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Game Dev Story |OT| of energy drinks and booth babes. Now for Android! (iOS/And)

Interfectum

Member
i love this game :lol :lol

anyway, i almost destroyed my entire company on a big budget game:

i released a niche title that ended up getting a shitload of exposure and great reviews. sold about 4 million copies. with that money i decided to go major big budget. spared no expense and ended up spending nearly all my cash on developement. during the course of development i had both a blackout and another company released a similar title. released the game to so-so reviews and only sold 500k copies. :lol i almost had to restart the damn game.

i guess it really does mimic real life. :lol
 

Rashanii

Neo Member
God bless this game. I picked it up 3 days ago, and haven't put it down yet. :D My company, BlackList, started off making an action game about ninjas called Red Mist, which sold well, but didn't explode. Since I didn't know yet about the Hall of Fame sequel thing, I simply made my own sequels as I saw fit, so I was up to Red Mist 4 before it hit the Hall, allowing me to make a sequel, which they wanted to call Red Mist 42. I currently have 3 Hackers, a Hardware Engineer, a Director, a Sound Engineer, and a couple of gofers who I should fire so I can hire brand new writers and get more genres. The thing is, I want to make a fantasy themed game, but the genre has not become available to me, and it is starting to frustrate me. But not enough to put the game down, apparently.

I am on my second console, the BlackLight 2, which is a 64 bit BD Console, but the other system makers are still in the PS 1, Game Box era, so I am blowing them out the frame with my games. I wanted to know if anyone was able to unlock a first person shooter theme, because when I tried to do a war shooter, called Dogs of War, it didn't say it was a good combo, but when I did Robot Shooter, it was an amazing combo which made me think that the shooter is more of a frantic Gradius type genre, and not a Call of Duty type genre.

Either way it goes, this game is not good for me. I have my IPhone charging up in my bathroom, where it doubles as an alarm clock for me. Last time I went to use the restroom, I turned on that game, and didn't come out until the alarm went off 4 hours later.

BlackList marches on...
 
Loved the game, but too easy to "break". Just my second game:
Completed a 64-bits/BD console at year 8, fanbase constantly at 9999 (except when it ages, but some moon writings get it back there), all games rated 38+, with graphics/fun/creativity and sounds all above 200, and selling 50M+ (not bad when the IB is less than 20M :D), and even maxed out one character (by the way, the hackers get +1 everywhere when you first upgrade to lvl 2, but they can get up to +20 everywhere after upgrading to lvl 3, worth it...).

The game is fantastic, and I had a blast for 3 days, but I would have liked a bit more challenge...
 

yeoz

Member
lawblob said:
Not sure what the deal is. When I start a new game nothing is retained.
Oh, I should point out that you still need to re-unlock locked types/genres, which means training and leveling characters all over again to get your old types/genres. They just start out at the level they were in your last game instead of new. Also you retain the number of assignable development points from game to game.
 
GalacticSushiman said:
The game is fantastic, and I had a blast for 3 days, but I would have liked a bit more challenge...

My sentiments too. For the price paid, it's good value though.

I'd love to see a sequel, developed natively for iOS with a lot more content though!
 

Rashanii

Neo Member
Am I alone in the fact that I don't want to publish my sequels, or really, any game for any other system now that I have made my own console?
 

Flek

Banned
Rashanii said:
Am I alone in the fact that I don't want to publish my sequels, or really, any game for any other system now that I have made my own console?

you are playing sega? :D
 

Mrbob

Member
I really enjoyed this for a couple days. I have about 6 or 7 hours into it and dominating with my own hardware platform and about 800 million in the bank. There were some stressful times early on though! I'm going to start a new game soon for some challenge again.

I'd have to say Hackers break this game. I have 4 of them on my dev team and they churn everything out like crazy. Especially at level 5. Once I got hackers on the staff is when I really started to dominate.

Hoping this game sells well so we can get a fully fleshed out sequel. Need some late game challenges. I wish there was some sort of late game focus where you gain more market share on your own platform. I notice hardware sales really don't accelerate yet I can churn out games which sell 30 to 40 million on a 16 million install base. :lol
 

W1SSY

Member
Picked this up earlier this week and made some duds until I made the action came Kid Comanche. Since my guys were weak I outsourced a lot of stuff and made my first Hall of Fame title. Since then I have been making Hall of Fame after Hall of Fame. Pretty fun game so far and I feel like it was well worth the price.
 

Mrbob

Member
BTW I'd love to give the Game awards crew a big FU. I made a Fantasy kart game and it got 32/40 and sold like 12 million, but it was considered an odd genre and won worst game of the year. WTF. :lol So I dug down and made a sequel a couple years later on my own hardware. Game scored 39/40 and ended up being runner up for Game of The Year while selling like 25 million copies. I only had one 40/40 game, and I it was an architectural simulation game.

