Game Dev Studio

Review

Here you are - you just bought your first office! At the moment it’s empty, but not for long as you visualize where the programmers, sound engineers, designers, artists and writers will be sitting. You’ll build glass partitions for the servers and conference rooms as well as your office. You’ll have four teams of five employees working on different projects at any given time. You can see it becoming one of the best game studios in the world . . .welcome to Game Dev Studio!   

Game Dev Studio is a management / Tycoon game where you take control of your own gaming studio and create awesome games for the gaming community.

The game offers a story mode where you must complete objectives, a free play mode without objectives, four different scenarios and three levels of difficulties. After selecting your mode of play, you’ll be prompted to customize your character. Here you’ll be able to define what your persona looks like, what traits he/she (female characters not available as yet, but in the works) is good at as well as his/her interests. All characters in Game Dev Studios have nine sets of skills (graphics, development, teamwork etc) and each of them has a scale from 0 to 100. They also have 4 attributes (intelligence, vision, charisma and speed), on a scale to 0 to 10.

The first thing you must do is to build your office (workstations, restrooms, kitchen and plenty of other options). Then the recruitment process will begin. In the meantime, your investor will give you objectives to reach; if you don’t reach your objectives, the game will end. Game Dev will give you a very good understanding of what studios must do to make a game that people want, then promote it effectively to maximise the sales, and decide which conferences to attend in order to be noticed.

You can either make your own game engine and upgrade it with new features through the hard work of your software engineers, or just buy one built by another company. Research which platforms you should use to create the game of the year by following the market trends. Commission your designers to find new themes and genres and deliver to the gaming community a brand-new style of game. As soon as a new project is in the works, announce it to create interest, and as soon as it is finished, test it or use a quality assurance company and fix all the bugs before you release, then see the money roll into the door (that is, if you market it correctly through the right media)!

In the meantime, your employees will earn experience on their skills, and each time they level up they will receive a point which will go towards one of their attributes. They will also ask you to organise outings (sky diving, camping and others), or they’ll just be pains by asking for salary increases.  

What I really like in this game is the balance between the fun and the management perspective. In some other tycoon games, it is very easy to become frustrated and loose the game via bankruptcy very quickly. Don’t get me wrong, it is also easy to go bankrupt in this game, especially if you are playing in the normal difficulty in one of the four scenarios. But overall the game is more lenient than others, which is a big plus as far as I am concerned!

The pixel graphics are pretty good, and you have nice and calming music in the background. In terms of the interface, it is very easy to use. It would have been nice to have a proper tutorial and more objects to place in the office(s).