It's a very basic game that I played as a kid on iOS. Bought it recently and had as much fun as I remember having then, although that fun waned hard after about an hour. Maybe get this if it's on sale ever? Parts of it are better than Game Dev Tycoon (which came out 3 years later. Not sure why Backloggd says this game came out in 1996 when it directly references the Wii.), but some parts are less enjoyable. I'd like to see a second iteration of either game that borrows from the other, as I think a good Game Dev Simulator is still yet to be released.

It really is games like Game Dev Story that truly prove graphics, sound, and pizzazz aren’t everything because GDS is just highly addictive, tongue in cheek, and very entertaining. What makes a game developing simulator fun? Developing games isn’t really fun, to begin with so the game should be as fun as eating stale bread. Kairosoft is geniuses and there’s a lot to be had here.

You start out with a little bit of cash, 4 employees, and only being able to develop on PC. You hire employees by paying for different job ads. The higher the job and price the better-skilled people will come into your office. Once you get your 4 people you pick a game system (new systems are released regularly but cost tons of money to buy licenses for). The game really tries to emulate the game industry by putting out consoles by three different companies Intendro, Sonny, and Micro. The game goes by in weeks, months, and years so certain events trigger at different times.

Once you pick your genre (rated by popularity from A-C) then you pick the type of game. Make sure the two match otherwise you will get poor sales. Once you pick the two (you can unlock more by training employees or hiring very skilled ones) you have to choose someone to design the game. Each employee has four types of ratings ranging from Program, Scenario, Graphics, and Sound. The scenario is what you want for people designing the game to start with. Once you choose this they will start pumping icons into a few of the four categories to make your game good: Fun, Creativity, Graphics, and Sound. When you start out your games won’t be very good, but after a few years, they will be.


Once this is all done and depending on the type of quality you chose for your game (the higher the quality the more money it costs) Your percentage complete ticker will start climbing. Depending on how skilled your developers are your four areas will increase. When the game is 40% done you will be asked to choose someone to boost the graphics. You can use the people you have or hire someone else to do it and this can cost lots of money if you choose someone with a high graphics rating. When the game is 80% done you will be asked to boost the sound and the same applies. Once the game is done you will start the debugging process and this can add lots of research data (use this to level up employees) and doesn’t really impact you negatively if you have a lot of bugs.


After the game is done you will be asked to name it then ship it and then critics will rate your game. When you start out the game will score low and probably won’t start getting high reviews until your 10th year or so. If you get a score of 31 or higher it goes into the hall of fame and you can develop sequels. Once the game ships your first week sales will come in and depending on its chart placing you will get good sales or not. After a while the sales drop off and then it’s off the market, then you repeat the process. Keep on top of the most popular console to boost sales as well as choosing good advertising methods because you need to keep your popularity up with every age demographic. Every 5 years the numbers will move down and you will lose fans if you don’t keep up.

When you start leveling up employees, the games get better and sales go up with high areas in-game design. During points of the year, you will get to go to Gamedex and accumulate fans to boosts sales as well as the awards show at the end of the year to earn extra prize money. After a while you will start earning millions of dollars and be able to hire more people and move into bigger offices. Eventually, you can fire people with low skills and start moving higher skilled people in and then your scores start going to 9’s and 10’s.


The beauty of the game is the climb to a successful company and your ability to do checks and balances determines if you fail or not. Starting out is a struggle, but it’s just so addictive and feels true to the game industry. The game may not be much to look at with simulated 8-bit graphics and sound, but I just played this for hours and hours and couldn’t put it down because you keep developing one more game and trying to balance your company out to make big bucks, get the latest systems, the most fans, hype up your games, and try to win game of the year. If you love simple simulations like these you will love Game Dev Story because there’s nothing quite like it.

Eh?

I find it funny that I know of this game because people always kept saying that Game Dev Tycoon was a rip-off of it because I find this to be a weaker game. Think about it this way: Game Dev Tycoon gets to the meat-and-potatoes of what a good casual tycoon game is like. It's intuitive, doesn't waste your time, and while guesswork is involved, it feels more like a pipeline of discovery and less like a total headscratcher. A fundamental part of all Kairosoft games is giving up and eventually looking up what all of the combinations are. I wish I could say that that's just a me thing, and while it totally is in a way, I don't do it because I'm lazy. The core loop of these games is compelling in short bursts, but anything longer than that will kill your enthusiasm. I've felt this in all of their games, but Game Dev Story has always been the most egregious to me. For an experience that's supposed to be casual, there are entirely too many knobs and switches to play with. At least, it feels that way because that's how it's presented.

I'll give Game Dev Story credit for its cute and charming presentation. I've always found that a lot of these games tend to have pretty flat and unappealing aesthetics. Game Dev Tycoon will, at the very least, make you smile. I just wish I had more to say about this than that.

it´s a phone game
yeah it had it´s debut as a 1998 windows game I think but virtually everyone thinks it´s a phone game and it kinda fits better that way so whatever
not so deep but it has a lot of charm and kinda cool references but it´s not the best out there now that I´ve played more of the genre it´s become quite easy to tell

kairosoft has better games imo, mall story I find incredible in particular

this has quite a low budget btw don´t expect this to like have a lot of songs or sfx or stuff I think I read something on japanese once about the guy developing this game in it´s original version in the 90s by himself for computers so yeah thats uhmmm something