You can throw shade at its developer for his edgy proclivities all you want to, but the developer of Game Dev Studio tactfully understands the core pillar of this sub-genre with flying colors. Believable imagination, as I'll call it, is the act of using terms that veer into vague territory but are just descriptive enough for you to read them with your own interpretation naturally. Having played many of these games, there's a bit of a pendulum swing; either you lack that believable imagination, or you're trying too hard to force it. On the furthest side left, you have games like Moviehouse that are so reliant on you projecting your imagination onto it that the lack of detail isn't endearing—it's a chore. Then you get into territory with the likes of GamersGoMakers and Mad Games Tycoon, which are far more involved affairs but ultimately push too much onto the player. Game Dev Studio is one of the rare games I've played that inch ever so closely to the center of this spectrum, right alongside Game Dev Tycoon.

What interested me in City Game Studio was that I've heard through the grapevine that it's like a more detailed version of Game Dev Tycoon. I might be ashamed of this on some level, but I have a track record of holding a vested interest in these things. I can shit on GamersGoMakers all day for the follies of its overambition and just strange design choices in general, but I cannot deny that I have poured tens (if not hundreds) of hours into playing around with its sandbox, warts and all. To give you a portrait of how much I revere the framework that game was built on, my ideal game in this subgenre is just a version of Studio with the in-depth review mechanic, yearly award mechanic, and licensed games mechanic from GamersGoMakers all lifted and iterated on. Knowing that this might be a more polished version of that formula, I dove in head first.

...this might be farther right on the spectrum than GamersGoMakers is.

Let me start off by saying that the presentation here is solid. Everything looks clean, simplistic, and nice. The UI is functional and easy to read. On the surface, this is a reasonably solid game in this sub-genre. And then you look at the genres they added, and a part of that hope sinks. You have your traditional entries like RPG, and Action, and Strategy. And I'll give this game props; outside of a modded version of Studio, this is the only game I know of in this sub-genre to feature eroge as a topic. Alongside those traditional tidbits are Interactive Fiction and Visual Novel. I'm sure that, with enough playtime in, you could work out what differentiates the two. But that's a problem and in of itself: you shouldn't have to do that. This sits alongside other baffling entries, like "Mystery-like," "Submarine," "Open world," "HTA-like," and "Infiltration." I could go on. I have a hunch that part of the problem here is poor translation (at least, it certainly gives off those vibes), but mostly, a lot of these just feel... I don't know, unnecessary? Let me tell you what the difference between "Strategy" and "Turn-based" is: there isn't really one. GamersGoMakers had the perfect solution to this. Vague terms like "Strategy" and "Action" aren't genres but categories. I still think it's an imperfect solution, as it does make the feeling of seeing your on-screen developer work seem somewhat arbitrary. But it's a sight better than pretending that birds of a feather share fundamental differences with each other.

The feeling I get from City Game Studio is that its heart is very much in the right place, but it needs some revision. Another example I can think of off the top of my head is the way reviews are handled. In-universe reviews in these games tend to be mixed bags; they either overdo it, or the feedback you get from them is too minimal to really be of use. The presentation here overdoes it, but the contents of those reviews are dubious at best. Why is it a bad thing that my RPG game running on the Magnavox Odyssey has physics in it? It just says "Physics" as a negative. Be more descriptive, please. While I haven't played this enough to say whether or not it's truly full of these holes or if the two I've pointed out here are only outliers, it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.

My recommendation so far is that this falls under the more casual side of the umbrella, and if that's what you're looking for, great. Otherwise, it's fascinating but flawed.

EDIT 1: Okay, so I played more of this, and what I described with GamersGoMakers is half-true here? It's really, really weird. On one hand, all of your research for these genres is split up in that exact way (i.e., you can't research Turn Based unless you have Strategy). The problem with this is that, once you decide to put your research into practice, this same categorization method makes no appearance. I understand that the intent here was maybe to make it so you can imagine your developer making an action game with turn-based aspects. But that just comes off as forced and inadequate. Something that I've yet to see one of these games try is have development cycles that feel either interactive, or at the mercy of the people you've hired to work on them. Considering there's a good amount of games you make in these games just to fulfill a financial quota, it would be very fascinating if there was an option to have the team you've hired just work on the game themselves or offer your input.

So anyway, once I get off my ass and stop daydreaming, you know the exact game I'm going to try and make. This is not a threat or a promise, but a force of will.