Game Dev Tycoon

Sean Dibble

Greenheart Games has hit the mark with this indie title. Game Dev Tycoon puts you in the chair of game developer and lets you see what these people go into when choosing what goes into development. Now, of course, it is a dumbed down and extremely simplified from what development would be but still fun to play. Throughout game play you will go from choosing a title, genre, and what system to make your game for. After that development phases start and from there you move sliders, and add features or take away features. Like I said in my games to buy on a budget this game is cheap and oddly addictive and worth a look.

Design your game and run the studio 

Game play- the very first thing you will do is name your new game company and start in the early 80's with the Commodore 64 (G64 in game) and PC and limited graphic and sound potential. You will also start with 4 topics to choose from and be careful how you pair them with the game genres it will help your score if for example you put Zombies with Action instead of Vocabulary with RPG. Be smart and take your time and think about how much you want to put into your sliders. At the end of the three development cycles you will then get ratings from four gaming magazines. These determine how well your game will sell. Lastly during the development phases you will gain research points which can be used to get new topics, train new staff (come after you move out of the garage and you hire them) or get new things for a new game engine.

Work on developing your staff and designs to help form your final game.

Graphics- Graphics are not that great they are very basic 2d, but they are not meant to blow your mind. The game doesn't focus on graphics because it doesn't need to instead of wowing you with how your guy looks they want you to actually work on building a great game.

There are many areas that a game can be made or broken in, and your team is always learning and improving.

Little Additions- A nice little addition to the game that they added was being forced to deal with things game development companies actually deal with. Piracy, stealing of engines, sabotage, and transferring of ideas all come into play and how you handle each one will determine how the public sees and likes you. Another thing is G3 (games version of E3) and setting up your own conventions and marketing campaigns these will help sell games that you recently made. Lastly the game engines don't forget to research new things and create new engines or else well you will fall behind and never make a good game no one wants an old engine I mean those graphics were SO LAST YEAR.

Your games will be reviewed by some fake review companies.

Few things- Just a few things bug me about the game the long game play is 42 years, and yes, you can continue even after you play that long; but really, it doesn't help your final score to do so. The game can be beaten within maybe 4 hours of straight gaming. And after you beat it once it's hard to say "let's go back and make a brand new company." Minor things and maybe they will fix this in future updates but it is worth noting.

Good:

-Addicting game play

-Cheap

-Nice little additions to see what actual gaming companies go through

Bad:

-Graphics are not mind blowing

-Seems short

-really no replay value after you beat it once

Scully Rating: 7 out of 10