Game Dev Story Review
Dev Con 1.
Version tested: iPhone
I've played games that have brought me to the point of existential crisis over my career choice before – Sonic Free Riders, most recently – but Game Dev Story makes me actively hate myself and everyone in my profession. I've been trying for ten game-years to develop a Super Mario Bros. or a Deus Ex or an Ico, you see, but I'm foiled at every turn by the damned reviewers.
I'll pour everything my little company has into making a Robot Shooter or Time Travel Adventure to redefine the genre, and they'll dismiss it in a second with a tepid 5 or 6 and a glib line of criticism. Those miserable, ungrateful, mean-spirited bastards! Don't they know how hard we worked on that? Don't they care?
Thankfully, in Game Dev Story, as in life, it doesn't always matter what the critics think. Kezsoft has scored a couple of million-sellers regardless of its apparent inability to turn out a Hall of Fame-worthy title. Still, I've become obsessed with getting a perfect 10 from someone, pouring millions of dollars and thousands of tiny-sprite-man-hours into ambitious projects, awaiting review scores with my breath held. If this is even a fraction of what it feels like to be on the other side of the fence, I'm going to feel a lot guiltier the next time I dole out a 4/10.
From your viewpoint above the office, you can see all your little drones tapping away on their keyboards. WORK HARDER, MINIONS.
I should mention that this is my third play-through of the games industry management sim. Unlike most mobile games, you haven't seen everything that Game Dev Story has to offer in the space of ten minutes. After 12 hours, I'm on my third company and am still finding new things. It's monstrously absorbing, and at £2.39, it's not only more addictive than crack but considerably cheaper, too.
Starting you off with a tiny team operating out of a single room, Game Dev Story gives you 20 years to realise your game development dreams and become a publishing powerhouse. Consoles, game expos and staff come and go; only you are constant, a sprite manager sitting in a comfortable chair, overseeing your little empire.
Everything you need to do – hire, fire and train staff, plug some cash into advertising, plan a new game – you do from a little menu that pops up when you touch the screen. Stats, like the state of your most recent project, sales figures and company reputation, are in a small bar at the bottom of the screen. It's beautifully simple. As in real life, success depends on careful planning, smart choices and a smidgen of luck.
You'll learn lessons: that hiring one visionary and propping him up with cheap, mediocre staff isn't a recipe for success. That jumping on the licensing bandwagon for new consoles as soon as they come out can burn you badly. And that it's almost impossible to please those anally-retentive reviewers. (Get a real job, you losers!) But everything you learn comes with you into your next play-through. You can keep playing indefinitely past the 20-year mark if you want, but moving on and starting again is both more fun and more productive.
To make games, you pick a genre and a theme from a list – War Shooter, Samurai Action, Fashion Simulation – then determine its direction by putting points into categories like Innovation, Polish, Game World, Cuteness and so on. Picking good combinations increases your chances of sales success, and if the direction matches the genre you'll level that genre up. After that, you pick one of your staff or an expensive contractor to write the design document, and you're off.
Your games are graded on Fun, Creativity, Graphics and Sound, and the higher those numbers are by the time it's released, the better its chances of critical success. What this means is that you're anxiously watching the numbers tick up and up and up for the whole of the development period, praying for a breakthrough and twitching with annoyance every time one of your tiny sprite producers, artists, coders or writers goes home to sleep.
Your staff are the key to everything. The better their stats and the harder they work, the better your game will be. Training them up in different ways unlocks different themes and genres. It's this as much as anything that gives Game Dev Story so much replay value – experimenting by sending your programmer to college or making the director play pinball constantly throws up new combinations (Mushroom Adventure! Poncho Sim RPG! Mini-Skirt Puzzle!).
You can even develop your own console, though it requires so much time, money, staff training and arcane knowledge that I still haven't managed it.
It's got oodles of charm as well as simple, enticing mechanics. The lovely 16-bit sprite art style is a perfect fit, infusing the serious business of simulation with cartoon sweetness. Appropriate beepy sound effects accompany everything from your coder's training animation to the director's frenzied brainstorming session.
There are just enough random elements to keep things unpredictable. Boost items, purchased at an exorbitant price, give bonuses of between about 10 and 25 points to one of your game's attributes, but using them costs research data that could otherwise be used to level up your staff. Power outages can sabotage a project, but positive articles in games magazines can help its chances. Do you save up to buy an incredibly expensive license to develop for a new console, or invest all that money in training? There's always something to think about, and before you know it it's stolen hours of your life.
Game Dev Story's adorable Sensible Soccer-style codewording of famous games, companies and designers also never fails to raise a smile. You can develop for the Intendro Whoops or the Sonny PlayStatus. You can hire Gilly Bates, Shigeto Minamoto or Stephen Jobson, and Kairosoft has thrown in its own special characters, including a luchador and a bear. At the annual Global Game Awards, your titles are up against things like Super Sergio Bros and Hunch Out – but some of them make you think a little harder. It's a loveable tribute to gaming history.
Game Dev Story is easily the best thing I've ever played on the iPhone. Unlike most addictive mobile games, which make you hate yourself a little for wasting so much time, it feels like you're investing in something. There's no other game that offers this much depth for £2.39, and it's so adorably packaged that it's impossible to resent it even when it dominates your entire Sunday. I'll get that 10/10 yet.
9 / 10
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Comments (96) Latest comment 1 year ago
Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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/resents Apple for making it so damn easy to spend money on the iPhone
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My only gripe is that it only got a 9. Would like to understand what more the game would need to do to secure the 10 considering it offers hours and hours of blissful entertainment for under £2.50
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If this comes to PC I'll pick it up, sounds very Theme Hospital/Bullfroggy.
