Game Dev Tycoon

Genre: Management Sim

Players: 1

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Review:

Game Dev Tycoon is a Management Sim that has players guiding the decisions of a startup videogame company, from its early days as a one-person company operating out of a garage to a massive entertainment empire. This game was originally released in 2013 on PC before being ported to mobile devices and finally, in 2020, to the Nintendo Switch.

This game’s presentation uses simple cartoony visuals and plucky music to decorate a clean interface that’s mostly about delivering information to the player. It’s nothing noteworthy, but it’s pleasant and gets the job done.

When it comes to the gameplay, this is a game that is purely about making savvy decisions when it comes to what to invest your time and money into, what sort of games to make, and what facets of the game’s design to focus on in the course of development. There’s a bit of trial and error here when it comes to finding good combinations of topic matter, genre, platform, and sort of resources – Should you make a PC game about pirates in the Adventure genre with a focus on story over gameplay, or a family-friendly Nintendo Entertainment System(-alike) casual game with zero story, simple graphics, and a huge focus on gameplay?

One of the cool things here is that having a degree of familiarity with videogame history can help make good decisions in-game. How smart is it going to be to invest in the high up-front cost of developing games for Nintendo(-esque) consoles in each generation? At what points in the timeline will it make the most sense to shift development focus to the PC? To some extent, this game almost acts as a test to see how well you know the videogame industry.

It would have been nice to have greater control over more elements of a game’s design, and if there were more ability to shape the market by getting them to like a franchise or popularize a genre/theme combination that isn’t initially in high demand. Likewise, it would have been nice if you had to compete with a market that could potentially be over-saturated by similar titles, trying to find your own niche… but none of this wish list stuff made it in here, and the trade-off is this is a more accessible but simpler game.

However, there is a major flaw in this version of the game beyond what’s not here and that is the price – at $15, the Nintendo Switch version of the game is $5 more than the PC version and $10 more expensive than the mobile version of the game.

One more thing to note before wrapping this up – this game has both standard gamepad controls as well as touchscreen controls comparable to the mobile version of the game, and both of these work fine (though I’d say the touchscreen is naturally going to be the better way to play a menu-based game like this).

It’s disappointing that a seven year-old game has gotten such an inflated price in a port to Nintendo Switch, and I wish more was done to add depth to the strategy of the game, but despite these issues, Game Dev Tycoon is still a highly enjoyable game that makes for a great Sim and a fantastic commentary on the videogame industry. If you’re a fan of the genre you’d do well to give this game a look.

tl;dr – Game Dev Tycoon is a Management Sim where players make smart decisions as a game designer to try to design successful, profitable games. It’s a fun entry in the genre, and one that makes for an interesting commentary on the videogame industry, but there are areas it could stand to be a bit deeper, and the $15 price tag is a bit steep for a 7 year-old game that’s significantly cheaper on other platforms.

Grade: B

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