Game Dev Story is amazing and horribly addicting! Build your game empire through staff, genre mashups, and advertising.
Absolutely Totally Horribly Addicting!: The just-one-more-turn syndrome is here in full force
Designing, Producing, and Marketing Games is A Lot of Fun: The sky is the limit with what games you want to make
Great Simulation of Video Game History: Lots of references starting in the late 80s, moving to systems like the NES, as well as popular games like Metal Gear Solid through hand-held systems and beyond, all parodied.
Hiring and Firing Staff and Leveling your Team is Satisfying: Many great employees if you can afford them, and you can increase staff stats as much as you want
Great Value and Re-Playability: You'll likely want to play it at least 2 times through, 10-25 hours of likely gameplay
Filled with light Parody: famous people, games, and even Kairosoft themselves appear, which keeps things light and not overly-serious
Simulation is slightly limited if you're a stat-geek: can't compare numerous facets of sales history, some genres seem to be missing (science-fiction) or awkwardly confusing, technology doesn't progress past 20 years really (with 1 exception I've seen)
Only 1 Save Game Slot: can't keep your old companies if you want to replay
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Kairosoft has struck gold! Their recent release, Game Dev Story, has light up iOS review sites left and right, and earned high marks from players as well (it's currently the #1 player-rated iphone app). After pouring 25 hours into 2 different game companies, smashing sales records, and hardly sleeping for a week out of obsession, I can easily say this is one of the most addictive games I've ever played.
At its core, Game Dev Story is a video game developer simulation. You start a company and your goal is to create, build, and distribute your own games, beating out the competition, and earning your place in history. Officially, you have 20 years to make it, and when you reach that point the game will mark your current assets and the most you've ever sold of any game. To get there, however, you'll need to build a dynasty. Staff can be hired, trained, leveled, and fired if need be. Development requires rights for developing games for specific consoles (unless you make your own, in later stages) which costs precious money to land a game with large market share. Different genres work well together (Dungeon RPG) while others really don't, granting bonuses or hurting your sales. Genres will need to be unlocked as well, which occurs through leveling staff, hiring new staff, and training them. Marketing will earn you hype and fame with your growing fan base, but it'll cost money to pull off too. All of which means you better make some games that people want to play, because without money you're hard up. Of course, you can always take on a job with specific creation goals that will pay out some capital.
Staff are the core of building a gaming empire, of course, and the more you spend on advertizing (like flying to Hollywood) the higher their likely skills. Every staff person has a specific job (programmer, sound designer, producer) and has levels in programming, storyboarding, art design, and sound development. Programming helps you rack up data points that are used to level staff and boost the game product. Storyboarding impacts how fun a game ends up. Art design affects how pretty your game is and, of course, sound impacts your music. All of your programmers also contribute to originality of a game, as well, which, while not a staff stat, is one of the four grades of any game (along with fun, art, and sound). When your staff work, they often catch on fire, at which time they'll either heap on a bunch of points into one of the game areas, or if their programming isn't great, introduce a ton of bugs. You can always ship a game with bugs, but we all know what that does to a game (looking at you Obsidian!).
Crafting a game is immensely satisfying. As you progress through the game, you'll unlock points to pour into aspects of your creations, with 8 different gameplay aspects to attend to (Cuteness/Realism, Approachability/Niche Appeal, Simplicity/Innovation, GameWorld/Polish). Finding interesting combinations of genres (Cowboy Shooter, Ogre Card Game, etc) can be rewarding as well, and is innately fun if you're a game geek. When you select a genre combination, you must designate one of your staff to write it up (using their storyboarding skill). When the game is 40% done, one of your staff works on the art, and at 80% one of your staff works on the music. When the game is done, you typically spend some time debugging it (if you want) before naming your release and sending it to the world. All along, your staff are pouring resources into the game, and leaving and returning the frequency of which depends on their stamina.
To make a game really sell, though, you don't just need a killer game, you also need people to know about it. The review boards will help if you make a masterpiece, affecting sales. But even if it bombs with the critics, you can make it happen with the fans. Spending money on advertising will increase the hype of the game and the fame of your company, which will boost sales. Going to Gamedex (equivalent of E3 etc) helps too, as will winning awards for your games (which happens once a year, in a little timing minigame).
Week 1 sales is critically important, of course, so the more you can boost hype before release, the better. Random events will also come into play, however. Power-outages and other companies releasing similar titles will hurt you, or on the other hand, being promoted by the console as a top title will vastly help. After years of work, if you can get a game into the Hall of Fame (awarded by the critics) you will be able to create sequels for games, which boost game quality instantly as well as sales. It's a lot of work, but through years of scratching by, eventually you'll amass enough money that you'll be reeling off successful sequels, advertizing with blimps and moon-lettering, and raking in the dough to pour into making your staff even better.
I've hardly touched on the light parody of video game history, but it deserves a shoutout. Seeing Intendro (Nintendo) release the Game Kid (Game Boy) and Woops! (Wii) never seems to get old. You'll also be able to hire parodies of famous people, zoo animals, and other amusing staff to boot. I should also mention that, to really kick butt in the game, you need to level one of your staff to level 5 in all jobs which unlocks the ability to create a console of your own for a big sweet piece of the marketshare pie.
The only downsides to Game Dev Story are on the nitpicky side. You can only have one save slot, so when you replay the game (which gives bonuses for genres you've perfected already) you'll delete your old game, though the records will stand until you break them. Following that, you can only track a few stats. After 25 hours of play, I really wish I had SimCity-esque charts and records for my time. Unfortunately, all you're left with are your last 32 game releases for sales, and your top 10 all-time selling games. It would've been great to see it all statistically, but you'll have to settle for minimal records and resources.
With all that said, Game Dev Story is one of the most addictive games I've ever played, with that just-one-more-minute play, and can kindle the sort of obsession that borders on dangerous. It's $3.99 right now on the itunes store, and is most definitely a must buy.
9.5/10
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PS - for anyone else who plays this game, see if you can beat my Sales Record: 73,559,678