Game Dev Tycoon - 27/52

     So, I’m going to do something a little different for this one.  Tycoon games are kind of a different genre, dealing with more specific player choice than any concrete storyline or gameplay progression.  The gameplay barely changes throughout your normal Tycoon game, and the objective more so seems to be to build something simple and addicting enough to draw people in, but with enough complexity to let them learn.  And, since I’m more going to be giving you a play-by-play of my own journey through Game Dev Tycoon rather than just playing through it, I’ll instead give you my thoughts on the game in the opening.  Game Dev Tycoon is fantastic.  It’s super addicting, super fun and really makes you enjoy living through the actually cruel and heartless world of game design.  Though it does air too much on the simple sometimes, it’s still super enjoyable and I highly recommend all of you play it.  I powered through it in two sittings and I’ll probably do a playthrough again at some other point when I’m not working on the 52.  With that out of the way, let’s start with the article proper.  Also, I’m totally making up some lore here so be patient with me, the game isn’t as in depth as I might be making it seem.  This is basically just me flexing my imagination from this point on.

Full disclosure, all these images are taken from other runs of the game.

     I don’t really know why my first game was a mystery game.  There’s a lot of potential in the early 80s market for, really anything, given that my options were the PC and the G64(a non-copyright infringing version of the Commodore 64), and I’m mostly an RPG guy, so why my first game was Dr. James and the Lost Manor is beyond me.  But I’m glad it was.  Dr. James and the Lost Manor was about a man who inherited a mansion from his recently passed uncle, only to discover the land where said mansion was quite empty.  Dr. James would then have to find clues, solve puzzles, meet wacky characters and, of course, ends up finding what happened to the Lost Manor.  Dr. James was definitely not a hit with critics, only getting a serviceable but not notable 6.5 out of 10, and, really, what else could be expected from your first game.  The important part is how much it connected with audiences.  Dr. James only sold about 25,500 copies total, and that was on the more widely known G64, which had about a 60-40 split with its competition, the standard PC.  But those 25,500 people really dug Dr. James.  It had a likable, down-to-earth protagonist and a great Maniac Mansion feel to it.  It was loved so much by its player base that they would create their own very popular fangame, a game I fully supported and would later make a canon part of the Dr. James series when working on Dr. James’ spinoff series later on.  Furthermore, it put Lariat Productions out there as a small indie game dev studio and I will forever think fondly on Dr. James.  But I could deny my RPG roots no longer.

I had failed to record my original run as I didn't believe this would be a 52.

     Legacy of the Night Watch being bad was probably my fault.  Legacy of the Night Watch was a game about Nocturna, an assassin with ties to the Aztec Empire operating in modern-day southern Mexico and northern Guatemala.  The titular Night Watch refers to a fictional group of Aztec warriors, founded by Nocturna’s ancestor, who would engage enemies in the shadows.  I had too ambitious a game in mind for the era.  A decent-sized Assassin-RPG with a well-written female protagonist and cutting-edge graphics on the G64 was definitely not a thing that was going work.  But also, I was young and stupid and didn’t know how to make RPGs.  I put way too much into Engine and World Design and not enough into Story and Dialogues and it was just a mess.  I don’t blame the reviewers for only collectively giving it a 4.5/10, it was definitely a bad game and a concept I would spend the rest of my career trying to get right.  Unfortunately, it also sold decently well.  Not nearly as well as Dr. James, but it had a steady amount of sales.  And bad game plus decent sales equates loss of fans overall.  For an early game dev studio, that’s a massive hit.  But we kept chugging on anyways, because that’s what you do when you’re making games in the 80s and still learning.

Yeah, as it would turn out, I didn't expect a tycoon game to have, like, a goal.

     The next two games I made were nothing noteworthy.  I was mostly just putting out games to build my experience and studying up on new kinds of games in between games.  In this period, I made Train Tycoon, which is a self-explanatory Train strategy game, and Narlines, my first game for the TES(NES), which was a pet simulator starring the titular Narlines, a species of Narwhal-housecat hybrids that you could play with and love and cuddle in a virtual setting.  Neither of these were especially good, Train Tycoon getting the same score as Dr. James with 6000 fewer copies sold and Narlines getting a really bad 4/10 and being the worst selling game I’ve ever made, but the point was more to gain the experience and I only released them to see some return on my investment.  And, to my surprise, I not only didn’t go bankrupt, but I would instead make the first decent hit of my entire career.

     Pirates of Penzance Turbo was originally just the silly working title for the Pirate/Adventure game I made for the TES.  Pirates of Penzance Turbo was a pretty bog-standard side-scrolling pirate game set in Europe in the 15th Century, primarily in England, France, Spain, Italy, and Greece.  You do all the normal pirate-y things like collect loot, burn things, get in sword fights, have ship battles, etc. I had no intention on ever referencing the Gilbert and Sullivan opera in the actual product.  But as development went on, I ended up really liking the name and the idea of making a more comedic game in tone and making these out of place references to an opera that my player base has definitely not seen.  I mean, I’m already in hot water with critics and audiences, so why not just go all in and make the theme to the Commodore boss fight in world 3 ‘Modern Major General’.  To my surprise, it ended up scoring a 7.5/10 with critics and sold 42,000 copies, and would serve as the oldest franchise that I never rebooted or reimagined.

