Game Dev Story Critic Reviews

Game Dev Story almost plays like an eye-opening cautionary tale intended for oblivious or callous game critics.

Game Dev Story is a challenging, interactive overview of our shared gaming experience.

Game Dev Story won't impress you with stellar visuals or an iPhone specific feature set, but it is a well thought out and thoroughly enjoyable time sink, and is even more intriguing if you're familiar with the last few decades of video game history.

Its touch controls are excruciatingly easy and once you pick up Game Dev Story and invest an hour of your time, none of your friends or family will see you again for a very, very long time.

At the end of the day though, even with the lack of killer graphics, I can safely say that I spent more time with Game Dev Story in one sitting than any other game I've played this year.

I'm normally not so hot on stat-based simulation games like this, but Game Dev Story grabbed me and refused to let go. The game strikes a perfect balance between offering a large enough variety of things to manage while simultaneously avoiding a situation in which there's just too much going on at once.

Game Dev Story is easily the best thing I've ever played on the iPhone.

If you own any of Apple's iDevices and are looking for a fun gaming experience that does not involve launching birds or landing planes, Game Dev Story is a sure bet.

All I can say is buy the game now.

The vast majority of iPhone fans probably won't get it. People who care about the gaming industry, however, definitely will.

For a game that relies on stats, Game Dev Story oozes charm and character. You will care about your company and its hard working employees, even when they fail you. It's this winning formula that will see you playing in to the small hours and possibly even laying awake at night, wondering just how you can make that one special game every developer dreams about.

Game Dev Story is certainly one of the best simulation games on the App Store to date. Sadly it's not really optimized for iPhone and it lacks Game Center support or any other social feature. But it has several good irons in the fire, and the mix of humour and completeness recalls some classics like Bullfrog's Theme Hospital. Well, come to think of it, it's so comprehensive that it would deserve to be released on PC.

Fans of gaming will love the tongue-in-cheek references and deep options that Game Dev Story has to offer, but it's a shame this game wasn't optimized for the iPhone.

An intoxicating game about making games, Game Dev Story is a compelling simulation and a charming ode to our favourite pastime.

The menu-based interface is clunky as hell, and the odd letterboxed look of the visuals betrays the fact that Game Dev Story was somewhat hastily ported from another mobile platform. But the quick, turn-based pacing still makes this a pretty terrific fit for the iPhone.

Game Dev Story promise is undeniably alluring: create your game studio and try and make it prosper. It seems pretty rich at first, with recruitment, advertising, genre level-up, training of your employees, advertisement, game reviews etc. to play with, but after 3 or 4 runs, most players will have seen almost everything and understood how to maximize profit and success in the game. Let's hope that the sequel will run deeper for a prolonged satisfaction.

But what GDS ends up proving about game development is this: making simple, fun and, yes, casual games that can keep rewarding players after that first flush of fun is so much harder than it looks.