I have to thank the DS system though. It was on that where I finally got some major capital. Had my first big hit with an RPG game and I churned out two sequels right after to build capital. I lost some fan base because of it but I gained it back through advertising and had money to make some more titles on consoles to get big bucks!
 
chris121580 said:
Is there any way to prevent power outages? Those are brutal

Save VERY often (after going from doing the story, then the graphics, then the music, and before taking the bugs), when you see the message switch the game off, go to your save and the message will probably not appear again, if it appears, repeat.

Ive discovered the game is VERY random, even when workers are pitching the ideas and graphics for example.
My Walt Sidney has nearly all the stats above 400, but that doesnt stop him from doing sometimes horrendous numbers. What I do is save before does took place, and if he does bad numbers (less than 30 something) I switch the game off and try again. The majority of times the result is totally different.
One time he did 13, and when I tried again he did 75. Totally illogical for a game like this.

I love the game and have been playing 3 days nonstop, but I dodnt like how random the workers work, when you are basing the game on stats.
 
SpacePirate Ridley said:
Save VERY often (after going from doing the story, then the graphics, then the music, and before taking the bugs), when you see the message switch the game off, go to your save and the message will probably not appear again, if it appears, repeat.

Ive discovered the game is VERY random, even when workers are pitching the ideas and graphics for example.
My Walt Sidney has nearly all the stats above 400, but that doesnt stop him from doing sometimes horrendous numbers. What I do is save before does took place, and if he does bad numbers (less than 30 something) I switch the game off and try again. The majority of times the result is totally different.
One time he did 13, and when I tried again he did 75. Totally illogical for a game like this.

I love the game and have been playing 3 days nonstop, but I dodnt like how random the workers work, when you are basing the game on stats.

it's a game with practically zero difficulty and you still find the need to cheat?
 

Shaneus

Member
^^ Pretty much this. You won't ace the game on your first play, but you will on your second or third. Are you against learning? My second game I managed to develop TWO consoles and shitloads of games rated over 36.
 

epik

Member
After 20 years..

here are my stats

Sales Record 39,741,873

Highest Capital 192,050,600


edit: not to mention i didn't win GOTY ever.... grrr so hard
 

scotcheggz

Member
My robot game "Mechs Factor" totally bombed, my RPG "Viva La Vivi" was mediocre but my animal education game "Flanimalz" was a multi-million seller. I'm catering to casuals and their money feels goooooood :lol
 
bsjezz said:
it's a game with practically zero difficulty and you still find the need to cheat?

Shaneus said:
^^ Pretty much this. You won't ace the game on your first play, but you will on your second or third. Are you against learning? My second game I managed to develop TWO consoles and shitloads of games rated over 36.

Oh, look at this people calling me cheater.
Yeah, I discovered this in my third walkthrough, so dont worry for my soul, I beated the game two times without a problem, with great games and with a shit load of money without doing that cheat.

Im only saying I find bad that a game based on stats works so randomly. If they want to increase the difficulty try making that, when workers have little bar left, work worse that when they have it nearly full or full, or make a stress bar that increases with too much work (like the second game in PC seems to have), that makes the game more tactical and could make it more difficult in later levels. Dont increase the difficulty ARTIFICIALLY by doing that my 400 points worker randomly does a incredibly shitty job and not because of my fault (they way I control my workers)

Another totally diferent thing are the power outages, now that is well placed, becuase they really are random in real life. What you can do to improve this, for example, is make that after some years and making it very expensive you can buy from the businessman a secure power suply to stop, or deacrease this problems.

BTW, I aced the game in my first play, is that easy. You dont need to cry for me.
 

Shaneus

Member
You're telling people to save often and if a certain decision doesn't go your way, close out and reload... and you expect us to NOT call you a cheat? :lol
 

qcf x2

Member
Flek said:
you are playing sega? :D


That's what I did, released a bunch of oddball (I prefer "genius") titles, but then made two consoles and kept my shit exclusively first-party.

Highest scoring game: 39
Highest selling: 55 million (a sequel to an Architecture RPG of all things).
End revenue: 378 million
Total: 44 games, 580+ million sold

I just felt horrible for firing this 1 employee. She gave a heartfelt goodbye. :(

It was funny selling 55 million copies on a console that sold ~25 million. Ppl really did buy it twice/thrice!

Edit: I should say I pulled a Nintendo. Developed 7 Hall of Fame franchises then hit the Sequel button. :lol
 

Atilac

Member
This game is fucking awesome, except for the fact I can't locate a hardware engineer.
My best selling game is an online sim about swimsuits: named "Tanlines" 22.761 million copies on the xbox 480.
Before that it was PersonaWhet2 on the Playstatues2, 18.6 million copies. It was a romance sim that scored 40/40.
 

qcf x2

Member
To unlock the hardware engineer position, you have to level up one employee to max (5) in all positions. This means using the position change item the salesman sells you.
 

