In Game Dev Tycoon you start out as an aspiring developer in his parent’s garage, making small games for the early growing games market of 1982.
From there, you have 32 years to make games to both keep you afloat economically, but also succeed as one of the big name developers in the industry.
Starting out, you make small games from the limited selection of available topics and genres. As you develop your games, you make choices based on how much effort you put into certain aspects of game development, such as Engine or Dialogue. This is what determines how well the game does on release as, yes, it’s not just the income itself that matters but the reactions of the gamers who buy the games.
The core of Game Dev Tycoon is making games that people want to actually play – not only is your success linked to the revenue generated from purchases, but also the fans gained from each completed.[sc name=”quote” text=”… not only is your success linked to the revenue generated from purchases, but also the fans gained from each completed.”]
As you release more games and generate more money, you’ll be able to move to a real-life office and start hiring employees, all to make even more games.
The overall aim through all these 3 decades of game development is to end up as one of the major developers in the entire industry. You will continue to progress, making medium and eventually large games, being able to self-publish and even make MMOs.
The core gameplay is essentially continual decision making – how much focus do you want to give to certain aspects of game development. As you research and experiment with new game topics and combinations, you will come to learn the ideal pathways to good review scores.[sc name=”quote” text=”As you research and experiment with new game topics and combinations, you will come to learn the ideal pathways to good review scores..”]
The inherent problem with the deterministic algorithm behind the review scores is that each successive game that gets good scores diminishes your ability to get higher scores thereafter. Essentially, once you get good scores, it’s all the more difficult to maintain those scores in future games. This means that as you progress, it is simply much harder to keep going.
The gradual introduction of new features is what keeps the player engages throughout the progressing story, however, as it’s always a new challenge to keep trying to develop bigger and, hopefully, better games, MMOs included.
Game Dev Tycoon is an indie game that manages to bring to the player an experience that they would never realize; game development is no easy task, so giving the player the ability to understand the intricacies of development, all while keeping the player interested and engaged through consistently fun gameplay and new choices.
Game Dev Tycoon is a great game through and through. With its adaption to mobile, a brand new player base gets even more access to a great game.
[review pros=”Great introspection into game development. Engaging decision-based gameplay.” cons=”The scoring system can feel confusing and unrewarding at times.” score=9]
[appbox appstore id1162580001]