     After the relative success of Pirates of Penzance Turbo, I discovered that the G64 was, unfortunately, coming to an end.  It being my first console I ever developed for, I felt a nostalgic need to make one more game as a salute to the lovable home computer.  So, I took a recently sent in publishing deal to make a sequel to Dr. James, which I would inevitably call Dr. James in the Catacombs, which would put the lovable Dr. James in the Parisian catacombs investigating a string of disappearances that have been going on for almost 200 years.  This would be the game that would retire Dr. James, as well as introduce us to Sebastien Marseille, a detective who claims to have been wandering the catacombs since 1885 when he went down to investigate the same disappearance.  Sebastien would inevitably lead his own spinoff series, the Monarch Mysteries.  It was also the first game I made to start a trend of having nods and easter eggs to other games I’ve made in it, with one of the marked graves in the catacombs reading ‘Captain Donnell Callaghan’, the protagonist of Penzance Turbo.  Thankfully, my send-off to my original design console was well received, scoring a 7.75/10 from critics and selling a little over 40,000 copies.  As well, it was what I believed would be the end of the official Dr. James series, though I assumed the fan games would keep him alive in all of our hearts.

     After making Dr. James in the Catacombs, I decided to get to work on a passion project of mine.  There was a Sci-Fi, Steampunk RPG I was kicking around in my head for a long time and I finally decided, with the fire burning off Dr. James, to make it a reality.  That game, was Xenocog, the story of a group of knights modeling themselves after the legends of King Arthur and their quest to guard an ancient alien doomsday device known as the Xenocog.  After an assault by the dark armies of Agan leaves these knights dead, it’s up to the last of them, Gawain XXIII, to battle his way through the Aganians and protect the Xenocog at all costs.  It was unfortunately not all I had hoped it to be.  Critics really dug it, giving it a very nice 7.75/10.  And it sold pretty well too, with almost 50,000 copies in its limited shelf-life.  Unfortunately, the game got some serious backlash, particularly in the form of the character Silver, who many players believed to weaken Gawain by how much she ended up saving him and the ending, which had Gawain dying and Silver taking up the mantle as Guardian of the Xenocog.  I was very proud of it and disappointed in how Silver was received but when Vena approached me about an updated remake of Xenocog that didn’t have Silver in it, I totally understood.

     After Xenocog, I decided to take another publishing deal to make the only game I ever made for the Master V(Sega Master System).  Not too much to say about Mt. Olymperestjaro, it’s just a mountain climbing game that got kind of eh review(6.25/10) and sold about 33,000 copies.  At this point, I was feeling comfortable with how things were going forward.  I was growing at a nice pace, had a few good games under my belt and was ready for a steady slide into the big times.  And then the world exploded when I made my first critical and commercial success, the spiritual successor to my old TES game Narlines, Porpors on the Gameling(Gameboy).

     Porpors was the game that changed everything.  It wasn’t super dissimilar from Narlines in concept, this time taking porpoises and combining them with dogs.  But in the years between the two, I apparently go super skilled at making pet sims without even realizing it.  Porpors sold almost 400,000 copies, blowing everything I had previously made out of the water.  It averaged a 9.25/10 with the critics and caused a massive financial gain and a swell in my fanbase.  But most importantly, it raised enough money to allow me to move out of my garage and get Lariat Productions into a real office.  Porpors would end up being tied for the fifth best game I ever made, behind a four-way tie for first place, but it was most definitely the most important game of my entire career.

     It was at this point I decided to start forming my team.  Obviously, now that Lariat Productions had a nice office, I had room to assemble a crack team of the best employees my budget could afford.  I decided to hire two before starting work on my next game, one who could focus on Design and one who could focus on Technology, with me being the balanced one.  It was this that led me to Kiri Wolftill, the best designer a guy could ask for, and Hasir Nebelli, a tech whiz with a passion for soundtracks.  After training these two, I decided to start off small with a prequel for Legacy of the Night Watch set in the 15th Century Aztec Empire and starring the original Nocturna, real name Metztli.  The team ended up clicking faster than I had imagined, but the game itself still was held back by our inexperience working together, and only got marginally better reviews at 5.25/10 and sold just over 31,000 copies.

     After this, I decided to exclusively take publishing contracts for a while to grow our fame and our income, as well as give our team an excuse to grow together.  I started off making two games for Vena(SEGA) for their newly released Vena Oasis(SEGA Genesis).  The Monarch Mystery, the Dr. James spin-off game starring Sebastien that canonized the Dr. James fangame from all those years ago, and Xenocog Redux, the admittedly superior remake to Xenocog that added a lot of new features, new content and changed the ending so Gawain doesn’t die this time.  In fact, Silver was removed from the game completely, with her role in the party being taken up by the relatively minor Rodrick from the original and her status as love interest being saved until a different character and a later game.  These games were both really well-received, both getting an 8.25/10 and both selling over one million units.  Then I picked two pretty bad publishing deals, one to make a parody of Final Fantasy called Rose Quartz for the Super TES(SNES) which ended up being a disaster but thankfully didn’t sell at all, and another to make a Werewolf Simulator that apparently was a bad concept and I didn’t realize it, because I think a game where you simulate being a werewolf sounds awesome.  Unfortunately, ‘The Pack’ was considered even worse than Rose Quartz, but sold actually really well and cost me tons of fans.  I would then spend most of the game attempting to get this series to work before inevitably realizing that people just hate werewolf games.  Along the way, I filled out the team by adding Kevin Flin, a well rounded experienced veteran of the game industry, and Sue Herrera, an up-and-comer who we found while doing a rally to try and encourage more women to follow their dreams and get into game design.

