Have you ever been playing a game and thought out loud to yourself, “I can make something better than this piece of junk”, or “I can easily make something as awesome as this”? Ever wanted to make your own video game but lack the creativity or knowledge of today’s thingamabob-gadgets and do-hickeys? Well, it is your lucky day. Greenheart Games have released their flagship title appropriately named Game Dev Tycoon, a business sim where you start and run your very own game company.

 In Game Dev Tycoon you begin your journey at the early years of video games. You begin by giving your company a name and by creating your games on a single workstation in your garage. From this humble origin you must now make a name for yourself in the world of game development. Do not worry about about the technical aspects of the game-making process, creating games has been simplified in Game Dev Tycoon. It is as easy as picking a game topic, its genre, and the target platform and you are on your way to creating the next hit.

As the owner, you call the shots as to what game is created; that werewolf RPG game you had rattling around in your brain? You can make it a reality. Zombie romance sim, government action-adventure, transport RPGs? Sure, why not. Mix and match to your adventurous whims.

Actual development is divided into stages where you adjust sliders in order to focus on certain aspects such as dialogue, graphics, sound, and so on. Care must be given to this as each stage will affect how well your game fares out compared to other games of that genre. Action games heavy in dialogue and RPGs lacking in story or graphics may fare poorly in the market, so you must use experience and your best judgement in order to make the game focused on what is most important to that specific game. Not everything will work, but it is fun to experiment with obscure mixes of genres and subjects. You never know what may become the next smash hit.

Every start up begins somewhere

Your options are very limited at the beginning, with only your garage as your office, yourself as the sole employee, and only the early infancy of computer technology as your platform. As time progresses you will gain new platforms and technology to work with as companies form and begin to release new consoles. As well as new tech, you gain experience with each new game released, new tech to research and, hopefully, some income from your game sales for which you can use to fund more projects or expand your company.

Speaking of platforms, the timeline in Game Dev Tycoon develops much like the real-life game industry. As the gaming industry grows, parodied versions of companies such as Ninvento will release game consoles and even form rivalries with other industry players such as Vena. Early on you gain access to consoles such as the Ninvento TES and the Vena Oasis for your game development. Those names sound familiar? These thinly-veiled parodies of real-life companies were a great source of amusement for myself. It was fun trying to guess what the next console or company would be named.

Cleverly “disguised” company rivals

If you have managed your money and releases well enough you will eventually be able to move into bigger and better offices. These offer a much larger workspace than a dingy garage and will allow you to hire employees and expand your company. As you grow even more you can expand even further into the industry by adding your own research department or develop your very own console. This all adds up to more tech, more development options, and more income. The amount of options available to you is simple astounding and frankly a little overwhelming.

I have played other similar game dev simulation games in the past such as Game Dev Story, but GreenHeart Games’ adaptation offers a bit more “meat”, so to speak. The game continued to impress me at each turn and gave me a few chuckles along the way. Very few issues come up with this game other than some frame rate slowdown at the later stages of the game, but it is bearable and it didn’t bother me so much.

I adore this game. It caters to my whims as an aspiring game developer and it just simply oozes with charm. If you want to fulfill your dreams as the head of your own game company or like business sims, give Game Dev Tycoon a go. You won’t be disappointed.

I wholeheartedly agree with their reviews

I would have to agree with the above rating. Simply marvelous.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

Buy or demo the game at GreenHeart Games

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Game jams are wonderful. Some of these quick-fire projects have even gone on to become super popular indie games like the frantic Surgeon Simulator 2013. It’s no surprise then that there is currently one such event happening right now,

The Walking Dead: All Out War Game Jam is one such event, and hopeful candidates have spent the better part of this year building their entries for the occasion. Unlike the frantic 24 hour blitz some jams go for, this one has allowed the developers more time to flesh out their ideas before the final cut off date earlier this month.

So what was the theme? All out war of course! Games weren’t necessarily restricted to zombies either, despite the host’s main theme. 10 winners will be chosen in the coming days, each earning a full Unity Pro license (That’s $1500 by the way), a Steam Greenlight key, special The Walking Dead goodies and featured spots on both TheWalkingDead.com & Eurogamer. The number one pick will also receive the official endorsement of Robert Kirkman, creator of the The Walking Dead series.

In light of the event, I trawled through a number of entries to pick out my 5 favourite hopeful submissions, some were impressive displays of indie talent, and others were just so crazy I couldn’t stop myself from including them.

5.  The Narrow Path

I can’t quite make out what these things are, spewing from the camper van. If they’re zombies that learned to drive, then all hope is lost. The developer lists this as a roguelike, and the art style was just fancy enough to warrant a closer look. Plus, there’s a dog that goes around eating up all the corpses.

4. Remember The Fallen

Remember the Fallen has a slick minimalist aesthetic, and the subject matter takes a more serious and emotional look at ‘All out war’. The player must search the ruined homes in the area to find several flowers, which need to be placed on the graves of fallen soldiers.

3. Dog In A Mech

It’s a dog. It has to drive a mech. I don’t need to say anything else. Seriously.

2. Don’t Make Me Turn This Car Around

This is a genius take on ‘All out war’. Here you test your patience as you wage war on the increasingly aggravating children sitting in the backseat of your car. This seems to be a strange blend of Desert Bus and Oregon Trail, where staving off monotony meets micromanaging the resources (or in this case, snacks and bladder capacity of your passengers) play key elements in the gameplay.

1. Black Death

Sword, crossbows and the medieval time period combine to make this action packed zombie slasher catch my eye. There are even explosive barrels!

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Game Dev Tycoon by Greenheart Games

Greetings fellow indie gamers!

Just a couple of days ago on the 27th of April, Greenheart Games released their very first video game, titled Game Dev Tycoon. Funnily enough, as I’m sure you can tell, this is actually a game about making games. Gameception?

In Game Dev Tycoon, you start your own game development company and are able to jump into the world of making video games. You can either focus mainly on developing your own games (indie) or take on publisher contracts in which you must develop a game of their choosing. After your games are released it’s actually reviewed by four sites, which is a pretty cool addition. This also ties into the publisher contracts, as with these you’re often contractually obligated to make a game that receives a score of at least a certain amount, and are penalized a large fee by the publisher if it doesn’t reach that score. Of course, you’re always free to do whatever you wish in the game and are never forced into anything, even being able to contract your studio out to develop software for other companies. This option doesn’t pay the best, but can be useful as a quick source of cash if you’re in a fix.

You’re even able to develop your own game engines, and integrate the capabilities and features into your engines that you wish to have. Of course, each feature and capability costs a little extra, so you’ll have to be careful to spend your money wisely. There’s also a research tree, so you can research better graphics and additional features for your games (such as a dialogue tree).

While playing Game Dev Tycoon, you’ll have to deal with everything involved in running a game development studio and developing a game. You start developing in your own home, then can move up to an office and hire staff. Studio isn’t doing so well? Maybe you’ll have to fire somebody, even if you don’t want to… just to save that little bit of money every month on their salary. You have to market your games, choose what parts of the game to focus development on, choose who’s developing what part… everything.

All in all, Game Dev Tycoon is looking to be a pretty awesome purchase. It costs a mere $8 and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux from the developer’s Fastspring store. It’s not currently available on Steam, but is up on Steam Greenlight and Greenheart Games has promised to provide purchasers of the game with Steam keys as well, if it ever makes it onto the platform. If you’re nervous about spending the cash, don’t be. The developers have released a demo of the game available for Windows and MAC with a Linux demo on the way, which you can download here.

Vote for the game on Steam Greenlight here.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.