Early game tips needed

[Rabble]

All the games i made ended up being complete flop with bad reviews.
One of those game was very high budget for the time with top notch features.
I started in the 1980s
Anyone got any tips on how to proceed early game?

[Starloss]

Don't hire anyone until you are making games from 70+.
Select 1 genre base for your company.
Develop 1 game for that genre.
Put your char in researching QA, the game report is the most powerfull weapon in the game, will tell you how much effort you must give in each category, the sub-genre that fits well with that genre in specific, if you are right in the design (story, ambient, core-player, etc).
Later, when you have researched the QA, create a QA room with 1 or 2 desktops, put your char in that room and make a report of your first game.
Make another game in the same genre and make another report, keep pollishing your knowledge and soon you will have a game with 95+ in ratings, from now you will have enough money and knowledge to do whatever you want

[Rabble]

thank you.

[Chief Wiggum]

Create 4 (and eventually 5) rooms in the first Building:
Bathroom (4x3)
Lounge (4x3)
Research (4x3)
And when researched – Quality Assurance (4x3)
Development (the rest of the space)

The Start -
Employ 2 more people at the start that will be part of the Dev team. At the start, move everyone (me plus the other 2) to the research room, to research the hot topic at the moment and the first 2 gameplay features.

Don’t start creating a game until you have the 4 gameplay features unlocked (2 given by the game and 2 researched), otherwise your games lose money in the long run. Early Games are English only to make the games profitable.

Add more people to the dev team (I work with 5 people in the initial dev team, 1 game designer (me), 1 sound, 1 graphic, 2 programmers, all with Error-free trait. Error-free is the best trait for all employees in the Dev room.

[jjheims]

I agree with the rooms, but I also cram a graphic studio into that first building as well. I found it makes all the difference in the world and really pushes my game ratings up there until I can buy the second building.

[MrMalfor]

graphic studio and sound studio as fast as you can. it has a big impact on the points in graphic and sound.
and skill the levels of technologies and features. (means, use it again and again. higher skill level boost the points too).
you "can" put a graphic and sound designer in dev team (many people will tell you), but it have only a little impact and makes your gameplay and technic worse.
better to only have "you" in the dev room. save money and youre the best designer at start.

[Shaorma pa paine]

Originally posted by Chief Wiggum:

The Start -
Employ 2 more people at the start that will be part of the Dev team. At the start, move everyone (me plus the other 2) to the research room, to research the hot topic at the moment and the first 2 gameplay features.

Don’t start creating a game until you have the 4 gameplay features unlocked (2 given by the game and 2 researched), otherwise your games lose money in the long run. Early Games are English only to make the games profitable.

Add more people to the dev team (I work with 5 people in the initial dev team, 1 game designer (me), 1 sound, 1 graphic, 2 programmers, all with Error-free trait. Error-free is the best trait for all employees in the Dev room.

That is actually part of the strategy I've proposed on hard mode (early game), here - https://steamcommunity.com/app/1342330/discussions/0/3114770279406318642/?ctp=5.

On normal difficulty you can employ everyone from the start, and still don't loose money, cause you'll get much better reviews if you create a game with the correct settings - use a guide like this https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2374616129 or make your own game reports if you like discovering things on your own.

Originally posted by MrMalfor:

you "can" put a graphic and sound designer in dev team (many people will tell you), but it have only a little impact and makes your gameplay and technic worse.
better to only have "you" in the dev room. save money and youre the best designer at start.

Nobody disagrees with having the separate Music&Sound and Graphic Studio making the games shine, but to research them you need 1mil in total. You don't have that amount at the start of the game, so until you research and create those rooms it would be desirable to have a sound and a graphic designer from the get go, to have better sound and graphics reviews early on. Then, when the specific rooms are built you can move them to the respective teams and by then they would also have their stats improved. The gameplay and controls are improved by the QA team, which is more affordable early on and much more needed, so you don't actually get a worse technical review.

[yutterh]

Make a 4x5 dev room, 4x5 research, 6x3 bathroom, and a 3x5 loung. Just put in a low level lamp and 2 $500 pictures in each room for a the quality, put two radiators in each room position to heat the rooms. Put 4 desks in all buildings. Leave a 4x5 for QA. Immediately start the research on QA. It leaves you with $300k for other things. Do not be afraid to borrow from the bank, just remember to pay it back. Get one game designer, programmer, graphics, and music in your dev room as soon as possible. Do some short assignment contracts to get some extra money and do a contract that has about 30% for the bonus. You need something easy to hit. Inbetween getting the QA you may want to research the genre and topic trend. when you make your first game it helps to have those adding bonuses for you. The second your QA is up get game testers. Only use the QA to upgrade your games, it is wasted on contracts. If doing a contract only use the QA to get rid of bugs. Make sure you also toss out a couple of updates for your games you make 2-3 would be fine if you can afford it. This should be good enough to get you going until you can unlock the next building and get the support, graphics, and sound rooms up. hopefully rng will be on your side and you will get the people you need when you need them to fill the rooms.

If you want, I have a video of me playing on hard. it is 2 hours long so you may not want to watch the whole thing. you can skip to when i am building the rooms, to see how i set things up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20e7uMilDVg