     It was after this that I decided to finally self-publish a medium-sized game.  This is a very risky move at the point of the game I was in as I didn’t exactly have the funds or the fanbase for this to be lucrative in any foreseen way, but I felt like it was a risk worth taking.  And, as it would happen, I was correct.  Penzance II: Dutchman Rising was a hit with critics and audiences, garnering a respectable 8.25/10 and selling 218,000 units.  So, as you might expect, I decided to immediately blow it by making another ‘The Pack’ game, this time a strategy game for PC.  The Pack never stays the same genre, heads up.  It sold a million and was only not considered the worst Pack game because I kept making Pack games.  It was almost a serious hit to the company.  But then, everything blew up a second time.  My long awaited sequel to Xenocog Redux hit on the Playsystem(PlayStation) and sold beyond expectations.  1.7 Million copies on a self-published game.  9.75/10 average from critics.  Xenocog II: The Bronze Battalion wasn’t just a good game, it was basically an instant classic.  Something in the same vein as Final Fantasy VII or Ocarina of Time.  The only question you could have coming off of it is ‘how long until I screw it up?’

     The next game I made was a colorful edutainment adventure for children for the PC called ‘Captain Spizzlefit.’  One game to screw it up.  To be fair, though, I now had a lot of wiggle room thanks to Xenocog.  I could theoretically make dozens of Pack sequels before going bankrupt thanks to Xenocog.  And lord knows I tried.  After Captain Spizzlefit, I thought it was time to finally make a sequel to Porpors.  I decided it would be a cool idea to not only finally deal Narlines into the Porpors series, seeing as Porpors were simply an evolution of the Narlines concept, but the real draw was that I introduced Dolphin-cat hybrids called Dolcats.  It didn’t review super well, getting 6/10 overall and then only sold about 88k.  With two self-published games down with major losses due to lack of sales, I decided to bite the bullet and take out another publishing deal.  Which led to Heist: The Museum Conspiracy, basically just a thief game where you break into different museums to steal artifacts and lead you to a big treasure in the end.  As it would come to pass, basically all my publishing deals would end up terrible somehow.  One could even say I might’ve been trying to ruin the competition.  But Heist was one of the worst, scoring 3.75/10 and selling far too many copies for comfort, losing me a massive amount of fans.  So, clearly, it was time to make a spiritual follow-up to my only ever Master V game.

     Glacial Force was a surprise hit.  An expedition game about traversing the Arctic regions with a cast of likable characters that sold 317,000 copies and got a pretty solid 7.75/10.  Not award winning by any means, but a decent enough game that built a surprising fanbase.  It also marked the beginning of the part of my career where I would start focusing on sequels, reboots and follow-ups more than new IPs, which would inevitably prove problematic when I wanted to create something new or different.  Following suit, my next game was a sequel to Monarch Mystery titled Monarch Manor: Pharaoh's Tomb.  While the game itself was fun and garnered a 6.5/10 and sold almost 300,000 copies, it would, unfortunately, be the game that retired Sebastien.  He was a far more eccentric character than Dr. James, and while he was charming enough in Monarch Mystery, players of Pharaoh's Tomb believed that his character had started to get one note and obnoxious.  As well, my tech may not have been up to snuff for the newly arrived Playsystem 2 era.  Especially since I designed this for the Playsystem and had to quickly port it.  My second PS2 game didn’t fare much better.  As per my usual, when I make a game that people like and a game people are okay with, I take a publishing deal and screw it up.  And that deal led me to create Rio Grande.

     I only made Rio Grande for the sales.  I’ll fully admit it.  I didn’t really try with this western about a smuggler bouncing on either side of the border illegally buying and selling supplies and evading the law.  I needed to attempt to gain fans so I could feel safer self-publishing larger games before I started working on Xenocog III.  I did want to make at least one cowboy game before the main campaign ended, but yeah.  I did it for the sales.  Which backfired, as Rio Grande was the third worst game I would ever release.  Thankfully, it didn’t sell nearly as well as I was initially thinking it would so no big loss.  I instead opted to self-publish a big ambitious evolution simulator and strategy game that would be the only game I ever made exclusively for the mBox(Xbox), called Morphology: a Journey Through Time.  Morphology was the first game to start my trend of obnoxiously putting Porpor cameos in every game I made since I wasn’t sure if I would ever create another sequel to my first big hit after the unfortunate failure of Porpors and Dolcats.  And Morphology was a hit.  Like, a pretty big one.  8.25/10 overall and sold almost 800,000 copies.  You know how the song goes at this point.  Make a hit, time to screw it up with a bad publishing deal.

