Game Dev Tycoon

In the virtual reviews from the virtual critics that judge your virtual game company's output in Game Dev Tycoon, depth is never a point of concern. Well, it is here.

Everything in the eyes of Informed Gamer (and other fake media outlets) is good or bad. While this lack of critical insight is one of the largest flaws in Game Dev Tycoon, it speaks volumes about the title's design.

Game Dev Tycoon is an occasionally clever idea that offers some perspective on what it's like to work in the game industry, but it fails to dig deeper as a game, settling somewhere between a parody of studio culture and a cute history lesson.

Game Dev Tycoon covers our gaming history from garage PC development to the PlaySystem 4, but the title itself owes much of its design, and lack of thoroughness, to Facebook and mobile gaming. From title to concept, it's impossible for the game to escape comparison to Kairosoft's Game Dev Story. Even in execution, the differences between the two don't become clear until a couple hours into Tycoon. Thankfully, these differences work in the title's favor, providing elegant and smart solutions to problems presented in Game Dev Story.

As the title suggests, Game Dev Tycoon is a business simulation in the style of Microprose series like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Railroad Tycoon. The business you run is a game studio, so the scale is much smaller. Once you create an avatar, the game starts you off in a garage with a commercial PC in the '70s. Depending on the time frame you chose (which can go from 25 years to 35+), you will eventually end up developing games for next-gen consoles in a highrise if you found success throughout the years.

Game Dev Tycoon does a great job of introducing new elements that keep each era of development as memorable as the offbeat hardware that we so often forget -- the Game Gears, cancelled Nintendo add-ons of yesteryear. Yet, these elements don't come quickly enough, making for a rather dry and monotonous early game.

Game development is divided into several stages: funding/company management, development, and marketing. At the start, income will come primarily from contract work which will also net research points. Research can be invested in unlocking new game topics, technology, and leveling up staff's abilities. Development itself is divided into several stages.

Once you have decided a name, topic, genre, and console platform, the player is prompted with three screens of development factors. Each screen has a slider with three different elements, for example world design, sound, and graphics. You can equalize all elements or focus on one. Only through gaming savvy (e.g., invest heavily in dialogue for RPG and adventure games) and trial-and-error will success be found.

As the player goes from PC development to buying licenses to create games for Ninvento and Vega consoles, new challenges are introduced in the form of managing a staff, dedicating money to researching new technology, and following current market trends. The game even has its own E3 convention; the bigger your booth, the more hype you'll generate for your current project. Hype is an invaluable resource, even if the game doesn't do a good job of letting you know how much it will impact sales.

Game Dev Tycoon does a poor job of surfacing any feedback to the player. There are no focus groups or beta testers, and the fake reviews offer little to no insight. Everything is good or bad. Why did my $10.5 million comedy action-RPG fail? Who knows. Sure, it's common sense not to make a sports-adventure hybrid or use outdated tech on modern consoles, but isn't it also common sense that delivering a timely sequel after a review said "Can't wait for the sequel" should be met with success?

Though Game Dev Tycoon takes influence from our gaming history, its rules don't always follow our reality. This wouldn't be such a problem if it put any effort into conveying its special alternate reality. Instead, the player is left to stumble in the dark. Each of my successes felt like dumb luck or exploiting a known formula for success. Maybe I could run Ubisoft, after all?

The sound and visuals are low-rent, leaning on social gaming gimmickry, like bubbles that pop with the frequency of popcorn as you earn design and technology points for your game in development. It all works, in the way that a manipulative Facebook game has proven to work, but it's hardly as inspired or charming as Game Dev Story's pixel art and SNES-era soundtrack. The best thing I can say is that the production elements neither get in the way or make much of an impression.

Half of the fun, however, is in seeing the game's reinterpretation of popular game consoles and posters in the office reflecting the blockbuster games of the time. I only wish there was more of this type of stuff and opportunities to interact and customize your work space.

When Game Dev Story introduced the idea of a game development sim to Japan in '97 and then the West in 2010, it was a novel concept that made overlooking its flaws easier. While Game Dev Tycoon is a superior experience with a better interface for its platform, it still suffers from the same pitfalls of monotony and lack of player feedback that Game Dev Story suffered from.

While I appreciate the perspective Game Dev Tycoon has given me on game development, from indie studios in debt to huge studios juggling multiple projects, it was never the game's sim elements that had me returning. It offers a pleasant walk down memory lane of past consoles and technology, but that's about it.

Game Dev Tycoon is a simulation game with a game development theme. You start off as a solo developer in your garage, making simple games to raise money to expand.

