Game Dev Story Review

October 30, 2018 Frank Duran Leave a comment

As a man who loves video games, I have always been fascinated with the game development process. It’s always cool to see how your favorite adventures actually get made. Game Dev Story aims to put you in the driver’s seat of your own Game Development company and find out what it takes to make top games. It arrives on switch and I quickly learned how addictive this game is.

Game Dev Story starts out small, you the CEO of your Game Dev company, your loyal assistant and three ambitious artists begin making little indie games. You have limited genres and game types that you can choose from but you can gather more by training and hiring the best employees. This is hard on your meager budget and tiny money flow however. You can do contracts that give you some quick money or innovation points, or you can start making games.

My absolutely favorite part of Game Dev Story is that you build your games in a timeline that is very similar to actual game history. You start with only being able to develop PC games but then the consoles start to come and start to compete. I love console wars and it was awesome to sway the console wars with games I was developing. Not everyone will fan over this like me, but it was a huge draw to play this game to completion.

I recommend just getting into it. You go through every phase of game dev, but of course simplified to fit a Sim. You write your game proposal, hire the best, get your graphics and characters right and work on the music; then of course you got to Debug the game after you have finished. It’s a fun little cycle that you can influence by using different boosts for different parts of the game or using the best of the best contractors or inhouse employees. I started the game just letting the game name each one I made like game #3 or Game #7 but you will get more enjoyment out of it by naming your games. I was super proud when my first #1 game was Ninja Toddler (like Ninja Kid, get it?!). The more you put into the game, the more fun you will have.

The rise and stumbles as you progress towards making a #1 game is what really sucked me into this game. It was a struggle to reach #1 and a struggle to keep it. When I got to the point in the game I assumed I would feel complete. Yet every in-game year there are game awards. At first I won nothing but once I started making #1 games they started noticing and threw me a best sound or a best design but never game of the year. This is when I became addicted. I needed Game Of The Year. I played all 28 years of the “game story”, even sweeping the awards the last couple of years, but never winning game of the year. I actually started a new game so I might have a chance at it. Your genre and type levels from the past playthrough all carry over but you still need to unlock them. I stormed through my 2nd playthrough, making smart decisions and trying out things that I hadn’t in my last run. You have to do the weird things to fight the samey feel a 2nd play comes with. I somehow had more fun though, as a company that couldn’t be stopped in my race to game of year. I finally finally got Game of the Year thanks to my masterpiece Cowboy RPG 3.

Game Dev Story gives a very enjoyable experience for game history nerds, Sim game lovers and lovers of funny parody titles. Other then some pacing problems, My only real complaint is something I learned way after I bought and enjoyed the hell out of the game. I learned it’s a game from 2010 but is double the price of the phone version on switch. The dreaded switch tax. Yet I may not have dived in as deep if I had played the $6 (just checked in NA it’s $2.50) phone version instead of the $12 switch version.

8 out of 10!