     Backstreet Boys: Hyper Fighting has a silly name.  It actually had nothing to do with the boy band.  It was about a gang war in the back alleys of Tokyo.  It also wasn’t a fighting game.  It was a beat ‘em up for the PC.  Not surprised this only got a 5.25/10, it was just a dumb joke game and my team finally decided to wise up and tell me that maybe we shouldn’t take publishing deals anymore unless they’re for something big.  Unfortunately, it ended up tied for the third best game saleswise for this point in my career.  It sold as many copies as the award-winning Xenocog II.  Travesty.  I spent the next couple years mostly making sequels to old properties.  I made another Glacial Force game, this time being the only game I would exclusively make for the Game Sphere(Gamecube) about the team surviving in the Saharan Desert that got great reviews and sold 423,000 copies.  I made yet another the Pack game, this one in the post-apocalypse and as per tradition, it sold a lot and was awful.  And I made another Porpors game, this one for the GS(DS), which took the classic Porpors formula and added in some Monster Rancher/Digimon World-style action RPG elements.  It was a major flop and it would dissuade me from making another Porpors game until near the end of my career.  With nowhere else to turn and a lot of loss, I reluctantly took another publishing deal.  This time, however, it was right in my wheelhouse.  The publisher let me have complete control over development with the only demand being ‘make a fantasy RPG’.  And so I made Drago: Knights of the Dragon King.

     On paper, there’s nothing super special about Drago: Knights of the Dragon King.  You just play as the elite knights of a nation of dragons that have assumed human form to live in peace on their quest to eradicate those that would start another war between dragons and humans.  The only really notable thing is that it was the first game I ever release multi-console.  But, Drago would end up being overall the best game I ever made.  9.75/10, which puts it on the same level as my award-winning Xenocog II.  But, more importantly, Drago sold almost 30 million copies.  Unfortunately, as it was a publishing deal, I only saw a percentage of the profits.  But it didn’t matter, Drago ended up making it so I could never make another game again and still retire comfortably.  And then, after that, I made Xenocog III, which also got rave reviews and sold 6 million copies, very impressive for a self-published game.  For a brief moment, I was on top.  I moved out of the office I was operating out of and got my own building.  After filling out my team more with another great designer in Kelly Santerano and my new head of R&D Colin Norton, I started riding the new dominance Lariat Productions had over the market to blow it completely.

     The next six games I made were all targeted at Mature audiences.  It was my first time designing for Mature audiences and I was definitely still finding my footing.  My first game was just a shovelware travel sim that I haphazardly threw together and connected to my third ever game, Train Tycoon.  I managed to somehow recruit Steve Martin into it and gave it the title ‘Steve Martin Tycoon’.  It was basically my ‘Eugene Levy’s Wacky World of Miniature Golf’.  It got terrible reviews and sold over a million copies.  Following that, I made the second-worst game of my career, Odyssey of the Spartan King.  It was a God of War rip off that took you through the events of the Odyssey, but you were playing as Leonidas I, King of the city-state of Sparta for some reason.  It got a 2/10 but thankfully only sold 44,500.  I lost a lot of money on it, but nobody bought it so I didn’t lose that many fans.  Two terrible games in a row, though, caused me to feel like I needed to go back to some of the old, beloved franchises and maybe give them a new twist.  It was time to finally resurrect Dr. James.

     I took a massive risk with Dr. James: The White Water Murders.  My thought process was that the kids who played Dr. James back in the G64 era were now all adults and that I should make a game targeted more towards these original fans.  But at the same time, nobody was playing Dr. James for a mature, gritty story.  Dr. James always had this air of charm more akin to a Saturday morning cartoon, a tone reflected in all the old fan games.  This is what people liked about Dr. James, he’s a normal guy in this bright and colorful but creepy and surreal world.  But it was a risk I was willing to take because I was basically just slowly going bankrupt at this point.  And, to everyone’s surprise, Dr. James: The White Water Murders was a decent sized hit.  892,200 sales and a 7.75/10.  People really dug how we stayed true to the original Dr. James character while updating him for the modern day and the different tone.  And it was cel-shaded so we could keep the Saturday morning cartoon-feel intact in this grittier universe.  With an actual success out of the way again, it was time to get offensive.

     Arthur: King of the Jews was not at all what the title seemed to imply.  It was an alt-history game whose title definitely seemed to imply Jesus being replaced with King Arthur, but it was really about King Arthur being transported back in time to 1000 BC in Jerusalem and becoming their king, causing a radical shift in history.  It was protested by religious groups and, as a result, sold 15 million copies.  The fact that it was a decent enough game didn’t hurt either.  My other ‘offensive’ game I made was very bad and I knew that and I made it anyways.  Romancing of the Bone was just a dumb Romance mini-game collection that I made while the team was on vacation.  It had some nudity in it for no other reason than I was bored.  It only scored a 3.5/10 and 113,000 copies and was pretty quickly buried in the Lariat Productions lexicon.  After my team came back well rested and relaxed, we got to work making two sequels that the market was finally ready for.  Nocturna: Legacy of the Aztecs and Xenocog: The Silver Story.

     I had been waiting for tastes to catch up to Night Watch and the original Xenocog before deciding to make another entry in them.  The games were generally panned by audiences who didn’t like how the games focused too much on real female protagonists.  I mean, this was an era where the main female influence was a yellow ball with a bow and a character who wasn’t revealed as female until the end.  Sure enough, tastes caught up to the two and I was finally able to comfortably continue Night Watch and the intended Xenocog series.  Nocturna: Legacy of the Aztecs was the first of these that I made.  It was both a sequel to Legacy of the Night Watch and La Guardia Nocturna, letting you play as both the original Nocturna and her 1980s descendant in two separate but interlocking stories that helped connect the original and its prequel way better.  It was a critical and commercial success.  Xenocog: The Silver Story, was very similar.  Creating a sequel to a TES game in the modern day may have seemed weird, but I felt that it was important to finally give Silver her due.  I focused heavily on the alternate universe aspect to create the story, showing the events of Xenocog II and Xenocog III in a world where Gawain had died at the end of Xenocog rather than Rodrick.  It got decent reviews and nice sales and would ironically, after years of the original Xenocog’s timeline being called the worse one, would end up doing better with the critics than Xenocog IV.

     It was at this point I was realizing an unfortunate part of how Lariat Productions has been operating.  We had become too well known for our adventure and RPG titles, with basically everything else we’ve mad being either unsuccessful or just bad.  I had decided that, instead of working on Penzance 3, I would start venturing out into other genres in an attempt to make a more varied portfolio.  It was here that I made Extreme Water Polo and Salamander Sliders.  Extreme Water Polo reeked of desperation.  The concept was a failure, how are you going to make Water Polo extreme?  I was not surprised when it was panned and didn’t sell, I was more so surprised it wasn’t panned nearly as much as I thought it would be.  Salamander Sliders, on the other hand, was actually a pretty decent racing game.  It had a cast of colorful, amphibious characters, solid track design, good graphics.  It was a little generic and didn’t meet publisher expectation at all, but what other racing game lets you play as a Porpor?  It got sold really well too, 13 million copies.  Which is super surprising because it was designed for the game’s pastiche of the Wii U, meaning that about half the people who owned a WiiU had Salamander Sliders.  But, all in all, it was a failed experiment and I inevitably started working on Penzance 3.

     I put a lot of time and care into making the third entry in the Penzance saga the best so far.  It finally took Captain Callaghan out of Europe and had him and his crew sail to the Americas to battle all types of crazy monsters of the land, sea, and sky.  And I wanted to establish a fact that I had always had in mind when developing Penzance, by having the past Nocturna appear in the series and teasing a Night Watch/Penzance crossover.  My efforts were not wasted, as Penzance 3 ended up getting rave reviews, tied for the fifth best game I ever made with Porpors, and sold almost 12 million by itself, which is ridiculous for a game that didn’t have a publishing deal.  And, to everyone’s shock, I didn’t follow it up by making one of the worst things I’ve ever made.  Ragnarok: Beginning of the End was not great, it was a very generic Norse mythology game modeled after God of War and only garnered a mediocre rating from critics and 3 million sales mostly on the fact that it was a Lariat game.  But I was just surprised I didn’t follow up a major hit with one of the worst things I’ve ever made.

     Xenocog IV started production immediately after Ragnarok.  I was never intending on giving such a large break between the Silver series and the main series but I needed a break from RPGs either way.  Xenocog IV was the last in the main Xenocog narrative and, unfortunately, I couldn’t keep up the award-winning nature of Xenocogs II and III.  The Golden Giant was admittedly rushed and ended up getting a measly 7.5/10.  Sold a lot, though, so that’s a plus.  It was an unfortunate end to the award-winning saga and if I ever decide to come out of retirement, fixing this will be the first thing I do.  And with one of my biggest series now officially over, it was time for me, to yet again, release another The Pack game.

     The Pack: A New Brood was the last chance.  Part sequel, part reboot, all terrible.  I knew that it was time to put it on the shelf and never look back.  Even if I continue the Lariat Productions playthrough in Free Play, I’m never making another the Pack game.  Thankfully, I followed this up with another Porpors game, Porpors Return, which took out all the unfortunately bad elements of previous Porpors games and made something more similar to the original, though way more on the Casual side of things.  As well, I added mini-games.  Because why not.  It didn’t get near the praise of the original, but it finally made fans care about the Porpors series again after years of it being pretty bad.  I was just happy to finally make Porpors good again, considering it was the game that really started everything for me.

     King of Swing: A 40s Jazz Adventure was the worst game I ever made.  I don’t know what happened near the end of my time as the head of Lariat Productions, but I suddenly was super into Music and Dance games.  I think it was just a desire to make any game that I never made throughout my career proper.  It was a disaster, scoring only 1.75/10 and selling 179,000 copies.  That’s as bad as Extreme Water Polo in the sales.  My attempts to make up didn’t go too well either.  I followed it up with a sequel to Xenocog: Silver Story that ended up going south really quickly.  My staff had been working on opening our new R&D department and desperately needed time off, but I wanted to quickly pump out a Silver universe companion piece to Golden Giant.  Which was wholly unnecessary, as the Silver universe was so disconnected at this point due to all the timeline changes that it was basically a different series unrelated to Xenocog.  Heck, Xenocog isn’t even in the title.  The game was called ‘Silver: Guardian of the Cog’.

     I was getting to the point where I thought I was going to spend the last years of my career making exclusively bad games until the game either ends or I go bankrupt.  The release of Rock of the Titans didn’t help matters.  Rock of the Titans was a retelling of the story of Zeus and Kronos in Greek mythology, with the gameplay of a Guitar Hero game (pre-Live) and a licensed rock soundtrack.  Unfortunately, basically everything went wrong with it.  We clearly weren’t equipped to be making music games and we arrogantly assumed that it would be easy, leading us to make two of the worst games of our career.  Thankfully, neither of them sold well at all and we just cut our losses.  So, what to do?  Make an award-winning sequel to Drago, obviously.