Atilac

Member
qcf x2 said:
To unlock the hardware engineer position, you have to level up one employee to max (5) in all positions. This means using the position change item the salesman sells you.
ah, ty
 

john tv

Member
qcf x2 said:
To unlock the hardware engineer position, you have to level up one employee to max (5) in all positions. This means using the position change item the salesman sells you.
I've unlocked it without ever doing this, FWIW. I think maybe it can be across all employees (not just one).
 

Chris R

Member
No clue how I'm screwing this game up so bad. Put together a solid combo, do my best with my people and still I only sell like 200k. Won't ever have enough money to buy the 5m+ rights for the newer consoles it seems like. I should just probably start over :|
 

Fantastical

Death Prophet
I was really happy to hear Ryan talk about this on this week's Bombcast. He was really loving it. Hopefully it will bring more sales to the title, which it really deserves. It's on the front page of Giant Bomb right now.. don't know if that means a lot of people are checking it out or if its there because they talked about it on the Bombcast, but I'm happy to see that. :D

rhfb said:
No clue how I'm screwing this game up so bad. Put together a solid combo, do my best with my people and still I only sell like 200k. Won't ever have enough money to buy the 5m+ rights for the newer consoles it seems like. I should just probably start over :|
I've started over a couple of times now because I also suck. Are you firing people? I wasn't at first, but the people you get at the beginning are easily outclassed later in the game by people that can make much better games.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
This is only for the iphone/pad/etc right? I don't have the means to play but am really engrossed by reading all the impressions. Sounds so fun.
 

Fantastical

Death Prophet
LiquidMetal14 said:
This is only for the iphone/pad/etc right? I don't have the means to play but am really engrossed by reading all the impressions. Sounds so fun.
Yes it is. As far as I can tell this is the developer's first game, so maybe it will expand to other platforms once they gain some money. I hope they do, and I hope they expand upon the idea.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Fantastical said:
Yes it is. As far as I can tell this is the developer's first game, so maybe it will expand to other platforms once they gain some money. I hope they do, and I hope they expand upon the idea.
Hope this expands onto PC/XBL/PSN or any platform which will have it.
 
Ugh, all productivity killed again today. I spent 4 hours straight playing this when I should've been working on a project... :lol

At least I released a 64-bit Blu Ray portable!
 

Rashanii

Neo Member
I don't know... it seems to have a weak shelf life to me. I have played for one week, and now I am at the point where every single game that I make comes out at number one and sells millions. I have the best console, and I won all 4 of the game awards. It is getting repetitve fast.

What that means is that I will simply put it aside for 3 days, and I will be in love with it all over again... This game is crack.
 
Okay, so I've never made a game that scored over 26 or 27 and whatever I try, it just doesn't happen. Also, what the fuck at a graphics artist not being able to create new graphics for two games in a row?

So, my question is: How do the 'boosts' work? Their results always seem to vary for me from 6 to 20, regardless of the person. Any tips (on making great games)?
 

Ninja Dom

Member
Use Boosts as often as you can but vary the people using them, a person who has already used a Boost probably only does half the Boost points the next time round. Boosts give the most points when they haven't been used before.

As I said in my earlier posts - wait till you move to your 3rd office. Immediately hire new staff using the Hollywood Recruitment and hire HACKERS. These people change the game for you.

Until you hire Hackers your game progress is always mediocre.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
My 'Warfair 3' sold a massive 49.7m units total with a 10/9/10/10 score. I'm guessing that 50m is the max total of games you can sell.
 

Ninja Dom

Member
kinoki said:
My 'Warfair 3' sold a massive 49.7m units total with a 10/9/10/10 score. I'm guessing that 50m is the max total of games you can sell.

Naaah, I've done 63 million before.

To get super high sales you need it to be an official Sequel and if possible, you need the console manufacturer to promote your game. This has happened to me twice but the game I was releasing was on MY OWN console so I was the console manufacturer. Don't know what variable needs to be triggered for this to happen though.
 

Nocebo

Member
Fantastical said:
Yes it is. As far as I can tell this is the developer's first game, so maybe it will expand to other platforms once they gain some money. I hope they do, and I hope they expand upon the idea.
The developer seems to have tons of games. All in Japanese though. And most of them only on mobile phone. There's a version of dev story on PC, but it's also in Japanese.
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
Rashanii said:
I don't know... it seems to have a weak shelf life to me. I have played for one week, and now I am at the point where every single game that I make comes out at number one and sells millions. I have the best console, and I won all 4 of the game awards. It is getting repetitve fast.

What that means is that I will simply put it aside for 3 days, and I will be in love with it all over again... This game is crack.

Same for me. It was fun for a couple of days. I'm done with it. Don't regret having bought it tho.
 

