As a simulation game, at first I wasn’t convinced that Game Dev Story would get me hooked. After all, the premise of the game is pretty simple…start off with a small company developing games and eventually work your way up in the industry to control the games and console market. As a gamer, it would definitely be a dream come true to be able to work in one of the big game companies like EA or Blizzard. For now though, this mobile game (both for Android and iOS) may be able to satisfy that fantasy. For the record, once I’ve started playing…let’s just say it became really addicting.
Gameplay
You start off the game by hiring some new staff to your original staff of four. When hiring take note of their skills and the salary that they ask for. The pop-up window also gives the initial stats of the person with regards to the strong points in his skill set to give to your team. After hiring them, you can now develop a new game. Another pop-up window comes up. Here you can choose what kind of console, the genre and type of game you’re going to develop.
As the game progresses, several new consoles are being released. You can choose to acquire licenses for these specific consoles but they do require a big amount of cash. After choosing, you can now start developing your game. During the game development process, you will see your staff hard at work. There will be icons popping up from their heads. These are indicators of what aspect of the game they’re working on and if the game is getting any bugs. Simultaneously, the game progress is also shown below the game window.
From time to time, a dialog window will show up asking which staff you’d want to use or if you want to outsource for someone to work on the graphics, sound etc. You also earn Research Data points as you go, these can be spent to further improve stats of your game or for leveling up your staff. After debugging your game, it will be released to the public. The critics will tell you how well you’ve done and then you’ll get to see how your game does in the market. You can also pay for advertising to help with the popularity and sales of your game. Then you get to make a new game using the lessons you’ve learned from making the first. Trust me, this is the part where it gets to be addictive.
There are certain combinations of game types and genres that can be a disaster or an instant hit. You can try to experiment and then reap the rewards after. Later on, when everything goes well and your company does pretty good, you can even work towards making your own console and then working towards a goal of having them in households.
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The graphics of this game is not very advanced but I like the pixel-look that it has. There’s no groundbreaking soundtrack either but I think what makes this game great is its re-playability. It makes you want to try harder with each game release at the sacrifice of losing several hours in the day of course.
You can try out a demo of the game at the Android Market or you can also buy the full-version.
Download Links:
