Game Dev Tycoon

Really Fun Kick Back & Time to relax & Chill Kind of Game!

I played this game when it released years ago and have recently rediscovered it on my phone. What a fulfilling feeling creating games through all the console generations!

I really love how this game is developed. I love how it makes you feel like you are the owner of your own gaming company, keeping up with the times and trends of what your audience wants. The freedom of choosing what games to develop and on what platform, I love how it can have positive or negative consequences for you. It also helps with the report of what works and what doesn't. I recommend the game. I wish more games were like this for this genre for this kind of direction.

Let me preface this with a suggestion: If you want a way more up to date and very similar game, check out Software Inc. Buy Game Dev Tycoon for the nostalgia and simplicity, Software Inc for modern and complexity.


Game Dev Tycoon was one of the first games I ever pirated, and one of the first games I ever bought. For little me, this game was what made me love management games. It is a very simple game, and after you play for a bit and learn some patterns you will steamroll everything. Match the patterns, you have a 10/10 game.

It pains me to say this as I wished there was more to this, but the current price is perfect for the game of this scale. If there was way more content I would have been fine paying $20-$30 for this game.

I adore this game, here's hoping for a sequel.... One of the best simulation games out there. Even on par with The Movies from Lions Gate back in the day, even though it's all 2D. With limited environments. It's just as enjoyable, if not more because of the great feedback loop it offers. Much love!

In Game Dev Tycoon you replay the history of the gaming industry by starting your own video game development company in the 80s. Create best selling games. Research new technologies and invent new game types. Become the leader of the market and gain worldwide fans.
A journey through gaming history

Start in the 80s
Start your adventure in a small garage office in the 80s. Enjoy the hand-crafted level design while you develop your first simple games. Gain experience, unlock new options and create your first game engine.

Create games your way
In Game Dev Tycoon the decisions you make during development really matter. Decide which areas you want to focus on. Does your game need more gameplay or should you focus more on quests? These decisions will have a major impact on the success of your game.

Grow your company
Once you have successfully released a few games you can move into your own office and forge a world-class development team. Hire staff, train them and unlock new options.

Make larger more complex games
With experience and a good team, you can release larger, more complex games. Larger games bring new challenges and you will have to manage your team well to deliver hit games.
Features

Start a game development company in the 80s
Design and create games
Gain new insights through game reports
Research new technologies
Create custom game engines
Move into bigger offices
Forge a world-class development team
Unlock secret labs
Conduct industry changing projects
Unlock achievements
Modding support
Workshop support
Community translations for German, Rizzing, Spanish, French, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Czech, Swedish, Dutch and Italian are available through the in-game menu.

The full game has many more features which are not listed here to prevent spoilers.

Fun and addictive game to play. Also great mod support.

great game! it has tons of customization potential, and is a fun way to look at the history of gaming!

Trying to understand how to get consistently good scores in this game is almost as hard as making a good game in real life.

It's a decent game; it's quite fun to figure out the best combos for creating a game. It's fun to get reminded of different consoles and platforms that were developed until now, of course with different names attached to them. Unfortunately, late into the game, the game suffers from having nothing much else to do. If you figure out some of the overpowered combos at the beginning of the games, then getting enough money is very easy, and soon enough, that drive to get more is gone. Overall a great game for a simple pass, but playing for a long time is not something I feel I will be doing. 7.7/10

You want a game that you can play casually? With near infinite possibilities? Quirky characters and a modding community that really runs wild. look no further.
Jokes aside, great game, lots of fun!

This game is so fun, everyone should really try it.
Also, the Easter Eggs with the name made me laugh out loud.
I went bankrupt really quick, but I will try again to go even further.

Fun game to play in general ,but the frame drops on the last stage of the game makes the experience less enjoyable overall. If this was fixed I would give the game a 8/10 ,but right it's gonna be a 6/10.

Game Dev Tycoon is a great simulator, although I always go bankrupt!

Honestly, For their first game, its really good. I'm not far in yet but just the 2D style is pretty cool. Keep going, you have potential.

