Game Dev Tycoon is a business simulation game where you replay the history of the gaming industry by starting your own video game development company in the 80s. Create best selling games. Research new technologies and invent new game types. Become the leader of the market and gain worldwide fans.
A disappointing throwback to great management sims like Transport Tycoon or Theme Hospital, but it fails to impress with its lack of depth.
It's pretty similar to The Movies (2005) by Lionhead games, where your main source of income relies on you betting money on projects to earn even more money by exploiting current news events or the mainstream media, while climbing to the top of the charts.
Obviously, this game isn't even close to being as advanced as The Movies, which isn't even that advanced compared to other "tycoon games".
Overall, it's a bare minimun of what I'd expect a management sim would do, and many times feel as a quick IOS time waster. Go play The Movies, instead.
The game seems like it will be awesome at first, but quickly proves to be little more but a shallow tease at what could have been better. I don't see the point of reiterating what others have said, but I will say that the entire process of making a game or engine seems incredibly arbitrary, and the lack of any actual diversity in gameplay will make the end stages seems just as trivial and boring as the beginning.
It had some nice points, and it was always fun to imagine my 'dream game (to the limit the game allowed me)' succeeding, though of course it was difficult with the way the game decided what made a good video game. Probably the worst part (and oddly at that) is the fact everything feels so small. You never feel like you're in a huge video game corporation by the end of the game, you only have about eight programmers and around ten other people in various departments.
The game is horribly designed. It's underlying mechanics are way too simple to make a compelling simulation, and work in a sometimes incomprehensible and illogical manner. The tools to properly work on titles are either not present or inaccessible at the stages they would normally be available at to game developers. Pressure builds in a silly manner due to misdesigned systems interaction (workforce management versus results in a stupidly compressed timeframe). If you **** up, you can basically start over, because correcting your mistakes so that they won't hurt you two hours down the line is nearly impossible. The progression is also painfully static. It basically forces you to replay, but doesn't offer any replay value to incentivize this.
Overall, the game feels really horrible. It's unrewarding, the components are slapped together in a stupidly simplistic and obscure box with mediocre windowdressing.
You can get hundreds of current games that have a WAY better value at this price.
Game is virtually unplayable after getting to the second stage. Instead of comparing all your games made to your highest scoring game, you should compare it to other simulated companies within the game.
Once you have a smash hit game, there's nowhere to go but down.
Terrible Terrible rip of existing titles, achieves little more than sheer emulation of other, much better "Tycoon" games.
awesome game, can never make it all the years but i still love it and i cant get enough of it, 10/10
Adds a fresh style to an admittedly existing concept and does so very convincingly and with loving attention to detail. While the core gameplay may still leave some things to be desired (e.g. more diverse development mechanics with deeper control granularity), this may be addressed through the game's built-in modding capabilities. All-in-all this little gem can offer hours and hours of geeky fun in trying to realize any hardcore gamer's dream - to evolve from proverbial garage developer to successful full-fledged game design studio boss (BTW, messing around with hilarious names and resulting dialogs can be a worthwhile side quest).
Simplistick browser java game for price of 9 euro
shallow and stupid, nothing to do with actual game developing
I give it 4 points for no microtransactions
This game is very addictive. Also nicely simulates a real company trying to reach the top. This game deserves more.
I have wasted so many hours on this and it is one of the few games that actually makes me lose track of time in the real world.
Definitely a game worth buying.