First off, Hi, I use the internet.
Right now thats over, Lets discuss the topic at hand, Game Dev Tycoon, I have played a good 10 hours of this since purchase on Thursday and I am actually so far enjoying it, It’s quite a deep experience for a really small startup company to do and I have enjoyed playing all 30 years of Game Dev Tycoon, Right up to the 8th Generation which weirdly have images of what the consoles look like despite the game being made before the appearance was revealed, if this game predicts the appearances correctly, I will be laughing.
Anyway, on to the gameplay. Gameplay in my honest opinion is pretty simple and quite easy, for someone who has played a lot of games, I find Game Dev Tycoon’s to be simplistic, However, the gameplay is a little deceptive, Each game has so many possibilites to screw up or sell 100 million copies that it’s mind boggling. I founded my game developer, Ironforged Studios, making games for the G64 (Definitely not a reference to the Commodore 64), I drew from what little knowledge I have of what types of games people liked from this time, I made a good few Strategy games and sold a few thousand copies, enough to make me some money at least. After a few ingame months, a company named “Ninvento” (really original naming, I know) announced they would release the TES (What the hell does the “T” stand for?) in North America, with industry experts claiming that it would be a fad that wouldn’t last. Seems watching “All Your History” paid off after all, The TES overtook the PC and G64. I could go on forever with this, but Game Dev Tycoon is quite a nice little summary of Gaming History in a nutshell. Fast Forward a couple of years and I had an office with four employees and myself, making games for the Fifth Gen Platforms (N64, Playstation, and Sega Saturn, which seems to have been omitted) I then got my Large office and started making games for the Playsystem 2 groan and eventually the Seventh Gen Platforms. This was a good time, I was making Large Games by myself without the help of any publishers, I sold a good few Million and while not making loads of cash, was keeping myself afloat. Fast forward to the Eighth Gen and I had got my R&D Lab, I quickly researched Internet usage, and Progressed down that route. Research in the game takes a good deal of time and I am really quite happy that something like that is there. As of now, Ironforged Studios stands on about $10 Trillion Dollars, Five Consoles (yes, you can research Consoles), Two Highly successful MMORPG’s (Dragonlands Online (A WoW like Fantasy MMORPG) and Cybercity ( A Cyberpunk Action MMORPG), the latter of which I had to shut down due to maintenance costs hitting One Trillion per month) A Ton of RPG’s, Strategy Games, AAA Harcore Government Simulators, and a good few Action Adventure games added in for good measure. My only problem is that there is not enough to research, There are 7 levels of Graphics, A load of Topics and Technologies, but I feel there could have been more. (I did however get to the end of my first game, so my experience does differ) What about Virtual Reality? A proper Dedicated VR Gaming Machine, (I know VR is an option but it does almost nothing) That, I feel would allow the game to continue for a long time… More Consoles, More Tech etc. Another complaint is that I feel it it too easy at higher levels to retain fans, Your company when it succeeds is essentially Valve, the god of PC Gaming that according to reddit and 4chan can apparently do no wrong. I feel that with the advent of the internet, there should be more than just giving interviews for the worlds first M rated game, What about if your game is leaked by a hacker all over the internet, ala Half-Life 2? Piracy posing a decent threat, Backlash against Codename; GRID for being DRM, just like Steam got back in the day, Someone hacking into your MMO and leaking the account details of your subscriber base? This however could take a lot of development time considering that only 2 guys made this game. I still feel that if something like this could be added over time, this game would really reach it’s full potential.
All that Aside, Game Dev Tycoon is actually fun for it’s price (£5.69) and I would recommend it for anyone, Also, they attempted to Guilt Trip Pirates, and probably succeeded in some cases, so for that, good on 'em.
Out of 10 I’d give this a solid 7, It is a pretty nice looking, stylised, sometimes funny and quite deep Game Development business strategy/game. It also rewards Experimentation, and that adds a lot to the game, it is however short and needs more content to reach its full potential. I, like the reviewers in game, look to see what Greenheart Games do next.