Found this game recently, having a great time playing it! Easy to understand how to play

its fun. nice NOT to worry about something or someone try to kill you somehow. just figure out the winnin combos and go for it

Loved the game since it came out, but only now I bought it. I had this on wishlist for 12 years and now that I am finally playing it, I'd say that it was worth the wait.

Just finished a run after 8ish hours. A fun trip back to memory lane and how game development shaped throughout the years with it's references.

I wish they added an updated version with dlc or a new game but the workshop fixes that a wee bit. 9/10 - all games *shakes fist*

You run a company that makes video games. There's a formula to get good reviews and make lots of money based on the audience type, game genre, platform, and specs. it starts off as a start-up company and then you can build it into a AAA big company where you get to hire employees and upgrade their skills. There's not much replayability after you beat the game.

Game Dev Tycoon sat on my wishlist for a very long time, and I feel a little sad now having played it that I didn’t play it sooner. Its influence on a number of simulation/tycoon games since its release is quite apparent! And the ‘Flash game’ aesthetics are, depressingly enough, nostalgic now in 2025.

Developing games throughout the eras is interesting, as opposed to just an unbound timeline. It’s a fun little historical review tracking consoles and tech as it developed over time. I’ve never really thought about it much, so this game gave me a new, however limited, view into game design and game design history in the real world. Not many games can say that, so I think that’s a unique impression this game left on me.

Despite this, the history is a bit contrived. Sequels being something you ‘research’ and unlock seems odd, as well as some aspects of your game engine never becoming auto-includes also doesn’t play well, even though they conceptually make sense. Overall, the gameplay is extremely research points bottle-necked, and it feels a little weird to be in the middle of the “mbox 360” era and not even have “online games” (for example) easily unlocked. You’d have to decommit from focusing on other aspects which would just then make those other missing things feel strange.

I think it thematically makes sense that some topics and audiences are better for certain consoles, and it’s cute that they are somewhat reflected by how they were in real life, but the game also somewhat incentivizes multiple playthroughs, so it would be interesting if there were another game-mode with shuffled combinations, or different console histories. They already do this somewhat by randomizing the “topics” you can develop for and their unlock order.

On the positive side, you can carry over knowledge from a previous run, and not only in your head, on what works well for each console, combination, audience, etc. In this way, the game is like a “roguelite”, but since this aspect of the game is a massive portion of your success, it makes future runs a bit less satisfying, even though you’re nearly guaranteed to be more successful. And that truly doesn’t feel good. Game satisfaction should be inextricably tied to success.

The game does a good job with time-limited trends “strange combinations” being the best, “new topics” being the least sensical. But the combinations are not as vast as the topics, because for some reason “topic” is a huge pool, and “genre” is extremely limited. And even though we know the games industry exploded over the ages, you never see the number of critic reviews increase, there is really no “divisive” game (neither between critics nor between critics and audience) as far as I can tell through two full plays.

Altogether, this means Game Dev Tycoon encourages multiple playthroughs, but lacks on variety between playthroughs, and so the game is less like a dessert of one scoop each chocolate and vanilla, and more like scoops of chocolate and orange.

Regardless, there’s stuff to like here. The loop is easy to understand, and it’s kind of addictive in a weird sort of way. I found the game hard to put down. My ~15 hours are more like 2 separate sessions of 5 hours each, as opposed to 7 sessions of 2 hours. So, despite all of the small shortcomings, it’s clearly doing something right in my brain.

I think in 2025 you can get better Tycoon/simulation games on Steam, but this does go on sale for a pretty awesome price, and in addition to the game being fun enough in its own right, it’s given me a deeper appreciation for some tycoon and simulation games I’ve played that have come out in the time since, and that’s an experience worth having for someone that likes games and their history in our global culture.

6.5/10

This is a perfect game

I discovered it about a decade ago now from Dunkey and immediately went to buy it. I've played through it from start to finish multiple times and while there is definitely a few formulas you discover that are far more successful than others, it is fun discovering what works and what doesn't. It's a blast watching the scores for your game come in then watching the copies sold number/graph rise week over week and checking through your release history to see the numbers. Releasing sequels and creating engines for specific game types is a really good time that helps build a sort of RPG element if that is fun for you.