Jintor

Member
Great little game. Finished my first 20 year run with Clan Flank, highest was a 32 million shipper and I had at least one 39/40, but the GOTY eluded me for my entire run. Game is way too easy once you get hackers, I don't even understand what precisely it is they do. Fun game but I agree with all them dudes who have wishlists of things they want in a sequel. I'll probably take one more runthrough over the next week or two and then put it away.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
Ninja Dom said:
Naaah, I've done 63 million before.

To get super high sales you need it to be an official Sequel and if possible, you need the console manufacturer to promote your game. This has happened to me twice but the game I was releasing was on MY OWN console so I was the console manufacturer. Don't know what variable needs to be triggered for this to happen though.

The odd part was that I was developing that for my very own console but the console itself had only sold in 16 million units. Meaning everyone that bought it must have bought 2-3 copies.
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
fun game, but I feel like you it's way too easy to just... win.

once you have your first two or three million sellers it's easy streak. I mean, buying Lunar Landings or whatever becomes child's play. I do it once or twice per game... just because, you know, I have more than enough expendable.

I'd love a more fleshed out mid/late-game.
 
Ninja Dom said:
Use Boosts as often as you can but vary the people using them, a person who has already used a Boost probably only does half the Boost points the next time round. Boosts give the most points when they haven't been used before.

As I said in my earlier posts - wait till you move to your 3rd office. Immediately hire new staff using the Hollywood Recruitment and hire HACKERS. These people change the game for you.

Until you hire Hackers your game progress is always mediocre.
:lol

Hired two hackers (is that the max you can have?) and instantly got a Hall of Fame game. Thanks :D
 

Jintor

Member
I have three Hackers. They really are cheating; they need bigger penalties :lol I guess it's not really a super serious game but goddamn do I want it to be
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
Jintor said:
I have three Hackers. They really are cheating; they need bigger penalties :lol I guess it's not really a super serious game but goddamn do I want it to be
yeah, once you can hire the three hackers the game becomes a wash
 

Barrett2

Member
donkey show said:
Ugh, all productivity killed again today. I spent 4 hours straight playing this when I should've been working on a project... :lol

At least I released a 64-bit Blu Ray portable!
I also released the same handheld! Mine is the 'Extreme Boy,' 19% market share.

I think for my next play through to keep it fresh i will develop only for the shitty consoles. No Game Boy or PS1 development. A little extra challenge. ;)
 

Merino

Member
Played it like crazy over the weekend. It's got an incredibly addictive quality like many have attested to before me,.

It did get rather shallow around midgame though and I kept wishing more options and freedom (like multi-game development) and kept noticing the shortcuts within the games code (like your previously released game going down in the chartz despite being nr1 because you release a new game). It was also a bit stupid that Intendro could have both a console AND a portable but I had to discontinue my market leading console when I tried to release a portable system on top of it.

My conclusion being.... GIMME Game Dev Story 2 NOW!!


Grasshopper Entertainment Year 20:
65 Games, 739,510,638 units sold, 9439 fans, Gamedex Record: 94,438 people

Top10 Selling Games:
1. Passion Island 7 (Review: 38) - Romance Simulator (also GOTY) with 46,766,328 units
2. Passion Island 6 (Review: 38)- Romance Simulator with 44m units
3. Zen 5 (Review: 40) - Ninja Action with 44m
4. Tumbleweed 3 (Review: 37) - Western Shooter with 42m
5. Fear Fantasy 3 (Review: 37) - Fantasy RPG with 36m
6. Oily Men 6 (Review: 37) - Wrestling simulator with 36m
7. Planet Shogun 5 (Review: 35) - Samurai Online RPG with
8. Rotterdam (Review: 36) - Harbor Sim RIPG with 21m
9. Zen 4 (Review: 39) - Ninja Action with 24m
10. Passion Island 3 (Review: 37) - Romance Simulator (also GOTY) with 24m

Console Development Cycle:
Year11: XanaX - 64bit, DVDROM, Console (best selling game: Passion Island 3, 24m, GOTY Award), Marketleader at Discontinuation
Year15: XanaX Lite - 64bit, BDROM, Portable (best selling game: Zen 4, 24m), 2nd Largest at Discontinuation
Year19: XuXoR - 64bit, BDROM, Console (best selling game: Passion Island 7, Largest at End Game with 16% Share
 
Just finished my second playthrough. My company, Emergency Trap, finished with a capital under year 20 of $1,130,455.5k.

My highest selling game was a Life/Swimsuit game called OMG She Fine! @ 64,003,642 units sold. It was the sequel to Girl Age. :lol
 

Enco

Member
One of the best games on my iPhone.

Really fun even though I'm not very good haha :lol

It can easily become not only one of the top iDevice games but one of the better games out there if it's updated and fleshed out more.
 
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