Game Dev Tycoon

So I've been a little on the fence about this one. A game about making a game, seems a little too close to inception for me. However, after hearing about the publicity stunt Greenheart games pulled on torrent users, I was intrigued. For those of you that don't know, there are fake torrents floating around that will stop you progressing in the game because too many people are torrenting the games you make. I thought it was funny, but I bet there's a few people out there who aren't very impressed.

For the last couple of days whenever I dropped into a group call with my friends, all I would hear is babble about game creation and development. Eventually I caved and bought Game Dev Tycoon. After playing it for 10 minutes and realizing that in reality 3 hours had passed, I knew I hadn't wasted my cash.

Making Final Fantasy doesn't always produce amazing results.

Upon creating your company name and choosing an avatar, you are presented with your office. A garage. Succeeding in Game Dev Tycoon requires you to make as many successful games as you can in 30 years of gaming history. To create a game you need to choose the genre, topic, and platform. Then you need to decide on what aspects to focus on. For example, an RPG generally needs good dialogue and quests. Once you have finished your game it goes onto the market, where it accumulates sales and fans for your company.

It starts out pretty basic at first; make games, make money. But you will quickly become overwhelmed by the creation of new consoles and creating engines to accommodate your new mechanics. Then you have to manage your employees and train them to be useful. You can enter contracts with publishers to fund your games and publicity. The further you progress into the game the more you have to manage and watch out for, and if you make several bad games in a row it can cost you a huge amount of fans and money. Nothing is more depressing than sinking your $1 million budget into the perfect game only for it to get pathetic reviews.

Choosing the best attributes to put your time into is important.

I've had a lot of fun playing this game so far, and every single one of my friends has bought it; which is not a common occurrence in our group. I've made several different companies and most of them have failed before the 15 year mark. In fact, the furthest I got was when I made EA games and ran my company like a bastard tyrant. Anyway, it's a lot of fun and you can put quite a bit of thought into how to market your games.

Game Dev Tycoon is one of those titles you would see as an app on Facebook. However, instead of using special coins purchased by micropayments to make you buy stuff in the game, they've opted for the far more sensible and affordable price of $8. It feels like a flash game you would find for free on Kongregate or Newgrounds. It's the ideal title for your tablet or laptop. Game Dev Tycoon doesn't have intensive graphics, just addictive company management and the fun that comes with making it as your own gaming company. Should you buy it? Yes.