Highscore Improving Tactics *Spoilers*

Game Dev Tycoon
#1

I’ve recently managed to reach a score above 70 mil by forging a tactic that includes some of the wikia guide tips but on various game types (namely simulation) is quite different and manages to reach nearly always to achieve 9’s on those types.

However I am wondering if any of you have tips to gain close to 80m scores are even as far as 100m.

What I did so far is

  • Make a new engine every 3D update accompanied by at least 2 game
    improvements.
  • Focusing on 1 type of games only (sim+strat+act)
  • Leaving the garage with at least a 3Dv2 engine with limited 15 rp
    upgrades
  • Hiring 2 employees for starters (1tech 1balance) and a third (balance
    60D/40T) at the time of making the 3Dv4 engine.
  • Not bothering with design game improvements above 15rp until large
    games.
  • Training employees every game until courses (30rp) and then only 1 or
    2 / game and only on their strongest tech or design values instead of R&D(make me think tactic) or speed
  • Creating 1 console 3Dv6 and 1 console 3Dv7
  • Releasing only medium games in the 2nd office.
  • Opening the R&D Lab after about to large games in the 3rd office and
    after creating 1 engine to train my design employee.
  • Releasing only large games (no publisher) and perfecting them before AAA
  • Max 40rp design upgrades in large games and 1 of them / field ( 71%)
    or 2x 15rp Design / field
  • Gaining at least 4 spec employees before AAA
  • Hiring employee six during the creation of the 3Dv7 engine to create
    AAA games

I would like some feedback of others and maybe you could share some of your tactics, so I can see if I can improve mine some more for my next play trough.

I am not sure how profitable it is to create large games in the 2nd office as it is very hard to reach the good management bonus with 4 employees (5 total incl boss).

Thanks in advance and I hope this may help others to try to reach 70m+ scores with my current tactic.

1 Like
#2

After the AAA games start doing MMO’s they get you a lot of money from them.

#3

One thing that I found helps is to make sure to carry an abundance of cash between locations. I left the Garage with 10M under my belt. That helped with letting me hire more expensive employees, pay my operating expenses, get them trained up some, and start belting out Medium games with a publisher.

Regarding publishers: look for something you do a lot of, preferably with a low required score. Even if it’s on a console that it won’t sell well on, you’ll make some money and fans, and you’ll dodge the penalty. Also, if you see Any Topic/Any Genre, take it!

As soon as you get your 100k fans and can self-publish, do it. Publishers like to make weird combos that hurt more than help.

Make a lot of 2 or 3 different types of games. I focused Adventure and RPG most of the way, but I’m sure you could mix others well enough to make it. You want to be able to leave your sliders in a winning position.

After every game, give a nice round of training. This improves your characters, which in turn makes your reviews higher next round, potentially.

Turn on as many features as you can without getting percentages.

Once you’ve unlocked large games, stick to medium for now, until you get into the Big Office, which should only be done when you have more than 50M to spend.

In the big office, immediately hire on 2 employees to cover the workload, give welcoming training, and then burn (make and trash) two small games. This gets them fully up to speed. Alternatively, if you don’t like making and throwing out games, burn contracts.

After all employees are up to speed, make a few medium games. You want to pass the number of fans it takes to self-publish Large games so you don’t have to mess with the crappy publisher deals.

I’ve found an effective tactic is to go make sequels to stuff you made forever ago, stuff that may have been garage era and early first office era. The engine you used then is weaker than the one you’ll use now, and will improve review scores a little.

Fire off marketing at the beginning of second stage development. Try to time game manufacturing so that you go through G3 while making your game, causing large amounts of Hype.