaire's head, prompting the rest of the ship to desert him on an island and for the artifact to be buried deep underneath the family estate, where it could do no harm.
  • And then when you finally defeat Cashious, he ends up framing you for assault, gets you charged guilty in spite of your allies' best efforts, and Angel ends up betraying you and stealing all of your assets, again.
• World of Weirdness: The Victorian Era presented in-game is roughly on-par with Bleak Expectations for sheer madcap insanity. Among other things: the occult and the supernatural exist comfortably with Steampunk inventions, hostile takeovers are accomplished by duking it out in the town square till one side's employees and CEO are all dead and bankrupted, and there are such fascinating wildlife as invisible lobsters and an all-seeing cephalopod appropriately named the "Panoptipus".

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