So I just bought this game on a steam sale and I feel like I don't "get" it. I make my first game, it gets mediocre reviews and barely makes a return on investment. Because I still have no other options, I make a second game; that gets slightly worse reviews and doesn't make a return on investment. Within 5 games, I don't have enough money to innovate at all and I can't make a game that earns profit.

Am I missing a core mechanic? It's a little frustrating that this exact situation has repeated 4 or 5 times now.

It's kinda hard at first, but yeah the core mechanic is learning how to match games with genres and get the balance right on all the sliders. It takes some experimentation, but there is logic to it.

@lackingsaint: The core mechanic you're missing is how review scores work. The game compares the games values to an invisible set of numbers to get the scores. These values for the game are based on the ratio and amount of the two stats for a certain game type. The part that brakes it is how the game gets these scores. The scores are based on your best game. So if you don't improve the for your next game, it will get a lower score. It means if you end up with a crazy blockbuster, it becomes very hard to make another one, because you need to significantly beat your old score. It seems to actually be better to do moderately well for most of the game till you unlock the research center. Otherwise you just go bankrupt. It's a really dumb system.

@cronus42: Sounds like what happened to Uncharted and Call of Duty, really. Very realistic.