izigame.me

REVIEW #65
Game Dev Tycoon
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Game Dev Tycoon is one of those games where, at its core, it's just a repetitious grind, and that alone should kill any enjoyment that one could deride from the experience. However, the grind offered here is so thoughtfully designed and surprisingly addictive that hours will disappear from your day before you know what happened.
The main goal of the game is to start and manage your own video game development company, starting in your garage during the 1980s and (hopefully) expanding and growing for the next 35 years. Technology trends and world events are expertly implemented so as to mimic the actual history of technology and video games as well as shape how the player proceeds with developing their business. As games are created and released, the press and public will react accordingly, and you can later glean hints from your releases as to how to properly tweak and adjust your development process for future releases. What's especially handy about that last feature is that information that you've gained will carry over to any new game that you start (if you so desire, that is). So, if your business flops but you gained some helpful hints along the way, they'll all be available when you start the game again.
Issues that I have with the game are few and moderately annoying at worst. For example, while the auto-save system's constant updating is great to have, it can be a double-edged sword if you mistakenly release a game and forget to give your team time to debug it first. I'm not sure if that's just a "me" thing, but I've unfortunately found it easy to do since a big, green "Finish" button will show up right at the beginning of the debugging process. The game does this in case you need to quickly release a game to jump-start your cash flow, but if you forget what you're doing and absentmindedly click the bright and shiny green button, you'll inadvertently disappoint your company's fans with a buggy mess of a game. My point here is that, since the auto-save system is so constant, unless you've made a manual save, if you accidentally make the above-mentioned blunder, no amount of Alt-F4 keystrokes will undo your error.
Also, since the game's release, I've had issues with my mouse cursor not interacting in the right position with menu buttons. This is something that's been vastly improved over the years, but surprisingly, I found the issue to still be present as of this week. Additionally, I personally mute the background music, but that's probably because I play the game so much that I hear the same tracks over and over. Again, I think that's a "me" thing.
The bottom line is that I love this intelligently designed title. It may be a rinse-and-repeat cycle at its core, but it's a really fun one. The fact that I'm not a "tycoon game" fan to begin with should say something about how positively I feel about Game Dev Tycoon for it to win me over like it has.