Play making games

Like every morning, the alarm rings at the usual time, we get dressed in a hurry, milk and cereals and then we go to the office.

Play making games

Today comes the new guy: he calls himself Pliffy D, but even if he's a bit snooty he looks like a really smart guy; he seems to be a game designer, and will be working on our new game for PlayStatus 2 together with Shigeto Minamoto. It's time to move though, because the Christmas holidays are around the corner, fans are waiting impatiently, and the game is still full of bugs to fix. Once a game has started a Game Dev Story for iPhone it's really hard not to get carried away. The management software of the Japanese team Kairosoft starts from a premise that has never been seriously explored: the player is at the head of a video game development team, and will have to reach the top of the market by creating quality products, doing advertising campaigns, participating in events and winning prizes. In short, the dream of all those video game enthusiasts who have never been able to write a line of code.



Curiosity

Those who don't have an iPhone or are looking for a more complex experience than the one offered by Game Dev Story should take a look at GameBiz. It is a management system in which you are at the head of a development team, characterized by a very questionable graphical interface, but also by an incomparable completeness and depth. GameBiz 3 has been on sale in the last few days, but you can still download the previous versions for free.


From the bedroom to E3

Those who have played the Bullfrog management classics will probably find in Game Dev Story more than one element in common. In particular, the game strongly recalls that perfect alchemy between a sense of humor, simplicity and completeness that characterized titles like Theme Hospital. Starting from a small office and a few thousand dollars in the wallet, it will be necessary to hire the necessary staff to develop the first game of the fledgling company. This is how the list of candidates is scrolled: there is a good programmer, a rather poor artist and a not bad designer; each of them, thanks to their skills, will be able to give a more or less relevant hand in the realization of the project. Once everything is ready you must finally choose the genre and the type of game to be made, bearing in mind that some combinations will marry much better than others: a fantasy RPG has more chances of success than a dating game in the Second. World War.


Play making games

At this point it will be up to choose the platform on which to develop the project, and here things start to get quite interesting. Game Dev Story in fact, it traces the last twenty years of the history of the video game industry, proposing it in the form of a hilarious parody: it starts with the first computers, and then gradually sees almost all the main portable and home consoles announced. The names of companies, games and platforms have been revised, but they are entirely traceable to the originals; the Game Boy becomes the Game Kid and Microsoft is now Microx. However, in addition to the order in which the consoles are launched, the developers have also chosen to keep the success they have had at the market level consistent, which, on the one hand, makes it even more pleasant to relive these twenty years from the inside. , on the other hand, it ensures that the player can easily foresee big deals and flops: no one will be so crazy as to develop a game for Virtual Boy (pardòn, Virtual Kid), while immediately supporting the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 counterparts could lead to big profits. . Game Dev Story it is intuitive, accessible to anyone right away, yet it is surprising how much meat there is on the fire: from time to time a company could hold a press conference and announce a new console to the public, the old platforms are withdrawn from the market after a some time, while video game fairs are excellent opportunities to advertise your products. There is also no shortage of annual awards, in which a jury awards the best games of the year in the various categories. During the development of a project, however, the player will never remain with his hands: he will have to train his employees in order to cultivate their skills, buy the development kits of the various consoles, send announcements and look for new staff. , keep an eye on market trends and continually invest in advertising. It is in fact essential to keep the interest of fans high, create hype and see players line up days before the game's release, while sales can also increase thanks to good reviews in specialized magazines. And again, making a sequel to a successful game means starting with a good chance that the game will sell, while the player can decide whether to invest everything in an ambitious project or make small titles in a very short time, until a budget is reached. high enough to be able to build and market your console. Unfortunately, there are small inconsistencies or aspects that clash with the real facts: it is indeed strange to see that the first employee of a small indie team is a secretary, where deadlines are not imposed and sales drop if you decide to specialize in a single genre.



The tested version is 1.0.0
Price: € 2,99
Link App Store

Comment

Resources4Gaming.com

8.8

Readers (26)

9.0


Your vote

Although it was originally developed for other mobile platforms, Game Dev Story it is undoubtedly one of the best management software that has appeared so far on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Unfortunately, precisely because it is not optimized for iOS devices, the graphical interface only partially occupies the screen, while there are no social functions that could have made the game even more interesting and perhaps a little less repetitive. Yet, the amount of elements to manage, the possibility of creating a new Zelda and the humor that burst from each pixel make Game Dev Story a wonderful and attractive game, capable of stealing hours and hours of continuous play without you noticing. In fact, it is such a complete management software that it almost fits tightly into a mobile device like the iPhone.


PRO

  • Very original idea
  • A lot of elements to manage
  • Relive the history of consoles from the inside
  • Graphically very lively
AGAINST
  • It is not optimized for iPhone
  • Social features are missing
  • Some elements are quite unreal
add a comment of Play making games
Comment sent successfully! We will review it in the next few hours.