Game Dev Story [Review]

FULL REVIEW

To be honest, most simulation games today seem extremely dull and tiresome. However, Kairosoft an indie developer has created a surprisingly simple, yet intensely fun simulation game for the iOS platform. It is of course, Game Dev Story which encourages gamers to run their own game development studio and develop some amazing titles which would earn you the best awards in the industry. It is obvious that all this is virtual, but the entire experience of how you progress as a game development studio is one reason why Kairosoft’s Game Dev Story would go down in history. The first time I got hooked on to this game, I ended up wasting one week filled with sleepless nights and unproductive days, and all the credit goes to this highly entertaining game about games.

I started playing video games when I got my SNES at the age of five, and Game Dev Story's pixel art style is iconic of those early days of innocence. The game is not the best when it comes to graphics, yet it looks pleasant with its pixel-art-style graphical theme. While the pixel-art-style does add some value to the entire experience, it is not the only reason why it is such an amazing mobile game. Kairosoft, came up with a simple yet unique idea, which even the best have never thought about and made it into possibly the best simulation game, at least I have ever played.

The game has a very simple concept to start off with – you are an owner of a small game development studio, with a team of a sexy secretary (you can only imagine) and two nerds who love video games. One of those nerds is a ‘Coder’ and another one is a ‘Writer’. To start developing a game you first have to combine game genre (eg; Action, Adventure, Simulation, etc.) along with a theme (eg; Ninja, Pirates, Fantasy, Basketball, etc). So, you make the right combination (eg; Action + Ninja and not Adventure + Basketball, seriously who would like to play that?), after you make the right combinations you have to set up the direction of the game and you have 10 parameters to set – Cuteness, Realism, Approachability, Niche Appeal, Simplicity, Innovation, Game World and Polish, you add up the available points to these and then start the development. As you progress and if the combination is a hit, the game genre and the game theme you have selected level up, so the next time when you develop a game using them you do the job slightly better than the last time.

Next, a critical aspect of the game is your staff, as mentioned before you are initially stuck with a ‘Coder’ and a ‘Writer’ however you can hire new staff including – ‘Graphic Designer’, 'Sound Engineer’, ‘Producer’, ‘Director’ and a ‘Hacker’. The characters in the game have really funny mock names, usually, related to a famous person or a thing (eg; S. Presso, Callie Fornia, Gilly Bates, Anne Droid, etc.). Once you hire staff you can use them in the game development process or simply outsource the task to someone called B. Toven who is good with music, amongst others.

Once the development process begins, you see your staff working hard and adding points to Graphics, Sound, Fun and Creativity, these four are the most important elements of the game your are developing and upon the release of the game add up to get you good reviews from critiques who rate your games and determine how well it would do in the market. While under development your team tends to leave some things buggy, this is determined by the amount of bugs which adds up during the development process. After the game has finished development, your teams spends a little bit more time fixing the bugs which get you research points, these can be used to level up your staff or use the boost items during development. Upon release the first week of sales rates your game in the charts and it typically determines the sales you can expect from the title. Further, you can also advertise your games by running a radio ad, a TV commercial and ultimately imprinting an ad on the moon itself!

Game Dev Story includes various consoles which you can develop on, however you first need to buy the license from the manufacturer. The manufacturer and even the consoles have mock-up names like Senga for Sega, Intendro for Nintendo, Microx for Microsoft, so on and so forth while the consoles are named like Game Kid, Super IES, Play Gear, etc. All the fun does not just end here, the consoles included in the game launch over a period of time and you have to attend a boring press event, conducted by a Japanese dude. It also includes an event call GameDex where you get to tease your upcoming games and an award ceremony where most of the time I ended up getting ‘The Worst Game of the Year’ award due to the crazy combination we tried. Another, useful addition to the game is especially for those who fail in developing good games. It is the ability to work on third-party projects, which mainly consist of working on a sound of an movie or designing characters for another developer, this helps you earn a quick buck and some research points. Finally, Game Dev Story also allows you to develop your own handheld or console, this can be done by having a Hardware Engineer in your team, while we know how to get one, we leave it up to you to figure it out.

Game Dev Story is one of the greatest mobile games I have ever played, and for the very first time when I played it, I was up all night until my eyes started bleeding. It is worth every penny, however, if you get it you may just quit your job and start living in your own fantasy game development studio.