     Drago II is not what I want to talk about.  All Drago II did was take everything that worked about Drago and made it bigger, better and for an older audience.  Instead, I want to talk about the final game I worked on as head of Lariat Productions.  I heard early in the year that, after 35 years in the industry, I was being awarded the lifetime achievement award.  And for that, I wanted to thank my fans with one last game.  Lariat Chronology: The Cross Conspiracy.  A massive crossover game of the beloved Lariat franchises taking place in past, present, and future.  It brought together matchups people always wanted to see, had interesting character interactions and, in particular, people loved the storyline between the main universe Gawain and Silver, as the universe that main Gawain is from never had a Silver and thus he doesn’t know the woman that he was engaged to in another life.  Unfortunately, the gameplay wasn’t there.  It was cooler than it was fun and only amassed a 7.25/10.  But I made it for the fans and they connected with it.  And, after 35 years in the game industry, I opted to finally retire and hand off Lariat Productions to my oldest employee, Kiri Wolftill.  It was a blast.

     If you read all that, I genuinely thank you.  It was fun to design this sort of narrative of my run of Game Dev Tycoon.  I really recommend you play through this game.  It’s full of a lot of great, addictive experiences and this will most definitely not be the last time I play through this game.  I hope you enjoyed this look at Game Dev Tycoon, thank you again for your time and we’ll be back next time with a game absolutely brimming with layers.  See you guys then.

Fire Emblem Warriors -26/52

     I feel bad for the Wii U sometimes.  Admittedly, it was not a great console.  Difficult to develop for, underpowered and poorly marketed, it was just a disaster.  But, like many Nintendo consoles, it was full to the brim with just fantastic exclusives.  One of which, was Hyrule Warriors.  Hyrule Warriors was probably the most fun experience I had with a Wii U game period.  This interesting blend of Zelda and Dynasty Warriors seems like it wouldn’t work on paper but it surprisingly does.  I mean, mostly because it’s just primarily a Dynasty Warriors game with a Zelda coat of paint on it.  Unfortunately, I’ve already completed Hyrule Warriors and, therefore, can’t really talk about it as a 52 game.  But, we need not worry.  Because last year, Nintendo and Koei-Tecmo teamed up once again for somewhat of a spiritual successor to Hyrule Warriors, Fire Emblem Warriors.  And today, we’ll be talking about this second crossover.

Welcome to the world of Fire Emblem!  Are you a boy, or a girl?

     Fire Emblem Warriors stars a pair of twin royals from the kingdom of Aytolis, the prince Rowan and the princess Lianna.  These two will serve as your Lords on this journey, a common Fire Emblem class denoting essentially main character status and Super Smash Bros. eligibility.  Aytolis is a land that is seemingly always in a state of war, with its peace treaty with the neighboring kingdom of Gristonne being a relatively recent development by all accounts.  During a sparring match between the twins and the prince of Gristonne, their childhood friend Prince Darios, an army of otherworldly, cyclopean monsters in various shades of red and yellow start attacking Aytolis.  During the struggle to escape, the twins are separated from their mother during a tunnel collapse, but before she seemingly dies, she gives her children a shield and tells them to seek out the Infinity Stones in order to complete the shield and stop the army.  With no choice, they must now venture the world seeking out these mysterious MacGuffins to stop the resurrection of the Dark Dragon, a ceremony that is being performed by Darios’ own father, King Oskar.  Along the way, they will meet classic Fire Emblem heroes that are mostly from Fates, deal with grand battles that are mostly ripped from Fates and learn what it truly means to be a hero of destiny, apparently like the main characters of Fates.

     Of course, the original story of Fire Emblem Warriors is not exactly the point.  The point is really to give a lot of love to the Fire Emblem series as a whole and as a result, you end up playing more through quick recaps of the plots to previous Fire Emblem games, in this case, Awakening, Fates and Shadow Dragon.  The main story is just an excuse to connect these three seemingly unrelated stories together and your reward for completing these stories is progress on the main plot.  But, honestly, the main plot is pretty decent as well.  It’s a standard FE plot, don’t get me wrong.  I feel like that’s the point, though.  FE has a lot of repeating tropes throughout the series and basically, all of them are present in some way, but that’s exactly what you’d like to see in a game meant to be a massive love letter to the series.  It’s not great, but as a Fire Emblem fan, I felt rewarded by it.

     I feel though it’s going to be impossible to talk about Fire Emblem Warriors without also discussing the games that went into making it in some capacity.  It takes so much of its plot from the three Fire Emblem games it highlights during its main story.  And, honestly, I have thoughts on Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates that I want to share with you and I will pretty much never have the chance to do a full 52 entry on them as I’ve already completed Awakening and I have at least 50% on all three stories of Fates.  So, I’m going to detour right now and talk about Fire Emblem Awakening, Fire Emblem Fates and Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon.  Hooray for long entries.

