City Game Studio: a tycoon about game dev
City Game Studio
I joined the open beta for City Game Studio a little while ago. Ever since I have seen it grow substantially. The game has been improved so much in a short amount of time and I can only see it getting better and better from here on out. The developer is very active and takes all the feedback and criticism he gets very seriously. Many of my own suggestions have already made it into the game and whenever an issue arises he is quick to fix it.
The game takes place in a city where you can rent, buy and even build your own studios and exhibitor centers. When your company is doing good you obviously want to expand and get even larger teams working on even bigger titles. The result of that can be very satisfying.
– Real player with 198.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Game Development Sandbox Games.
Overview
First off, on advice from this author’s attorney Frankie “Fine Print” Lymann, copycat games are not a crime. (See Data East USA v. Epyx for proof that copycats do not constitute copyright infringement.) Remember Game Dev Tycoon? Take the awesomeness of the aforementioned game, add interior decorating, an outside world where buildings can be rented, bought, and even constructed, and then add in some nice new ideas (along with a bad idea) and you have City Game Studio. In case the reader doesn’t know, the game is a management sim in which the player starts a game company starting in the year of the player’s choosing, and goes from rags to riches through developing and publishing video games.
– Real player with 43.6 hrs in game
Mad Games Tycoon 2
Let me start this off by saying I love this game and I will continue to monitor the progress, and I will change my review along the way. I am a long fan of MGT series and I decided to support the developer by buying EA game which I usually NEVER do.
However… There are really really BIG issues for me. Before I do get into it I have to say one more thing, english isn’t my native language and I apologize in advance because I will have to write longer to make a point that I could have probably made in one sentence.
– Real player with 143.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Game Development City Builder Games.
TLDR
Pros: Good flow / pacing - Very minimal game breaking bugs - Nice relaxing game
Oks: Some amazing core concepts, but could be taken further - Art / Assets work well, but could use further refining - Each room has it’s own purpose, but some less ‘needed’ than others - Actual construction is well thought out, but the grid can feel too large in places and no ‘clone room’ feature - Random events happen, some of which are utterly pointless depending on the year / progress of the studio
– Real player with 133.0 hrs in game
Crypto Mining Simulator
Can’t really recommend this game. Seems to be pretty poorly constructed. I’ll try to point out some of the design flaws.
Game crashed and dupped the rig I was working on. I broke the game and I wasn’t even trying
UI is pretty confusing. You can’t tell what is buttons and what isn’t.
Inconsistent UI, i.e. you can sell Eth from the escape menu but have to go into the market to sell BTC.
Outside of the tutorial, which is short, there’s really nothing to do but let money accrue. Might as well be an idle game.
– Real player with 30.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Game Development Sandbox Games.
Before I slam this game for all the problems it has, I will say I’d be willing to revisit this after they fix the issues and make some enhancements moving forward.
Pros -
1. Fairly easy to move forward with mining and building
2. Allows one to redesign there room
3. Offers a sandbox environment.
Cons - (there are a lot!)
1. Customer builds never seem to work, After accepting a task, building to spec, placing in customer pickup area …nothing happens.
2. Sometimes buying a rack comes completely assembled
– Real player with 16.7 hrs in game
Game Dev Masters
TLDR: Worth the price (even if I didn’t pay for it, I would’ve) and then some. Super cool Developer that has listened to feedback and implemented suggested changes.
So you’ll see from my account I rarely review games, mainly because I don’t feel that my opinion matters much when people are choosing games as I tend to play differently from most players so I just don’t bother. However, in this instance, I’ve had first hand experience of speaking 1 on 1 with a small games developer and I know the work they have put into this game deserves any help any player of their game could do to help boost its visibility and or sales.
– Real player with 56.9 hrs in game
This game is addicting. I know nothing about developing games and I’m honestly a little confused in this game BUT I am learning and having fun in the process! Played the Demo for free for a few hours and purchased the EA version a few nights ago. Making each game is, for me, a fun process.. learning how to “train” myself to make games, figuring out how to make a hit (not quite there yet at master level), trying not to bankrupt my own company… love the challenges! Failed my company a few times but starting over each time has taught me how to progress in this game farther, faster!
– Real player with 50.5 hrs in game
Game Corp DX
Load of hours with fun for very cheap price.
Probably one of the best or maybe the best Economy-Management Game Dev Simulation ever so far. I used to play Game Dev Tycoon few months ago, it was the last good game dev simulation game.
After few months Game Corp DX came out. It was in early acces, I stayed away cuz of bugs and some negative reviews. Just added it to my wishlist and got it on my birthday as a gift. LOL, I am lucky cause this game is totally awesome.
There is three difficulty mode ; Hard, Normal and Easy. Easy is really easy. You can learn the game basics as like as it’s a tutorial. Then you can play normal or hard without getting bored easily.
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game
I have a fondness for game dev sims, but I didn’t have high expectations for Game Corp Dx. After all, how good could a $2.99 Early Access title be? When I started playing I was pleasantly surprised by it. Rather than a short simplistic game, there appears to be real depth to this title. There’s enough going on this game that I’ve decided to just write the bulk of this review in + and - list form.
