Grand Prix Story

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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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.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, while Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income.

When Grand Prix Story was released on mobile devices in the US in 2011, with ports to Nintendo Switch in 2019, PlayStation 4 in 2020, and Xbox One in 2024, it went for the former of those two templates, being a game about managing your staff’s time and your company’s investments, with the company in question being a Nascar-style racing team.

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 repetitive chiptune music and sound effects. Apart from the annoying music, everything about this presentation is really endearing, and the way the game even shows your cute little pixel car racing is really delightful… at first.

The problem is, players have absolutely no control over races (a huge missed opportunity), and cannot opt to just skip the race and see results. And given how this game makes these races a major source of income, this means that you’ll be seeing the same races over and over again as you grind for cash.

Beyond this issue, many of the other problems of Game Dev Story return here – you have very little in the way of options to expand your crew and build better vehicles, and the game drip-feeds these upgrades to you far too slowly. Most frustrating is the lack of more than a single racing team early into the game, as this limits your crew to only working on one project at any given time, forcing you to wait as they do.

While the idea of mixing Game Dev Story’s gameplay with cute pixel races seems like a sure bet, in the end, Grand Prix Story only succeeds in replicating many of the problems of that earlier title while adding all-new problems on top. The result is a game which, unless you’re a huge fan of Nascar-like races, will just have you wanting to go back to playing Game Dev Story instead.

tl;dr – Grand Prix Story is a Management Simulation where players manage a racing crew trying to build and race winning vehicles on Nascar-like circuits. This game uses the basic gameplay template of this developer’s earlier game, Game Dev Story, but doesn’t fix most of that game’s problems, instead adding new problems. The result is a game that feels inferior to the one it was largely based on. Unless you’re a Nascar fanatic, you’re better off playing Game Dev Story instead of this.

Grade: C

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