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 Economy 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
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 Economy 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
Tabletopia
I have a premium subscription to Tabletopia. Based on several games over the past few weeks, I can say that this product is a great sandbox for playing Tabletop games. That said, I’ll point out some caveats.
The community is generally positive though a bit too small to have games running 24/7/365. It’s hard to find a game or players. That said, they do have organized events for teaching and playing games and are expanding the roster of teachers/organizers. Also, after the game reaches final release; more players will be able to be available. Game discussions are generally positive and feedback is welcomed.
– Real player with 185.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Game Development Tabletop Games.
This game is nice because its free however it doesn’t even hold a flame to Tabletop Simulator. This game has some games I have yet to see on Tabletop like S.C.A.R.E. Tactics however this games paywall is painful to say the least. This game contains DLC like Tabletop does but this game also has a subscription system. A vast amount of games are limited in some way because of the need for a subscription. An great example would be Sub Terra. It used to be completely free. Now they added expansions and made it DLC. That isn’t really a problem however they also put the base of the game which was free behind a pay wall. Previously me and 3 other friends would play for free now its only free if you do 2 player coop. Issue with that is if you select 2p coop instead of 1-4 players it restricts your survivor options to only 4 cards instead of all 8 options.
– Real player with 113.9 hrs in game
Axis Game Factory’s AGFPRO v3
Game factory does not make games. It is a level / world design tool. A really good level / world design tool for Unity based games. You see everything in real time. You can play test your levels, run around and stuff, but its not a stand alone game game engine, just a level / world design tool. However, calling yourself Game Factory was slightly misleading, but whatever. On the forum, the developers hint at wanting to one day make it a stand alone game engine, but I’m not sure if its a hint or misleading. Since they call it Game Factory, I have to lean toward the potential of misleading here.
– Real player with 238.5 hrs in game
(tl;dr: Summary at bottom. Also pay attention to review dates….especially the positive ones….)
Update Jan 2019: Seems AGFPRO and Geovox have finally had the option to purchase them on Steam removed for Australians it seems.
Everyone else has my pity.
UPDATE: Some AGF content is game breakingly broken at the moment. Dev ZekeThe Defender aka Alex has posted a fix that requires rolling back AGF to older versions.
Sadly he has also quit AGF. So could be a while before a proper fix is provided. Until then consider AGF broken and I seriously recommend not buying it or it’s DLC’s until the matter is resolved.
– Real player with 135.1 hrs in game
Crapht Box
I remain highly confused, yet extremely intrigued by Crapht Box.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
There are better alternatives.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
Leadwerks Game Engine
Leadwerks is a semi easy-to-use and very powerful game engine written in OpenGL 4 with a deferred renderer. The engine is crossplatform between Windows & Linux, frequently updated, and has a very friendly and active community. With Leadwerks, you can create any game you want, be it an FPS game, 3rd person shooter, a puzzle game, or something super wacky, you can make it in the Leadwerks engine.
Some Of The Great Features
The deferred renderer is the pride and joy in this engine, giving you the ability to easily add dynamic lights and/or static lights with realistic shadows instantly, no lightmap baking needed. CSG level editing (like Source Engine’s Hammer editor) is fun and fast in the Leadwerks editor, allowing you to map out and create a level to test out pretty quickly. The engine is built upon OpenGL 4, making the engine crossplatform between Windows and Linux. A Mac version is currently in the works and should be out sometime in the near future.
– Real player with 1535.7 hrs in game
If you read this before the end of the 2nd December 2014, and you are wanting to be be able to write a 3D game, get this now. Its incredible value at 50% off. If you have and use visual studio and write code in C++, and want to use it to write a game, splash out and get the Standard version too. I bought mine in a previous sale, with -25% off, and have invested many hours in using this latest version during the beta testing of 3.3.
There are lots of video tutorials on you-tube, which are really useful for a beginner to understand how to start to use Leadwerks. The Forum http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/ is a great community resource, which is always worth a visit when your stuck, answers to many of your questions can be found by searching in here. If its not already answered you can ask the community, and there are some really great people who have been using Leadwerks for years, including Josh (Leadwerks CEO) who respond with knowlegeable answers.
– Real player with 979.8 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
Totally Working Game
2000s flash nostalgia I didn’t know I needed, the game memes on itself but has decent potential and is fun to play. I hope the dev continues adding content and tightens up the rough edges & UI
Tortured a ragdoll trapped in a square of eternal torment with a custom .jpeg of my own smiling face on it and related on an emotional level / 10
– Real player with 14.3 hrs in game
yes this is totally working and pretty good game! 5/5
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Villa’s Blinds
Kinda fun game. Problem aside from having to walk everywhere is that they don’t seem to be doing anything else with it. Why not? It sort of feels unfinished. I do enjoy it though. Some aspects of it are really cool (stats on the walls)
It has so much potential to be one of the best. Got mine on sale. Love Sales. Please read the other reviews. Thanks ^.^
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2583598387
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2645208537
EDIT: For those new, I tried to put something together to give a feel for what the game is like. I’m not a good Guide creator but there’s something since there was nothing there before. There’s a lot of Screenshots and some tips. :)
– Real player with 25.3 hrs in game
Villa’s Blinds is a game development tycoon style game where you can live in the game world. It is a little bare right now but there are some fun twists that you don’t get in any other similar games. You start out in a shabby garage with old hardware so the UI may look ugly at first but if you keep playing, that will improve.
It is interesting they chose 2005 as a time period. You don’t see a lot of games set in this era and I like that
There are things to do besides making games like cleaning, eating, drinking, decorating your space. some fun little mini games. Once you move out of the garage you can join a crew. I particularly liked just chilling out by the fire with them even though they dont say much yet. Very impressive for a fledgling Turkish studio making their first game.
– Real player with 16.4 hrs in game
Buildmark
ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL!! This game is one of the best sandbox games I have ever played in my life!! (and trust me, I’ve played a lot of sandbox games in the past).
First of all, I think it’s the only sandbox game that is based around raytracing and that’s an amazing idea in my opinion!
Secondly, for a brand new early access game, I find that there are already many creative possibilities and it will only get better!
third, this guy is alone! Yes you heard me right, it’s only one person who designed this masterpiece and for only one person, it really stands out.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
Simple and relaxing.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game