Game #13 – Game Dev Story

Publisher: Kairosoft

Developer: Kairosoft

Platform: iPhone

2010 wasn't a particularly huge year for the iPhone...at least, for the first half. The second half proved much better, with releases of games such as Epic/Chair's Infinity Blade, Apple's game service “Game Center”; but none of them could match Game Dev Story, one of the most surpsingly good games of 2010.

Game Dev Story sees you run a game studio from the around the early/mid 80's to the current day. You hire/fire employees, purchase licenses for consoles, win awards, slave drive your employees, spam out shovelware, all the things that makes current day gaming great! Add a dash of personality (in naming your games and company), and you have quite a fun experience seeing just how many people buy a game with the most offensive title ever.

But here's the weird thing. There isn't much actual game here – once you set up development, you can't really do much aside from attempting to bolster employee stamina or try add bonuses to your current game. Yet that's the weird thing – it remains oddly compelling to see just what works, what games prove to be sucessful, how many games of a type you can spit out before people get sick of it etc. And it's always satisfying to see just just how much money your games make.

For the price it's going for, it's certainly worth checking out. It's made many a lunchtime at work much more enjoyable, and it's one of the few games I've seen provoke some major discussion about on things like Twitter – at one point, just about everyone was talking about it. If you don't care about being late to the party, or need a great mobile game to pass the time – you really can't go wrong with Game Dev Story.