     I mentioned previously that during the days of the Jake Chapman streams, I watched him play through Fire Emblem games.  In particular, he played through Fire Emblem Path of Radiance for the Gamecube during this period.  What I never mentioned was that this was really my first introduction to Fire Emblem.  I had seen the characters in Smash, obviously, and I had played part of the way through Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon on a GameFly rental, but I had never really experienced what Fire Emblem was like with any sort of depth until his streams.  And I fell in love with the franchise almost immediately.  But I wouldn’t get to play one fully for myself until Fire Emblem Awakening.  The story of Chrom, Robin, and the Shepherds was really endearing to me, I loved the cast of characters so much and, while the story of gathering the MacGuffin stones of ultimate power was cliched, I loved what they did with it.  I fell in love with Fire Emblem because of Fire Emblem Awakening and sought out any way to satisfy my itch for more.  But, looking back, I see Fire Emblem Awakening’s weaknesses way more.  The gameplay is not very deep and oftentimes too simple.  It gives you way too many ways to grind your characters so, if you are playing with permadeath on, you don’t have to worry about getting walled because you can just grind until you overpower it.  And the idea that Awakening probably would’ve been the last Fire Emblem game if the series hadn’t suddenly hit a massive boom in popularity does kind of sour me on it.  But it is still a game I love to death and one I have already played through three times just from how much I love it.

Starring Yuri Lowenthal as the most Yuri Lowenthal role ever.

     I don’t have a lot of memories of Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon.  I played about a third of it 10 years ago when, honestly, I just didn’t have the patience for turn-based strategy, especially when permadeath was a mechanic.  I’ve always been the first to admit that I’m not a guy who particularly cares for overly difficult games and that I honestly probably whine too much about difficulty, but I was way worse ten years ago.  I hated all my current favorite games for years because I was mad they didn’t hold my hand throughout because I was so used to the relative linearity of Pokemon and Kingdom Hearts.  But, really, regardless of the whole not being patient thing and not liking decently hard game mechanics thing back in 2008/2009, Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon just didn't grab me.  I admittedly gave up on the game too early and I would love to revisit it at some point, but my memories of Shadow Dragon are mostly just me not really caring about the story or Marth or anything and then not understanding when my characters suddenly aren't there anymore.  I’ve heard Shadow Dragon wasn’t great though anyways, but I still feel like I should go back and complete it.

Could you believe this is the only picture I got of Corrin in the entire game?

     I hate Fire Emblem Fates.  That may seem strong but hear me out here.  I was super hyped for Fire Emblem Fates.  The game that was advertised to me was a multi-faceted, complex story where the player would have to make tough decisions in a completely gray storyline where both sides are right and both sides are wrong.  And I got hyped.  The idea of there being no clear villain and the player basically having tough decisions with serious consequences was exactly what I wanted for a Fire Emblem game.  That’s not what Fates was.  Fates was a giant narrative mess with no depth or complexity in any way, shape or form.  All three storylines lead to the same resolution, the villain is just one or two obviously evil dudes who may or may not become dragons.  The game recommends you do the Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation in that order because of difficulty if you wish to play the three stories, but difficulty is a meaningless term because the games are structured for completely different play styles and may actually fluctuate depending on if you are playing in Casual or Classic.  Like how most of Birthright's characters are just glass cannons that will die very easily because the game is built for more of the Casual Mode audience the series attracted in Awakening and it manages to skew the difficult to insane levels if you're playing Classic.  Corrin is by far the worst Lord I’ve ever seen, the game builds her up as this great warrior and tactician but in all scenarios, she just behaves like a petulant child who believes she’s right all the time and her siblings just need to see things her way.  Oh, and there’s required party death.  In a Fire Emblem game.  What the heck.

     So, why explain all this.  Well, there’s a big issue with Fire Emblem Warriors related to how these three games are represented overall.  In that they are basically the only three games represented.  Now, to be fair, there are two other classic Fire Emblems represented in here, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia and Fire Emblem The Blazing Blade.  But these two games each have a single representative that you can only unlock after beating the game.  Meanwhile, there are a total of three characters from Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, six characters from Fire Emblem Awakening and nine characters from the dreaded Fire Emblem Fates.  And, granted, Hyrule Warriors also only initially contained characters from three games, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword.  The difference there is that Hyrule Warriors contained far more original versions of classic characters as well as adding more games into it in subsequent releases and DLC packs.  Fire Emblem Warriors only added more from Shadow Dragon, Awakening and Fates in DLC.  And this is my issue, the character selection is indicative of the fact that this isn’t actually a love letter to Fire Emblem, it’s a love letter to only the Fire Emblem games that modern fans would recognize.

This image makes it seem like almost half the roster isn't Fates characters.  It lies.

     And you know what, that’s fair.  I can totally understand why you’d highlight Awakening and Fates over anything else.  I get that by the time this game was being developed you didn’t really have time to know who were going to be the members of Echoes that fans want to see.  It just feels like, with Nintendo’s Fire Emblem crossovers, their focus is more on what’s current and what’s popular than the series as a whole.  Fire Emblem has a rich history full of plenty of great characters that I’d think would be worth spotlighting.  Bring in guys from the Ike series or more from Blazing Blade or Blazing Blade’s followup that was also released on the GBA.  Give more of a reason to have fans look back on the series as a whole and maybe even get them craving some re-releases that you could turn profit on.  I know I’d love to see an HD remake of the Ike games for Switch since those are what really turned me on to Fire Emblem.  It feels like you’re limiting Fire Emblem Warriors’ potential by having such a limited pool of games to draw from.  Though, that might have also been because of another problem with Fire Emblem Warriors’ character selection.

No wait, found more Corrin.  She's so cute in this game, you guys.  Class A waifu.

