When Mad Games Tycoon came out earlier this year, I was interested in it. Take Game Dev Tycoon and make it more of a Tycoon game. Despite it being in Early Access, it’s developers are active and make constant updates, it has positive reception and is currently on sale for a good price. Unfortunately, I kinda wished I waited.

Mad Games Tycoon:
http://store.steampowered.com/widget/341000/

My first hour of the game was spent trying to figure out how things work. The tutorial gave the simple basics but I spent a lot of the time not realizing that I had to build a Research building, nor did I understand at all how the Priorities work. My games failed miserably and I kept losing over and over. Game Dev Tycoon wasn’t even this unforgiving, even though it does start super rough. I looked up online to see how the game’s supposed algorithms and game development work and not much is known about it. Game Dev Tycoon has full wiki pages dedicated to archiving detail regarding how the game determines the fate of one of your games. Not much is known about Mad Games Tycoon at the moment. Exploring and finding out yourself is definitely a part of these games, but the game itself is surprisingly inaccessible, to a degree where it’s learning curve is worse than Game Dev Tycoon.

It’s problems are shared with Game Dev Tycoon, although that game is way more simplistic and more accessible (And more moddable). It’s music is all stock music that is uninteresting and grating to listen to. Graphics are simplistic but look less dull then GDT does. It’s sliders and ridiculous algorithms for determining game success is way too ridiculous and way too complicated for players to easily form how to understand games. Game Dev Tycoon has a hint system that allows you to get information from research. This is also in Mad Games but it’s done in a more clunkier way. It makes it harder to understand what I’m doing right.

I still love it’s concept. There’s so many missed opportunities Game Dev Tycoon had that were given life here. There’s some real depth here, it’s just that the game fails to introduce you to them. There’s a high learning curve and that’s something a lot of players are still stuck at.

And that also means I don’t exactly hate it either. I just feel like that it still shows that it’s in Early Access. It needs a better way to introduce players into the more complex mechanics and it’s going to need way more features, content, and better UI for me to truly get into it. Better Steam integration would be nice too.

Game Dev-kind of simulation games are weird. They aren’t really accessible games on their own right and it’s kind of a niche market, but I really dig it. It allows players to take mistakes (But not huge risks), learn from it and understand the game’s systems to make super successful games. Mad Games Tycoon is a great step for these kind of games but it’s still not polished yet. It doesn’t have what makes these kind of games enjoyable in a sense. It’s still charming, and most of the users that have bought the game generally liked it, but I personally had a eh night playing this game.

I guess Early Access games are just not for me. They’re unfinished, they’ll obviously improve in the future, and tonight’s experience taught me exactly that. I’ll wait for when it comes out of Early Access and has fixed a few of it’s problems.

For now, I refunded it, but I could take a look at this game in the future when it’s out on Early Access. If you’re willing to give games like this a shot, then go ahead. It’s still not finished and it clearly shows.

Screenshots were taken from the Steam Storefront for the game. I did not record any footage or any screenshots in my play-through.