Once you have accumulated enough wealth, you can purchase a new office which allows you to hire more developers. A larger office is available later which allows you to have a Research Lab then Hardware lab as long as you have a Design and Technology specialist.

When you make a game, you choose the game's name, then can pick the Size (start off with Small, then unlock further sizes as you progress), Topic (theme), Genre and Platform. A later upgrade allows you to choose the target audience; Young, Everyone, Mature. Then there's 3 stages of development where you move sliders and choose extra features.

• Engine, Gameplay, Story

• Dialogues, Level design, AI

• World Design, Graphic, Sound.

For medium sized projects and above, you have to assign a developer to lead the development for each aspect.

Adding additional features (eg Soundtrack, Surround Sound) and using game engines comes at a cost, but the more features usually means a better quality game. It's not clear how random a lot of these elements are though, or if certain tech affects the genres differently.

Once you have created your game, you can wait a bit longer to put the finishing touches. The number of bugs will decrease and you can add extra points to Design, Technology. When you click "Release", you will be given a review score and your experience within all aspects will increase.

You can then generate a game report which will give you hints on which aspects are important, and if the target audience and platform fit the style of game and theme.

Money will come in from the sales with declining sales over time and then the game is removed from the market.

As time progresses, new technologies become available for research, and Platforms are released or removed from the market. You can then buy a Development Licence to make games on that Platform. The names and images of the consoles are slight variations to avoid copyright but it's easy to recognise what they are supposed to be. Each console is biased towards certain genres and audiences. You start with the PC and Commodore, and it progresses to modern day with the Xbox Series and PS5.

You can take on simple contract work which gives you a small amount of money for a small amount of your time. The main advantage is to acquire more Research points. You can also develop games for Publishers but must create the game at a certain quality in order to receive the full amount. These contracts are more beneficial when you haven't accumulated enough fans. Later on when you do have many fans, even mediocre games seem to sell themselves.

With your Research points, you can send your employees on training courses. You can Research new topics (which seems like a randomly ordered large list which is unlocked in batches), and technology.

Once you have researched some more technology, it's often beneficial to create a new Game Engine so you can use these features. The main reason to create an engine is when you progress with the 2D and 3D graphics. Once you have used Lv1 enough, then you gain access to Lv2, so you need newer game engines over time or you will be making poor games.

There's not many Genres but there are loads of Topics, but I think some of the Topics should be Genres such as Racing and Sports. Two other Genres that seem obvious to include would be Platforming and Puzzle. I also wondered how the developer interpreted the genres especially when you unlock the ability to choose 2 genres (you cannot have multiple topics though). For example: what does "Adventure" mean? It seems like a point and click, but then what does RPG Adventure combo mean? Or Simulation Adventure? Are these combos doomed to fail, or do the developers have a different idea what this actually means? Casual is down as a Genre, but isn't this tied to the size of the game? Does Large Casual make sense? Possibly a game like Animal Crossing, but even I'd say that is Medium at most. For the most part, the decisions seemed logical, but there's probably some Topic-Genre combos that you won't agree with.

As time progresses, games take longer to develop, require more staff and cost way more money. This is like real life when early computer games were developed by tiny teams over a few months. Those games may have been text only, or had primitive graphics with colours, but that was what the consoles could handle back then. Today's “AAA” takes years to develop but has the cutting-edge graphics and sound. So in this game you need to hire more staff, keep training their skills, and make sure you have the staff in the right areas. You can only have 1 game in development at any time.

Your staff wages increase as they level up, and the general cost of development means it's a good idea to have a large surplus of money if you can. If you do drop into negative figures you can get offered a short term loan but with extremely high interest. If you can't afford that, then you are bankrupt. You are allowed to restart from your last save, the last office move, or you can just start again. The game can be tricky if you don't land those big revenues at the right time.

The Research room takes a lot of money to use. Even moving the slider slightly will cost $300k or so per month. You can research a Steam-like platform, the ability to make your own console in the Hardware Lab, create MMOs and a few other options. It's quite hard to acquire these aspects before the game "ends". You can carry on playing but new consoles won't be released and there's no "events" that trigger.

Just like a lot of simulation games like this, once I loaded the game, I found myself playing for hours and found it hard to put it down. It's simplistic and not for everyone, but I found it satisfying watching those number-bubbles float to the top and increment those total counts.

Though it is a simple tycoon game, its very addictive, and since its story is tied to the development of the gaming industry its interesting to play as well. The only issue is that it feels too barebones, there should be more mechanics to play around with.

Still had a good time with it, for a couple of hours at least.