[b] Make sure you make the game itself while playing to get an achievement [b]

Their focus on the Gameplay served this game very well.
9/10
-All Games

i feel like antvenom. spent all 22.2 hours drinking soylent and making some of the best games and consoles the world has ever seen. #redditkarma?

This game is a fun little simulator for starting your own video game company. I play both on my phone and on PC, and I've already run several small gaming companies into the ground. Good times!

Truly a fun game that never plays the same each time you play. The freedom you get to make any game any way you want has kept me playing this game for years on end.

This game is the absolute best tycoon game ever. I always loved when the devs broke the 4th wall

Such a great sim game! So simple yet you can really create your own gaming history in a fun and engaging way. A true indie classic!

I really like the simple design and chill pace of game-play. It's a basic simulation game that unlocks features over time, so it's not overwhelming as a beginner.

The solid and steady progress rate makes the pacing fun, and it gives my brain easy dopamine.

Great job dev team!

A really fun and engaging tycoon game. It encourages you to try different genres together and feels like you're in the game development/console race golden age.

A comfort game I come back to time and time again. Sometimes I wish there was a Game Dev Tycoon 2, because just a few tweaks here and there would've made it perfect, but it's still a 9/10, 9/10, 9/10, 8/10. That's a GDT joke :P

I want to like it, but I can't accept how random the chance of success is. I've done dozens of playthroughs, tried tons of combos, got the market research on what's important for each genre, etc. Your success is a cointoss, and that just doesn't feel rewarding.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☐ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☑ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☑ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

Gamers love games so how about playing a game on making games? This little gem offers great fun and infinite replayability. I can't recommend it enough!

Lots of nostalgia, but needs some depth and player agency. It feels like a black box and the skill needed to master the strategy is not clear.

Sure making a phenomena title is like gambling in real life, but I it's the frustrating part of the real life that I don't want to simulate for

although fun at first, it became a spread sheet of combos, and just remembering patterns, lack of rng.

My First Steam Game

Game Dev Tycoon was the first game I got on Steam, and all these years later, I still love this little game. It’s simple, addictive, and with mods, it gets crazy fun. A game I always find myself coming back to!

To be honest just publish games with an editor before having the last studio, it's much simpler.

ironically i have hundreds of hours on a pirated copy of this game

The gameplay loop of this game has always taken hold of me. It's definitely addicting in a good way. There's a lot of depth as well that's continuously introduced as your company ascends. The developer also seems to be a class act.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☑ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☑ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☑ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

---{ Author }---
☑ https://vojtastruhar.github.io/steam-review-template

This game can make one realise that they are indeed creative.

Proof:


- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (AFTER the release of Skyrim)
- Baka Nu School Demon
- The Elder Scrolls VI: REDACTED
- The Elder Scrolls VII: DONT STOP! (which flopped)
- Ashley, This Resident Is Evil
- Doki Doki in 1404
- The Elder Scrolls VIII: Stop.
- Leon, This Resident Is Evil
- This Resident Is The Most Evil
- Dokidokidokidokidokidokidokidoki
- Kalli Linkoks - The Game
- Tesco-
- John Disaster

Nice casual game about games. Gameplay could be better, but it's good for chilling out

great game, but someone stole my bank card while i was afk for 2 minutes

The bubble noise during game development still lives in my head all these years later

One of the first and most simple game development games, with its simplicity meaning its really easy to jump right into and start playing while still having a lot of depth and width to explore. Its addicting as hell and one of the best management/simulation games from an addiction POV I've played

I remember when this game came out in 2013.

How did I only get it in 2019?

And play it in 2025?

It's a fun sim game that allows multiple playthroughs to help you get better.

Kinda like a rogue-lite.

Classic game, though. ^^;

super addicting, and has a decent learning curve. Also sweet easter eggs

I don't know why it is fun. It just is. I apparently devoted 46 hours of my life to this game. Definitely wins in the cost/benefit analysis.

Despite its age it is still one of the better tycoon style games for game development. The experience is further enhanced by some mods which modernize the game a bit.

I'm not sure that more modern games of the genre have expanded on the ideas here to any great degree either (they all have pros and cons), and that just makes Game Dev Tycoon an even easier game to recommend in 2025.

I make-a da video game!!
Super fun little game, really engaging and deep if you wanna get into it