I downloaded this little unassuming title without knowing too much about it to be honest. Little did I know that I’d get sucked into a 9 hour vortex only to escape it when my eyes started to bleed from hours of staring at tiny characters on a tiny iPhone screen. This is Game Dev Story.

So this is how it works; you are the President/CEO type chap of a new game development company and you must work your way up the ranks of the gaming world over 20 in-game years. Behind the cutesy graphics lies quite a lot of depth and it is really easy to navigate your way around the screen, despite it not actually being a full-screen game. Not sure why they couldn’t make you play it on a horizontally and given you a nicer screen to look at, but you soon forget that when you get teleported into the mini world of game development.

Your first task will probably be to take on an out-sourcing job for another company, developing special effects or ringtones just to get some cash before you start making your first game. My company (iPlay With You) started this way and when I had enough money I made my first game for the PC, which is the cheapest platform to make a game for.

When you first decide to make a game you must pick platform, genre and type. Different genres and types are unlocked for you as you play the game and level up characters or perform certain tasks and different platforms are released at a specific time in the game. The platforms are all parodies of real life game consoles such as the Intendro IES, the Game Kid or the Playstatus.

Then the development process starts and you must pick a member of your team to write-up the proposal or just hire someone else to do it. The latter is obviously more expensive but in these early days they are much more skilled than your in-house team. The quality of the proposal will depend on the attributes of the person you chose to write it. These are broken up into four basic skill sets; Programming, Scenario (writing), Graphics and Sound.

You then begin development and along the way you pick who leads the team in developing the graphics and then again for the sound. You also pick up bugs as you go which will need to be weeded out in the debugging process at the end of development, although you can release a game that’s full of bugs if you want to get it out early, but this may lead to your product being recalled and getting scored lower than it would normally.

As the development cycle chugs along you will see more “Fun” or “Graphics” being added to the game in a little score meter at the bottom. While I was playing I liked to imagine a real life games studio executive saying to his team “Can we add more “fun” in please guys? I know there’s a lot already but if we can just squeeze in a little bit more I think we may have a hit on our hands…”

When the game is finished it is then handed over to the critics to judge your efforts. If it scores high enough you get into the Hall of Fame and are able to create a sequel to it in the future. For example I had my first success with a kids “action” game called Robo-Bobby, which spawned 11 sequels on various platforms! Robo-Bobby 2 all the way through to Robo-Bobby 9, then Robo-Bobby Jnr (for the Game Kid) and then the next-gen games – Robo-Bobby X and Robo-Bobby: Origins. My best-selling game, however, was The Quest, an RPG-Fantasy game that was fourth in the “Quest” quadrilogy which consisted of Beard Quest, Sword Quest and Quest Quest.

The games strength comes from the fact it mixes depth with simplicity beautifully. The controls are so intuitive it takes no time at all to get into the swing of things. You’ll be cranking out top titles such as “Legend of Helga” and “Bears of War” in no time! Like I mentioned before I got sucked into this game for HOURS, I couldn’t quite believe how engrossing it was. I almost feel like warning you not to get this game rather than recommending it, but I can’t deny someone the chance to play a game that’s had so much “fun” pumped into it.

Overall I’d give this a solid 8/10. It gets marked down because there isn’t much replay value to it as it loses most of its charm the 2nd time round due to repetitiveness. Also the soundtrack is incredibly annoying, I had to mute it otherwise it’d give me a headache it was seriously that bad. That said, it’s still worth a purchase, even if it’s just for the chance to create a series of noir inspired Romance-Adventure games called Le Flange, Le Flange Deux and Le Shaft – like I did.

Try it for yourself, but be warned! It’s VERY addictive!

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