Game Dev Tycoon
BANGER · Strategy · 2013
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
A BANGER at $9.99.
- Length
- 8.6h
- Value
- $1.16/hr
- Reviews
- 95% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, Hardware Accelerated Graphics with dedicated memory. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
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.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $1.99. That was August 2023. It has been discounted 77 times in the 13 years tracked here, typically at 55 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 4 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 1 percent on value. It is pricier than 70 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 99 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Cookie Clicker ($4.99, scores 98) beats it on value, while it beats Prison Architect ($29.99, scores 81).
The press gave it 68; the people who bought it give it 95 percent. A 27-point gap in the buyer's favour.
Steam's global achievement data says about 2 percent of players ever finish it. On an 8.6-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. Of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 17 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2022 to September 2026. That is fewer refunded reviewers than 7 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 2,864 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 2,285 have a larger share. Inside the two-hour refund window, 80 percent of the 2,340 reviews written there were positive, against 95 percent overall, and those are 6 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 8.6 hours. Doing everything runs 26, 3.0 times as long.
The drop-off
98% start to 2% finishMost players never reach the end. On an 8.6-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
157 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Very few games can you make a game called Wagon Age: Oregon developed by MECCware. Anyhow, this game is decent at what it does, although hits are not guaranteed even if you practically put in the makings of "SimCity" or "Oregon Trail" or even "Space Quest" you may not actually get your intended result. Also this game draws a parallel to AI creators perfectly. "I typed characters into a text box, please validate my...
This is a very solid game. Fun time killer. Scratches an itch. 8/10. However, I wish the game reports generated more info for future games and helping you make decisions on the sliders in a more impactful way. I should be able to "learn" from failures or "mid" games and have it impact future games in more impactful ways. We should be able to design game case covers as well, that would be cool and have it effect...
Это первый тайкун за последние... лет 10-15 наверное, который я запустил. По началу игра даёт то, что ты от неё ожидаешь: начинаешь в гараже, пилишь какую-то первую простенькую игру в соло, первые деньги, первый офис, первый сотрудник. Дальше появляются контракты с издательствами, свой движок, бОльший масштаб и часа через 2-3 игра выходит на плато в плане возможностей. Я имею в виду, что масштаб задач как бы...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Game Dev Tycoon scores 86/100 on the BANG Score (a BANGER). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/239820/game-dev-tycoonThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 13, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.