The Joy Of Making Videa Games
Like a thief in the night, Game Dev Story will meander into your very cortex and borrow a hole there. It will gladly make its home in your sub-conscious as you think of new and exciting strategies during your time being a faux-developer. Actually, I think you're the dude behind the desk - you're the Head Honcho of your very own game development studio. Haven't you always wanted that? The chance to expose to the world the next gaming megaton? This game allows you to do this - in your mind, obviously. That same mind which already is home to the very game you're playing. It's devious like that.
The simpliest of things can make you fall in love with the title - you can name your studio (I called my gaff "Cuntorsoft") without any recourse for the most vile of swears. Once that is out the way, you then get the chance to employ some people to fill your office. You begin with a smattering of cash, barely enough for a decent advert. Who knows who you'll attract? The games industry is rife with weirdos, ego-hounds and wannabes - soon enough your devco will be buzzing with chatter before you start on the road of dev.
You can either work on contracts to get a bit more cash in the coffers, or jump straight in with the development of a bonafide videogame. More likely you'll be working on the cheap-as-chips PC format, though the game offers once again to give you the chance to name your creation. "Anal Invader", "Felch Wars" and more even fetid notions come to your dirty brains. What kind of game will it be though? The game allows you to choose the genre of game and the content of the game. Fancy a racing game with pirates? Go for it. The game starts off with a small selection of genres and content, though this can be expanded through training your employees and levelling them up.
As soon as development begins, that's when the fun starts - you first have to assign an employee to write your game. Depending on the type of employee you have (Writer, Coder, Designer...), you could either get a masterpiece of a scenario, or something which isn't all that great. From there, the fuse is lit and your uber-cute pixel studio lights up with activity. Icons spawn from the heads of your workforce which then add to the game itself - fun, creativity, graphics and music. You're given the chance to inject some more graphics and music into your slowly-forming videogame at certain points throughout the process. Get your best on the case and improve the heck out of that thing!
Retro 3.5" floppy discs (remember those?) pop up over the heads of employees at times - often when breakthroughs are made. You can use these research points to level up your team members, or spend them on "boosts" when an employee crawls towards your shiny, new desk and asks if they can improve a certain element of your title. This is governed by a percentage which if successful, can lead to a large increase of stats. You will obsess at the numbers at the bottom of your screen, for they are the very essence of "Pieces of Race". All too soon, the game is finished and a bug-fixing session is invoked. You can be like Bethesda and sneak out a bug-ridden product (hopefully no Russian mafia will kill me for saying that) although sticking with the bug-fixing also bumps up your research data.
What follows is a review process - Famitsu style. Four reviewers give their opinion of your game and a score out of 10. Bad review scores don't necessarily mean your product is boned though. If you push it enough with advertising, you can salvage it. Once released, you can work on another contract to earn more money, or start work on the next game right away. A travelling salesman will often visit too. So many exotic items he has for you to purchase, all of them beneficial to your game-making process. As you can see, Game Dev Story does something very sneaky. Let's call it the "World of Warcraft Effect".
What do I mean by that? WoW has a very devious way of hooking you into the game - it overlaps its quests and gives you more incentive to continue to play the game. It's that very special sauce which is also present in Game Dev Story - it will throw new console launches at you, new genres, new opportunities - and all with a knowing smile. It knows its target audience - jaded gamers who have always dreamed of making The Perfect Game. As the in-game years roll by, you'll be releasing videogames with more lewd titles and more bizarre combinations of genre and content. Why? Because you can.
Game Dev Story is by Kairosoft - a Japanese developer, and one which also knows the industry enough to mimic console launches and the development process. The cute graphics, the catchy retro bit-tune soundtrack which plays constantly, the constant feedback of stats... it seems to be the perfect mix. There are slight niggles - the interface is a little clunky and the tutorial could do more with highlighting the more complex aspects of the game during the final few years (heck, you can even make your own console at one point!), but you can't argue at the price of admission.
