Game Dev Tycoon is the first video game developed by Greenheart Studios, and shows great promise. You take on the role of a game developer, reliving the early years of the gaming industry in your garage, upgrade to offices and beyond, and live in the modern day of gaming, and even beyond!
When you begin, you start off in a garage, and as a programmer, you will begin creating your first games during the early years of the gaming revolution. When you begin you create your company name, and name your avatar and choose basics customization options. Once you start, you can begin creating your first game. You will start off with 4 random game topics, and once you select your topic you will pick a genre (action, simulation, strategy, etc). Once you are happy with your selection, and select a console/computer to put it on, you will start the development process. Development of a game has 3 stages, with 3 sliders for each stage (for a total of 9). These stages will have options such as engine, graphics, level design, artificial intelligence, etc. Depending on the game topic and genre, certain combinations will value greater focus on certain subjects than others. For instance, Action games favor engine, graphics, and artificial intelligence for better review scores. Once you are done with your game the last phase is removing bugs from your game, and having a large number of bugs will hurt your score. When you are content with the bug removal and content to publish your game, you will soon receive a review score from 4 reviewers. Depending on how well made the game is, will ultimate affect your profits and sales.
Once done with the game you can generate a report, which will give you valuable information about the topic, genre, and how the system you select responds to the topic and genre. You will generate research points, which you can research new technologies and new topics, such as custom engines and so forth. You can also use research points to train yourself and your employees to better their technology, design, speed, and research skills. With high enough skill points in the fields, you can specialize them in certain fields, such as graphics, or artificial intelligence.
As you unlock new technologies, you can create your own custom game engine to better your games. As you upgrade to higher offices you can employ more workers, gain access to larger games, even access to research and development labs, and hardware labs to produce your very own gaming consoles! The game features a 35 year campaign which will last you several hours, and allows you to continue playing the current game after the game is over if you wish.
The tutorials provided help teach you enough of the game to help develop your games, but I feel a little more explanation could of been added, or additional tool-tips, but these are just minor suggestions to help make the game a bit better in my own opinion. Overall, I find the game enjoyable and if you are into the tycoon or business sim genre of games, I believe you will find a good deal of enjoyment from the game. For a first game from Greenheart games, I enjoy it and will look forward to future titles.