I found a few gems and a few stinkers in the recent holiday Steam sale. My favorite purchase? Game Dev Tycoon! This game is awesome!!
Everyone here knows I never praise games much because I’m such a grouchy person. Actually, it’s because I’m a genius, truly, and geniuses demand perfection. Well, I may have found it – or the closest thing to it yet. Game Dev Tycoon.
You play as an indie game developer in the early 1980s, just before the NES was released. You begin in a garage, making shitty games like E.T. and Pro-Wrestling (which ruled at the time). You decide the genre and the audience and the features…you even name the game – but you don’t have to spend a bunch of time doing sucky stuff like designing levels or characters or things. That would become so old. You just name the game, pick the genre and the system you’re releasing it for and a few other choices…and bam.
You start out in your garage with…yep. A DELOREAN.
As you move through the years, new systems like the TES (for NES) or other mock-named systems (to avoid trademarks) get released. You go through to the PS5!
You hire staff and do research. You analyze previous releases. You can even release MMOs and expansions!! Or make your own system like Nintendo did!!! Sick!
You also move up and make more money. Guides are online for this game and definitely help make you money!
The game has a cute set of clever achievements, although I would have liked to have seen more. I’m anxiously awaiting a release of this perhaps on Vita, iOs or some other platform I selfishly own.
Some stuff from the game, I don’t feel like describing it.
I would give this game a 9/10. It reaches a fine balance between being way too in-depth and offering enough to make you feel like you’re really a developer. It would be perfect, except that it apparently took a lot of inspiration from Game Dev Story on Android and iTunes.
Speaking of developers, the guy who made this game released a cracked version that included a code preventing folks from making any money off of their game releases, due to piracy! How cool is that!!? Read about it here. And hopefully, you’ll support these guys.
Edit:
I decided to play Game Dev Story and some other piece of shit on Steam that cost me $15 and wouldn’t play…Game Dev Tycoon has the best balance of graphics, gameplay and depth, in my opinion.
I just like this photo and wanted to include it it in one of my articles.
I’ve sank a lot of time into Game Dev Tycoon. Its sad replaying it and figuring out you’re given a hit game :-( Not to mention you can just churn out the same game over and over. Sorry to rain like this on someone’s blog. I still love it, I just wish there was some kind of randomization each play through like Sega wins the console wars or something.
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