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It's a pity Segagaga never got a Western release, as I believe it was about building up Sega by creating games and consoles. Ironically enough it came out just as the Dreamcast was killed off so it was never released over here.
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You unlock tons of genres (for example RPG, shooter, puzzle...) and topics/settings (war, monsters, historical,...) you have to combine. It can sometimes be a little mysterious which game works and which doesn't, but by and large, it works fine.
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My top seller was Modern Poopfare selling a whopping 38million for my console, the Microny PlaySoft!!!
And Keza, how could you not mention the ability to level up your character to a hardware engineer and make a new console!!! I think maybe now you should consider bumping up the score to a 10 !!
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Did you ever play Software House? It came out a couple of years after Software Star, but a lot of people played it when Crash put it on one of their covertapes. Take a look at http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseeki...
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Never outsource music tracks to Milk Puddingsky though. She doesn't half strike out a lot!
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I actually play this on the iPad - the graphics are a bit blurry, but it adds to its charm.
Ideas for a sequel:
Full multiplayer - everyone is against everyone in the awards - staff are hired/fired/traded between studios.
Just like in real-life, those starting late in the lifecycle will have a harder time than those dev studios that have been established for 10+ years.
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Nah. Of course you could make a much more complex business sim based around the same idea for the "big systems", but the game as it is now is perfect for mobiles.
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Well here's a few things I've noticed work, but I'll spoiler them for those who are just starting the game.
-Employ hackers as soon as you're able to (I guess retraining your existing staff would work, but I just bought some in). They can do pretty much anything, including writing the original proposal, graphics and sound: the top couple of scores on their profile seem to determine how good they are at writing proposals. Walt Sidney is a good all-rounder.
-I've noticed some of the hackers often get a boost when writing proposals, although I'm not sure why (I think it might be related to them having full energy when starting the task). Walt Sidney's one of these in my game: he'll get 50-60 fun out of the proposal, but as soon as he's finished the fun score is often double that.
-The game's fun score seems to be the most important in getting good reviews (seems reasonable!), so invest in a fun boost from the salesman and use it when you need to.
-If you use an energy drink just before starting to develop a new game, it'll usually do well, because you get a bit more out of everything: especially the initial proposal which is really key to getting a good fun score (and therefore good reviews).
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"I seem to go from strength to strength in this game. I'm not sure what Keza's doing wrong, and I don't mean to gloat, but I find it hard to make a game that doesn't get in the hall of fame and sell 10m+ copies."
Did you enable the "Molyneaux mode" cheat by any chance?
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Will look forward to checking this out.
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+2 for getting funny looks when you walk back into the office after 35 minutes on the bog
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In fact, it's high time I went back for another run through, see if I can make myself that console I've always dreamed of...
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sorry jonsaan but if you don't make any indication at all that you were joking in some way, the comment reads exactly like someone who doesnt know what theyre talking about slagging it off based purely on screenshots.
please forgive me, but also please remember thats what smily faces are for
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i still read it like "im going to slag this off for shits and giggles hahahaha"
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Yes I know I can play the iPhone version on iPad, but a iPad specific version would be nice.
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Ive just moved into my 3rd office and am starting to take the industry by storm!- Great stuff.
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however, it is always enjoyable, no denying that!
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BTW - come on people let's hear the names.
Name - "Wank Designs"
Latest game - "Parsnip Gods"
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"Game development is a very special job that requires a very special person. The high stress levels often drive our staff members to become...subhuman. They're violent and need to be caged. But we need them to make good games. This is the unfortunate truth of the game industry."
I love that quote, so true
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You didn't work for Realtime Worlds by any chance did you?
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ZING!
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And: the PC already has Game Dev Story 2.
Likelihood of more ports to other devices; no idea, sadly. I can't tell whether GDS2 had a mobile version or not.
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Hey, some of us were reading full reviews of it almost a fortnight ago...
http://podgamer.com/2369/story-time/
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I got 40/40 in a game, a few games won the grand prize and I had developed a Ps3 type console as well as a PS3 portable. As soon as the money dmstarys rolling in, you can afford everything.
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In all honesty i thought i had a hit on my hands with Sexy Killers a Romatic action game, apparently they don't mix very well.
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Sales: 51.4m
Y20 earnings: $1,065,188.7K
@Beano I reckon it would be unlikely to see an iPad version, the iPhone version is already a port from a Japanese phone, so the interface is a bit odd and not 100% suited to a touch screen, and the graphics are a little fuzzy due to the upscaling. I'd love to be proved wrong though! A much bigger version with a more suitable interface and crisper sprites would be perfect.
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Company name: 4Carebears
Best selling game: ActionRPG/Fantasy - Smellda 59.5m
Aprox Y20 earnings: $1.495.000.000
Number of 40/40: 4
Grand prizes: 5
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"I can't put it down."
"Just one more game."
These are the usual phrases you with most of these kinds of games. You play it for a little while and then slowly but surely the dust settles, novelty wears and you're left with a ho-hum game.
I have played this game for about 4 hours non-stop. Everytime I tell my self "I'll stop after I release this game" I have to see how the sales go only to find the staff are bored and I need to make another game to occupy them.
I had lots planned for this afternoon and you went and took it from me.
Thanks. Thanks very much.
/boosts fun
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Yes. Yes, you are.
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Wee Tennis also did pretty well, and Worldcraft reached 9 million sales
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/ has spent more time playing this game than I spent playing with myself during puberty
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I'll buy it!
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Played it for about 10 hours total, by which point I was about done for now. Well worth the money.
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/whip
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I hope that they can flesh this game out even more, by offering DLC for it, and the ability to go deeper into the game management process!
Very fun game though, definitely worth £2.50
"Everybody loved it!"
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