Recent reviews by Dargon Supreme

Game Dev Tycoon is a very addicting adventure through the rise and domination of your own videogame company. There are so many things about this game that I really appreciate: the research that the developers must have put into retaining an accurate timeline for new technology; the massive variety of topic and genre combinations you can form; and the fact that the developers follow some of the practices they preach in their game (such as providing mod support for your games as a way of making them better and more feature-rich). I had a chuckle at the latest 1.6 update, which offered a new Pirate Mode for increased difficulty. To be completely honest, due to a lack of funds I torrented a cracked version of this game in the past in one of its very early iterations; years later I purchased it here on Steam to help the developers, and I'll certainly purchase it again as a gift to friends who enjoy this genre. The current version is so much more developed and mature than the version I played years ago, so I'm glad to see that the developers are keeping up with this game and adding new and enjoyable content.

This game can also be quite enjoyable to play with a group of people. I had a few friends stop by and they showed some interest in Game Dev Tycoon. We ended up spending four hours talking about good games to make and freaking out when we hit a 10/10 game on a publishing deal that took us from 30M to 150M.

I wouldn't say this game is perfect, though. I'd probably give it the frustrating 10-10-10-9 that you're bound to get in Game Dev Tycoon if you've played it enough. I've encountered a few things that I'd like to see addressed.

• The variety of contract work is rather limited. Throughout the game, from your garage to your large game with R&D and Hardware sectors, the contract jobs you can complete will always include Horoscope Generators, Library Software, and Setting up Computers. These jobs make sense for perhaps the garage stage, but I'd like to see contract jobs that better reflect the company's progress. Moreover, contract jobs could be aiding other companies in their game development; these jobs could reflect your team's skill strengths (design or technology) and in what genres, topics, game sizes, or platforms your team has been successful.
  
  
• While I was in the process of developing a new game I received a notification that my previously released game had some unseen bugs that made it to publication and that the community wanted my team to fix these. I couldn't for the life of me find how to address the bug. I feel that, even if I'm in the middle of developing a game, I should be able to allocate one of my team members to fixing the bug. I believe I lost fans because I couldn't figure out how to fix the bug.
  
  
• It almost seems like employees get more lazy over time. I kept my first two employees from their employment to the end of the game. It seemed like towards the end they needed to be sent on vacation after every game, sometimes even during the game's development. In earlier stages, I could complete two or even three games before they needed to be sent on vacation. I'm paying them a hell of a lot more for their experience but they're spending the majority of their time on vacation. Maybe this is by design to encourage the employment of new individuals, but I didn't want to spend funds searching for a new candidate and then spending RP training them to the same skill level of my tenured employees.
  
  
• I believe the game should be slowed down some. I'm not really sure how you could properly reflect the time it takes to actually create a game while also allocating the player more time to explore what Game Dev Tycoon has to offer. By the time my game was over I hadn't finished three R&D topics, had only had my console out for a year, and still had a number of research topics to cover. I know that you can continue playing after the game is over, but I really wish I had the chance to capitalize on the big ticket items that can really make your company take off, like MMOs or AAA games; you really only get the chance to even research these things in (I'd say) the last quarter of the game unless you focus them outright.