Firstly, I love this game. It’s simple, addictive, and worthwhile. As someone who’s learning to code and make games of his own, it’s really inspiring both to see the game’s success and to play the game about that success. Keep it up, guys. 
I’ve played through the game and taken mental notes along the way. I know there’s a lot here, but I believe each point is worth your attention if nothing else. Here are my suggestions!
-
Efficiency bars are hard to see in the last office since they fade in
slowly, especially on the lowest desk on the screen. I think the
space near the employee’s name (on the floor) is very under-used; a
bar underneath or above their name, matching the isometric view,
would look great and utilise the space better. Another element you
can place there would be the employee’s specialisation, so we can see
at a glance who is trained in what. -
Miss-clicking can be frustrating, though especially in the endgame
when the framerate starts to drop. I think this is partly down to
having to click anywhere. Perhaps the general menu (Develop new game,
etc) could be activated with right click regardless of click
location, and staff menus by left clicking on the employee. I’d also
appreciate a highlight of some kind when an employee is moused-over,
so you can see exactly what you’re clicking on. It’s not absolutely
necessary, but I think it would make the game more user-friendly. -
The boxes for Hardware and Research are pretty bland, I’m sorry to
say. I feel that they could be polished up with a little colour or
something, a simple white rectangle with a border is fine for
debugging, but with the lovely graphical images for consoles and
offices they stick out as being somewhat under-done. -
Make an option to turn off Tutorials in the options menu at any time.
Starting a new game and accidentally keeping them on means having to
start an entirely new game to turn them off. -
Being able to see previous engines when you’re making a new one would
be great, as a lot of people like to have incremental names. At the
moment that means opening the new game menu, selecting a new engine
and reading through the list to see what the most recent one was. -
Research points seem to accumulate very slowly at the beginning and
way too fast at the end. I think a little evening-out and balancing
might help in order to get those industry standards like stereo sound
and proper graphics when they become available and avoid having
thousands of points with nothing to spend them on later. I think a
good solution for this would be to drop the research cost for new
topics altogether. I don’t think an inspired game developer in their
garage needs anything other than a library card or an internet
connection to learn about fantasy or sci-fi. Perhaps increase the
time it takes to research new topics to balance it, as taking a
month’s expenses to learn seems costly enough, but requiring research
points seems arbitrary. -
I think after the main game ends, or at least in the later game, a
research project for much larger game reports would work extremely well.
Creating a game that makes over a hundred million in sales, then
generating a report that says ‘Sci-fi and RPG are a great
combination’ is frustratingly lax. There’s a lot more to be said for
the combinations, consoles, and audience, and I think there’s a good
opportunity there for a great research project. Another possibility is market
research, studying other games on the market to garner information
rather than having to make an entirely new game of your own. -
‘Action’ seems like way too broad a term for a game developer. For a
store or sales platform like Steam, fine, but how about splitting
that into Platformer, First-Person shooter, Third-Person Shooter,
Shoot-em-up, etc? When I see a game described as ‘Action’, it
honestly means nothing. Anything can really be described as action if
there’s stuff happening, and matching Action to the different topics
is made much harder by that vague definition. I think it’d be a great
addition to the game to split that into more defined and easily
recognisable genres. -
Arcade games were massive back in the day, and it surprised me when
there was no option to use that market. There’s still very much a
market for it now, but missing out when there were legends like
Donkey Kong and Pac-Man at the time seems like a pretty large
oversight for our budding game developer. Arcade booths would be a
great platform choice!
That’s pretty much everything. Thanks very much if you read this far.
Edit: Another idea: Starting story. Choose your character’s background and code experience to determine your beginning stats.