Started playing Game Dev Tycoon but having trouble keeping your head above water? Check out our success guide for beginners, with tips and tricks for making great games and keeping your company in the green.
Last week Greenheart Games’ hit simulator, Game Dev Tycoon released on iOS. The game, which turned out to be one of the best simulators we’d played in a while, involves starting your own game development company out of your garage and growing it beyond your wildest dreams. While making a hit game might seem like a walk in the park, it doesn’t take long to realize there’s a lot to think about when starting your own company and trying to release a successful product. If you’ve been struggling with bankruptcy or a long list of games that just aren’t making it big with your audience, we’ve put together this beginner’s tips and tricks guide to help you on your way. In the game, there are a number of rooms or offices you’ll move to on your path to becoming a game dev tycoon and each room requires different strategies to succeed. While the majority of the tips in this guide focus on success in room one, the ideas continue to be applicable even in later stages of the game. If you’re beyond room one but are still struggling to survive, you can check out our addition guides, here.
Game Dev Tycoon Beginner Success Guide: Tips, Tricks And Strategy For Making Great Games
The first room of Game Dev Tycoon could really be considered a tutorial level, but that doesn’t mean it’s without challenges. In this room, you’ll be experimenting with combos and platforms to figure out which pieces work best together. This can prove a challenge as each game costs money to develop and if you’re consistently developing awful games, you aren’t making much of a profit. We played the first room several times and though each time was a different experience, it allowed us to pick up some good info on how to ace it.
Research Wisely
In the first room, you may be tempted to start researching stuff right away, but honestly, it’s better to hold off until you’ve developed 2-3 games. Research costs money and research points and in the beginning, you don’t have a whole lot of either. Your character starts the game with four topics already unlocked. It’s a good idea to try developing at least three of these before starting any research. By this time you’ll have enough research points built up to develop your first game engine, which plays a big role in the success of future games.
Always Generate Game Reports
Something you will constantly need in this game is more research points as they are used for researching more topic and genres and developing your own custom game engines. You earn research points by developing games and conducting research, but also by generating game reports.
In addition to giving you research points, game reports provide valuable information for your game dev journey. In the reports, you’ll be given clues about how well the elements of your game worked together. You’ll get advice on best combos for genre, topic, platform and more. This data will be stored and will show up while you are developing new games to guide you in choices you make. As a result, generating game reports is probably one of the most helpful tools for success in the game. Don’t forget them!
Think Carefully About Combos And Features
If you spend any amount of time playing video games, you ought to have a decent idea of the types of topics and genres that work best together, so use your intuition! Many of my hit games have happened when I’ve considered my favorite games and why I enjoyed them. While we do have a complete list of best combos for genre, topic and platform available here, we’d encourage you to experiment with these on your own as it’ll make the game far more interesting. One thing to pay attention to are patterns you see inside specific genres so that you know which areas of development to focus on. For example, if you are developing a simulation game, we found that the most crucial areas of development are engine, gameplay, AI, level design, and graphics but that dialogues and quests weren’t too important. Focusing development on non-important features can actually hurt a game that would have otherwise been successful so be sure to keep track info gleaned from game reports about development features.
When In Doubt, Use PC
As you progress through the game more and more platforms will be introduced and you may feel nervous about which one to pick. As we played the game, the safest platform seemed to be PC. If a game platform has you stumped, go with PC. It’s cheaper and a decent match for nearly every game genre in the early stages.
Get A Game Engine Built
As I mentioned before, early in the game one of your goals should be to build your own game engine. The initial research will cost you 50 research points, and then you’ll need to research additional areas like mono sound, 2D Graphics etc. After you’ve made your first four or five games is probably a great time to begin researching a new game engine. Then alternate your research between learning a new genre and adding more pieces to your game engine. Once you have researched the basic story, graphics, sound and engine upgrades, work towards building the engine. It’ll make a big difference in the success of your future games.
Avoid Contracts Unless You Must
Being successful at Game Dev Tycoon is as much about resource management as it is about choosing great game combos. In the early stages, you may try to do too much too quickly and end up in a financial tangle. Contracts can be appealing at times like these because you get money upfront for doing a particular task, but in most cases the money is a pretty small amount for the time you invest. Time you could have spent developing your next hit game.
Avoid Scams & Shady Propositions
At times you’ll receive different offers via encrypted messages. These come in the form of offers to give secret info about competitors, sabotage offers or offers for investment in your company. All of these will turn out to be scams so take the high road and ignore them, no matter how tempting they may sound.
Hold Off On Marketing
Depending on how long you are in the first room, you may unlock the marketing feature. Although this feature can be useful in building hype later, for your early games it seems a bit of a waste as the cost is quite a lot compared to the income you are making off of your early games.
Don't Be Afraid To Start Over
One thing I appreciate about Game Dev Tycoon is that there's no shame in starting over. If for some reason you get a bad topic list to begin with, or you just don't like how things are going, you can restart the game and all the tips you learned along the way will transfer with you. Not only does it make the game more enjoyable, it' also givesit a greater shelf life as you'll find yourself restarting even after you've beaten the game, just to unlock more features or create a successful company even faster.
- no in-app purchases
- easy to learn
- grows in complexity at each level
- designed for replaying more than once
- tons of achievements, genres and data to unlock
- not many character customization options