Game Corp Dx features;
- Simple and intuitive graphical interface. There aren’t dozens of menus to navigate here, and it’s pretty easy to figure out how to use the ones that are.
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game
Dev Inc
My Character is Zee, i have made it to 100mil + and love the game. I would like to see more upgrades past 2060 and a possibility of multiple teams that can make multiple games at once.
ScuffingtonYT
– Real player with 33.8 hrs in game
this game has a very good idea but there are too many bugs that make the game unplayable like when you get to around 2010 every time you try to make a new game engine literally thye last week the game will freeze and youll loss the money the engine and time and dont waste your time going to the discord because its dead the dev seamed really positive about the game but i wouldnt get it right now there are just too mant bugs
– Real player with 14.3 hrs in game
GamersGoMakers
There once was a time, a long long time ago, when simulation games on the PC meant something. They were large productions and sold well, creating such stars as Sid Meier among others. I bring that name up because, it seems to me, that that is the only franchise that has been able to survive to this day. A true simulation about the creation of your civilization. Your choices mattered and numbers behind the curtain were calculating the outcomes of various action or non actions. It gave you so many paths to victory or loss. Yes my friends, you could actually LOOSE a game back then. I know…hard to believe!
– Real player with 176.7 hrs in game
I was curious of the other Game Management games out there. I started out with Game Dev Tycoon (Throughly enjoyed that game with 200+ hours), then I tried Game Tycoon (Which is absolutely dreadful, don’t waste your time and money. You’re better off wiping your butt than spending it), I tried GameBiz 3 (Enjoyed it for its gameplay but hated it for its extremely poor UI and sales restrictions), and I played Game Dev Story on iOS (Which is great for on the go. I enjoyed it for its simulation, but not very much for its management and lack of interaction). So one day, I came upon this game and I decided to give this a shot.
– Real player with 39.9 hrs in game
Scrapping Simulator
This game is in early access so, you unlock all the available features quickly. As you may have guessed, this game is about disassembling eWaste for scrap materials. You can then sell the scrap directly or spend the time to melt them down to ingots for a bigger profit. Eventually, the world will be much more open and new features are coming.
I’ve logged a lot of extra hours figuring out many of the ins and outs of different processes. I enjoy the “grindy” aspects of this game and look forward to how they’ll adapt to user input.
– Real player with 35.1 hrs in game
game is really fun and easy to get into having a good time playing this game easy and chilled to play. loving all the new stuff and animations but game has some little bugs here and there but can see they are trying to fix them. but loving the game cant wait to see what else they do to the game.
– Real player with 30.3 hrs in game
Software Inc.
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Gameplay
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Replayability
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Building/Office Design
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Realism
-
Developer
-
Stability
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Peer Game Comparison
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Procedurally Generated Worlds
+/- Learning Curve
+/- Graphics
+/- Sound
+/- Difficulty
+/- Interface
+/- Modability
+/- Optimization
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Music
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Campaign
I will mark whether I like something +, dislike something -, or am neutral +/- as I write the review.
You start as the founder of a software company in a standard sandbox enviroment +/-. You can choose the difficulty, speed of gameplay, starting funds, starting time period, traits, and skills of your founder +. You are able to set a basic appearance for the founder, but this is clearly not a focus of the game +/-.
– Real player with 617.8 hrs in game
A10: The polish is coming along pretty nicely although since I posted the review (Late 2016) although I do have to say that some of the changes have made the development process a bit too hit-and-miss since you really have no idea how a product is going to turn out until it’s too late - while the code reviews are a nice addition, they’re not really that useful as far as ensuring a good product as most of the quality control process is out of your hands.
You can also put the best staff on a project, allocate teams optimally etc and it’ll still come out as rubbish, so I don’t know, maybe that needs to be more sensible.
– Real player with 132.2 hrs in game
Game Tycoon 2
- First of all, this is not a Game Dev Tycoon! These two games may share similar topic, but the concepts are different. *
I’m recommending this game, because I enjoyed both first and second game in series, and there are only few games of this genre available. Sure, it has it’s pros and cons, but I think that true fans will find a way to enjoy it.
The game it self may be clunky, with not so sharp graphics, but underneath it is a true tycoon game. Tutorials may be better, but at the end it is us who needs to discover the whole game (yes, game developers wanted to be mysterious).
– Real player with 28.2 hrs in game
Not a bad game, but, frankly, it fails to reach the “standard” quality of the genre,
If you want to check, I own the majority of the “game development” games on Steam (and also some “small” non-Steam productions).
I have put this game at the end of the list and I’m really sorry to say this.
The main problems are:
- there is a good tutorial, but this doesn’t help to understand how a game… sell! There is a strange feedback system that helps very little (there is a quality rating and a “professional” rating: this could work, but, at the end, only makes you create the best games on the market and see them selling very little…)
– Real player with 13.2 hrs in game