I’ve been playing a lot of Game Dev Story over the past few days and actually managed to get to the end of my second game. Suffice to say, I’ve beaten my first attempt by a long shot. I also wrote down a lot of things, gathering a lot of data about the game.Continue reading
Muffin Co. is in their sixth year of existence and they’re rapidly starting to grow. I’m not completely sure, but it’s very possible I’m way ahead of where Sunny Studios was at this time. I started picking out good combos more often, to keep the snowball rolling.
All of this happened between May 14th and May 16th of 2013.
I decided I should try to play it smart this time, so I picked a few combos I knew worked and started switching them around to make hit games one after another. The two combos I used most are
I also used one extra as my last game and that one ended up getting into the hall of fame. Guess what it was?
Yup, the first game I’ll be able to do sequels for is a game about dating life. Great!
30 points isn’t enough for Hall of Fame, but 33 is. The range is getting smaller.
Outside of that, I also encountered some bad combos as well as some neutral combos, but I was too lazy to write them down, so I can’t remember any of them now.
Quite a chunk of my money went into advertisement, but most of it went into staff training. Most of the profit I got, in fact, went into hiring and training. I used the Anime training on each employee until they stopped getting points in at least two of the four stats. Once that was out, I used the cheaper types of training until those became worthless as well, so now most of my staff has all of their stats around 100.
A lengthy training session unlocked a bunch of new genres and themes.
This means the games are getting better and better.
It looks like I was wrong about direction points. It seems that every time you level up a genre or a theme and that genre or theme somehow matches up with the game’s focus, there’s a chance to gain two direction points. I still get two points every time I get a genre or a theme to level 5, but I also sometimes get points for any level up.
Apparently, the more points in a category I accumulated, the better the boost.
In any case, I now Cuteness, Approachability Simplicity, Game World and Polish maxed out and I’m focusing points into Innovation from now on. I’m not sure but I think direction points affect how the four game stats end up developing. Right now, most of my games seem to have a lot of points in fun, with a moderate amount of points in Graphics and Sound. Creativity used to be low, but it started to get higher now that I have Polish maxed out and started putting points into Innovation.
I can’t find any conclusive information about how it really all works, but stack exchange has a few pointers on how direction points might affect the mechanics in Game Dev Story. Some of the guesses include:
With the Senga Exodus getting close to the end of its life, I ended up buying a Game Kid license, since it was the most popular console on the market. It was worth it because once I started making games for that one, I started making millions. My Dating Life game was developed for the Game Kid.
Robot Shooters and Animal Life games – it works so why change it?
It also might be that, since it’s a portable console, my fun, polish and cuteness-oriented game direction might positively affect the popularity of my games.
Game Dev Story might seem like a simple game, but I have plenty to discover yet. For instance…
Apparently, there’s a unique potential employee roaming the world of Game Dev Story sometimes. When that happens, there’s an event, such as an article in the newspaper or something that tells me this.
This will be my next game. I’m thinking another Hall of Fame entry.
Sunny Studios managed to hire Mister X, Grizzly Bearington and King Ackbar last time I played through Game Dev Story, but I ended up firing them because they honestly weren’t that good. This time, I decided to at least try and stick with them. I’m hoping that, since the game seems to portray them as unique, it might be somehow worth it in the future.
For now, I hired Mister X and King Ackbar. I had to fire a decent producer for King Ackbar, so now I’ll have to spend more money to train him back up to those levels. Mister X was hired early in the game, so he was never a downgrade, but he doesn’t seem that powerful either. I’ll see what happens when I train both of them further.
I decided to start a new game of Game Dev Story, just to see which parts transfer over. For that, I needed to found a new company – Muffin Co. It’s time for cold, hard business.Continue reading
During the last week, I’ve used all of my time waiting in lines, or for someone, or for a train, to play Game Dev Story. I actually managed to get to the end of it, and what an end it was!Continue reading
I’ve been looking at Game Dev Story for a while now, but it was the whole Game Dev Tycoon happening that finally pushed me into getting it for my phone. It’s a pretty cool game, so I’ll play it before Game Dev Tycoon to decided if Tycoon is a rip off as many people say.Continue reading