Mobile phone games.
That tag alone is enough to make most veteran gamers roll their eyes and think about Angry Bird copycat games.
In fact, I have to admit that until recently, I didn’t think there was much in the way of phone games that could hold my attention for any length of time, excluding the ubiquitous Scrabble clones.
Enter “Game Dev Story” from Kairosoft.
This game had me spending more than one night on the couch, trying to run a successful game development company and leaving my consoles and PCs untouched and loveless.
The premise of the game is, as the name implies, running a game development company.
You can choose a name for your company and start in a small office, ready to start hiring staff members and making some games!
The game gives you the option to choose the theme of the game and the genre. This can lead to many classic combinations, such as a historical golf game, pirate racing games, or an anime puzzle game (although I guess anime really works with everything, huh?).
Of course, you can also make more sensible combinations, like a robot action game or a historical strategy game.
Combining is important because some combos work better with gaming audiences than others.
At the same time, it will improve your experience in creating these games, so that your company is better at creating these types of games.
Of course, you will also need to decide which platform your pirate racing game will be released on.
All the different platforms have different costs associated with them, and before you can develop a game for a console, you’ll need to lay down a few greens for a one-time license fee.
When development begins, you can choose who will work on different parts of the game, such as the script and graphics.
You can use your in-house staff members or you can spend some money on outsourcing the work (a way of showing trust in your people, boss).
When the development of the game is complete, his team will begin to eliminate any bugs in the software.
Here you can be a cynical greedy bastard and go ahead and release the game with bugs, or you can let your guys finish the job and polish everything (so you can decide if you’re playing Obsidian or Blizzard).
When your game is released, reviewers will judge it (sadly, there’s no option to bribe reviewers, so I guess it’s not that realistic of a game) and then it’s time to see those sales numbers start to add up.
You can also help the process along by spending some of your money on advertising campaigns, which can be anything from radio ads to advertising on the moon, depending on the size of your wallet (and the severity of your megalomania).
Games that receive high critical acclaim end up in the hall of fame and you will be able to make sequels to them.
But if the sequels don’t make it to the hall of fame as well, then you can’t continue with that series anymore.
So Super Pirate Racing 2 had better live up to the high standards set by the original!
There are plenty of other cool details, like training your staff or attending an E3-type gaming convention.
Game Dev Story really grabbed me with its surprising depth, and what long-time gamer hasn’t fantasized at one point or another about creating their own game?
Picking winning combinations, nurturing them through development, seeing them sell millions, and create successful sequels feels incredibly satisfying.
I can only recommend that you check out Game Dev Story if you haven’t already.
It’s an incredibly addictive experience and definitely the most fun I’ve had with my phone since I jokingly called Nokia and thanked them for making such great phones.