Game Dev Story

In Game Dev Story, starting from a small office and a few thousand dollars in your wallet, you'll have to hire the necessary personnel to develop the first game of the newly created company. This is how the list of candidates goes: There is a good programmer, an artist who is a bit scarce, and a designer who is not bad; each of them, thanks to their skills, can make a more or less important contribution to the realization of the project. Finally, when everything is ready, you have to decide on the kind and type of game you want to realize. In doing so, you should keep in mind that some combinations will fit better than others. In Game Dev Story, the player can choose the platform on which the project will be developed, and this is where things start to get very interesting. Game Dev Story traces the last twenty years of the video game industry's history and presents it in the form of an exhilarating parody: We start with the first computers and then see almost all the main portable and home consoles announced. The names of the companies, games and platforms have been changed, but can be fully traced back to the originals; Game Boy becomes Game Kid and Microsoft is now called Microx. However, besides the order in which the consoles are launched, the developers have also decided to keep the success they had. On the one hand, this makes it even more pleasant to relive those twenty years from the inside, on the other hand, the player can easily predict big deals and flops: no one will be crazy enough to develop a game for the Virtual Boy (pardòn, Virtual Kid), while the immediate support of the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 fees could lead to big boxes. There are also annual awards, where a jury awards the best games of the year in the different categories. When developing a project, however, the player never stays with his hands: He must guide his collaborators to promote their skills, buy the development kits of the different consoles, send announcements and look for new collaborators. It's important to keep the fans' interest high, create hype and see players lining up days before the game is released, while sales can increase thanks to good reviews in specialized magazines. However, making a sequel to a successful game also means that there is a good chance that the game will sell. The choice is whether to invest everything in an ambitious project or to make small titles in a short time until a budget is reached that is high enough to make the console and bring it to market.