Game Dev Story

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

.

Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 55 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations. And in a way, they all started here, with Game Dev Story. While not Kairosoft’s first videogame (that is apparently a game called Bookstore Story, not currently on Nintendo Switch), Game Dev Story was the first game where Kairosoft found widespread popularity.

Originally released on PC in 1997, Game Dev Story was later ported to mobile devices in 2010, then to Nintendo Switch in 2018, then to PlayStation 4 in 2021, then to Xbox One in 2023. And as you might gather from the title, Game Dev Story has players managing a videogame developer, choosing who to hire and fire, what videogames to work on, and how to best spend money to make the most popular, best-selling games possible.

As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals presented in an isometric view, paired with chiptune music and sound effects. The sound effects can be a bit loud and grating, but otherwise everything about this presentation is really endearing, and the way the game even has little parody versions of all the major (and many minor) game consoles and handhelds over the generations is a real delight.

Given this game’s popularity, you may think that it must be a wonderfully-detailed and intricate Management Simulation, but the truth is rather the opposite. Players are given very few choices. You can decide who to hire and fire, but not how much to pay them, what hours to make them work, or what their working conditions are like apart from what their seating arrangement is. You can decide the genre, topic matter, and game platform of the game you’re developing, but you can’t decide partway through development to take longer to make a better game (though you can always opt to shove it out the door early, bugs and all). You don’t even get to decide when to expand to a larger office to hire more employees – the game does that for you.

Given how restrictive and limiting this game is, you might also think that this game is selling just on its charm and presentation alone but… actually, no. This game remains compelling despite its simplicity and lack of options. In fact, it may be compelling in part because of that simplicity.

There’s something oddly exciting about seeing your development team at work, watching as they pour more points into “fun”, “creativity”, “graphics”, and “sound”, getting a brief bit of joy as one of your workers gets a sudden burst of inspiration, signified by a visual that looks like them catching on fire and accompanied by an annoying loud sound effect. And then waiting with suspense to see how your game is received by critics and the general public. And after every game release, there’s a strong compulsion to have your team make “just one more” game before you save and quit. I think I must have played for six hours straight before I could tear myself away.

Your success in the game isn’t random, thankfully. You’ll have to gradually train up your team by investing into them with time, money, and “research” (represented by a floppy disk), building up their stats as you do. And you can always farm out the biggest parts of your game’s development to outside contractors, for a fee. What’s more, some genres and topic matters are more popular than others, and thus more likely to sell. And some genres and topic matters pair better than others.

This is where Game Dev Story ultimately falls flat – through trial and error you’ll eventually find strong pairings of genre and topic matter, and once you find three or four of these pairings, you won’t really need to put any more thought into what games you develop, as you can just cycle through those three or four and find increasing success every time. Just be sure to jump to new successful game platforms when you’ve saved up enough money to comfortably do so, and continue to train up your staff, and you’re set for the rest of the game, no thought required.

At some point you’ll get an in-game mechanic to make a game a direct sequel to a massive hit, and even to create your own game console, but by that point you’ll have likely made a bunch of sequels anyway just by repeating the same genre/topic combo over and over again, and as for creating game consoles, you need hardware engineers for that and you likely won’t have room for any of those unless you fire someone, breaking apart your well-oiled money-making machine.

It’s a shame that Game Dev Story doesn’t give players better tools to get deeper into the details of the gameplay if they desire to do so, and that the simplicity makes it all too easy to simply find a working pattern and just keep repeating it, removing all challenge. For these reasons, I almost want to be harsh in my critique of this game… but I just can’t. For all its faults, Game Dev Story still manages to be extremely compelling, and an immensely satisfying time-waster of a Management Simulation. If you’re a fan of the genre, don’t expect this to be anything close to genre-defining, but I still think you’ll find it a delightful game all the same.

tl;dr – Game Dev Story is a Management Simulation where players manage a game developer, deciding who to hire and fire, how to train employees, and what games to make. This game is sadly lacking a lot of options, and things become easy and brainless once you find what game combos work best and just keep reusing them. However, despite this game’s flaws, it’s still surprisingly compelling, and fans of the genre looking for something more simple to play as a time-waster will likely find this well worth getting.

Grade: B-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}