Review of the board game Game Dev Sim
About six months ago, while attending open lectures and thematic events on game development, I heard about the development of a seemingly similar game, but in a desktop version, from a Russian publisher – Game Dev Sim.
I’m not a serious board player myself, but later I played the prototype at open game libraries – I liked the idea, the gameplay was brisk, there was humor based on specific situations in game development (and on the topic of IT in general).
I recently purchased the release version of the game (sales only started at the beginning of this month) and played about 10 games solo and with friends.
How to give players the opportunity to loot korovans.
In fact, the box https://viper-casino.co.uk/mobile-app/ with the game proudly announces that this is the first board game whose gameplay boils down to developing your own game. Is that so?? Yes and no.
On the one hand, unlike the same Game Dev Tycoon, the main emphasis here was on the development process, production features, problematic situations faced by developers. The end result – what characteristics the game will have, whether it will become commercially successful – is not a victory condition.
On the other hand, the game is addictive with the signature gamedev feeling of permanent chaos and failure: missed deadlines, demoralization of the team, a bad streak in relations with investors.
Rules and conditions of victory:
Players (or a player, solo is also possible here) get control of one of four game studios (recognizable logos are one of the many Easter eggs to real phenomena and personalities of the industry).
Afterwards, they receive a game project that must be completed within 6 months. 1 month = 1 turn, when the player’s studio is not only engaged in the actual development, but also solves a bunch of related problems, some of which are extremely indirectly related to the flight of a game designer’s imagination – fending off patent trolls, organizing corporate parties, going to exhibitions.
In total, the game provides 60 unique playable situations where players are asked to choose one of 3 proposed options for solving a problem (or opportunity) that has arisen.
In each month, at least 4 are played out, thus the same situations do not emerge from game to game.
In order to cope with these problems (and even start developing a game), you need to hire a team in the available labor market. Specialists are represented both by direct developers – programmers, designers, game designers, as well as marketers (they are the ones who allow you to fill in 4 progress bars to launch a project – code, art, game design and marketing, respectively), and less obvious, but also very necessary specialties – PMs, scriptwriters, testers, producers, HRs and others.
Each studio has a monthly budget (depending on relations with investors), 4 office options for placement, team morale, money in the cash register remaining after paying all expenses.
And here the most interesting part begins – hiring all the specialists, as expected, does not work out due to the budget. Moreover, at first there are difficulties in hiring even the seemingly minimum required number of them. At the same time, it turns out that some money should be set aside to solve problem situations, existing specialists constantly have to be sent to solve other problems – as a result, you can easily find yourself in the middle of a game with a team on the verge of a nervous breakdown, an investor threatening to break the contract and a project that is 10 percent ready (in 3 months they came up with the name and designed the fonts).
In short, this almost permanent oh shit effect is present almost constantly in the first games and with increased difficulty (adjustable at the request of the players, there are 3 modes). In our company this has reached the level of loosing is fun, although perhaps not everyone will like it.
As a result, we have a game more about managing a team and development processes. Proper distribution of resources, assessing the value of individual specialists depending on the stage of development, bringing employees to the brink of exhaustion – all in order to ensure that the project is completed on time (and with the maximum set of additional features, if we want to beat competing players).
The material part of the box seems to be standard – the cards are thick and pleasant, there are a lot of them, the marker cubes are colorful and beautiful, there are also a lot of them. The visual style can be called simple, but it looks quite unique and juicy.
Will the game please everyone?? Definitely not – it will most likely surprise seasoned board players with little, and will not be suitable for principled fans of Monopoly, since you have to think – especially at first – moderately intensely (but, as mentioned above, it is not always necessary to get fun). If you try to sit people at a table with a game who are very far from games and the IT sphere in general, you can most likely also expect misunderstanding, since without its humor and recognition of Easter eggs, it certainly loses its style and charm, turning simply into an office management simulator.
However, minus the above categories, the game seems to be doing well with its potential audience. It’s especially nice that this is an original from a Russian publisher – of course, not AAA from the world of board games like those coffins of yours with Glumhavens, but it seems like its own idea.