Before you read this I kindly ask you to bear in mind that English is not my native language nor have I any kind of hatred towards this game or its developers (Greenheart). On the contrary, I love this game and Im an avid fan of Game Dev Story for iOS. I have created this topic for the sole reason of making this better and helping out the community.
After finding several threads on the same topic but with no direct or satisfying answer I have decided to create another thread concerning the obvious balance issues this game has. To make matters worse, Greenheart developers have not given an answer concerning these issues (of which a number of players are having).
This is my story:
I have started a fifth consecutive game, every time doing very well in the beginning. I usually release a number of 9+ scored games earning well over a couple of million cr. And thats done before the 4th year mark. After I’ve amassed about 10 million credits I move out of my basement to the first office, immediately hiring 1 or 2 specialist workers.
And this is where the problems start.
It seems (and bear in mind, I have started from scratch for 5 times now) whatever I do I can not produce a well-selling game. The weird thing is that most of my games have fairly good ratings (Over 8 points mostly). They rarely sell over 100k units though. I have tried uncountable amount of different combinations, slider options, platforms, target audiences, creating small to large scale games, doing so with employees and without them but the result is always the same. At some point my company goes bankrupt because no matter the combinations I try, they just won’t sell.
It gets weirder though. In my last game I got frustrated and created an abysmal game (Transport-Action) and I completely randomised the sliders. Needless to say, it got awful scores averaging 2.5. But for some reason it sold over 1 million copies. It was not targeted to an audience, there was no current trends and its platform was PS1. Every Good or Perfect combination game before that (Fantasy-RPG, Aliens-Action, Game Dev-Simulation etc.) with very good slider adjustments which scored 8+ on reviews only sold near to 100k copies.
I have a feeling that whatever you do it doesnt really matter. Its like the sales are generated randomly. This is where Greenheart insight would be appreciated. There are many people with issues like that and an official statement concerning these problems should be considered.
This game works very well before you move out of your basement stage, after that its a complete mess and should be readjusted.
Thank you for reading this. I hope Greenheart responds to this.
(And yes, I have bought the game and supported you :D)