     Hyrule Warriors benefited primarily from the fact that it was a series that always had a single protagonist, Link.  We all know what Link plays like and that was all they had to represent in making the game.  But then, they got to have fun.  They had an entire cast of characters that we had never played as before, some of which were new and many of which were old favorites who had never been in a combat setting before this, to play around with and create an entire cast that plays almost uniquely.  Fire Emblem Warriors, meanwhile, is beholden to the fact that Fire Emblem has specific classes with specific gameplay styles you now have to represent.  As a result, too many of this game’s characters play the same.  Rowan and Lianna’s only difference is that Rowan can deal hits better and Lianna can take hits better.  Other than special moves and slight unique weapon differences, I don’t think there is a difference between Chrom and Lucina, Leo and Elise, Cordelia and Hinoka, Sakura and Takumi, etc.  It creates a real Fire Emblem feel, don’t get me wrong.  You have a lot of different options in the same role and, because of different Fire Emblem mechanics they also imported, that is overall beneficial.  But it also cheapens the feel of a lot of characters who just end up like carbon copies of other characters you currently have.

     Speaking of Fire Emblem feel, the way this game actually manages to properly import all the weapon mechanics into a Dynasty Warriors setting is great.  If you’ve never played a Fire Emblem before, the game functions on a weapon triangle system.  All weapons have a roshambo feeling where they’re strong against certain weapons, weak against certain weapons and draw against certain weapons.  The basic weapon triangle is that swords get a damage multiplier on axes, axes get a damage multiplier on lances and lances get a damage multiplier on swords.  There are specific weapons that reverse the triangle but it’s otherwise set in stone.  Warriors uses this to great effect, adding a lot of that classic Fire Emblem strategy to a fairly mindless hack n’ slash.  Also, bows are still ridiculously good on flying enemies and I love that because it just means that I can take a small, sickly Japanese girl and make her a dragonslayer.  Sakura is the immortal hero of legend and her songs shall be sung forever.

Fire Emblem Warriors also manages to translate Fates' obsession with fanservice.

     But that’s not the only thing from Fire Emblem that Warriors manages to translate over.  After all, what would Fire Emblem be without strategically ordering your units around to allow as much of the map covered with as little hassle as possible?  Fire Emblem Warriors allows you to pause at any time to order any units you’re not currently playing as to go do specific tasks from capturing enemy strongholds to guarding important NPCs.  This allows you the closest feel of playing FE while still doing your hack n’ slash Warriors thing and it’s much appreciated.  Unfortunately, the AI isn’t especially intelligent in combat situations and will often times just sit around letting themselves get hit so I wouldn’t trust it too greatly.  It is, however, a convenient way to spread units throughout the map so you can readily switch to different corners without much effort.  But if you want to get the full Fire Emblem feel, after you beat the game, you unlock the Tactician blessing where you can just play as the big commanding voice in the sky ordering all your units to take over the world.

     Pair Up is one of the more recent Fire Emblem mechanics, but the impact it had on the series and this game especially is notable.  The idea of quickly building party affinity by having members team up and gain specific boosts from their cooperation both allows your characters more survivability and basically turned Fire Emblem into a dating sim with tactical RPG elements and I’m weeb trash so I wouldn’t have it any other way.  The way it’s used here, though, is possibly its strongest showing ever.  You, unfortunately, don’t get the option to play as every unit you currently have on the field at all times, with many maps having four playable characters and four support characters.  However, you can easily team up your playable and support characters to both give the player characters an extra boost, a free hit if you’ve charged up the pair up’s defense icon, a free attack that could double as a way to aid your character in a battle against a weapon mashup they’re not good with and a dual-special.  This game gets pair up not just right, it improves on every issue that pair up has in the original games.  If only this showing would be present in the actual source material.

     I feel like the most bizarre addition to the game was the decision to keep the permadeath in.  The game gives you the option to play it in both Casual and Classic, Casual being a mode introduced to Fire Emblem in Awakening to ease new players into the formula, being a mode where all dead party members are resurrected at the end of a stage, and Classic being the traditional permadeath mode.  Kind of.  It’s not really permadeath as after a certain threshold is reached in the game, you get the ability to revive party members, albeit with a steep cost.  I don’t know what that cost is, mind, because even though I played on Classic mode, I didn’t have any issues overall.  There was only one time where one of my characters even died, my almighty dragonslayer falling to her older brother, Takumi, the worst Fire Emblem character, and the Fire Emblem in me just caused me to reset the level to get her back.  I’m glad how smooth Classic ended up going, as I was initially worried permadeath would be a serious problem in this kind of game.  But if you do find Classic to be too problematic, the game does give you the option to switch to Casual mode at any time.  Unfortunately, you can’t switch back if you wanted to, so be warned on that.

     I wanna take a moment to talk about History Mode.  I usually don’t mention alternate side modes on these as my feelings on it is that a game should mostly be judged on main content rather than a bunch of side content, regardless how large and varied that content is.  Also, I’m too lazy and too busy to 100% every game.  But History Mode is a worthy exception.  Adventure Mode in Hyrule Warriors was honestly the best part of the game.  Just hundreds of hundreds of extra levels with unique objectives and great secrets to find for those who know their Zelda.  Unfortunately, for those that don’t know their Zelda, it’s a bunch of difficult guesswork to get all the secrets and progress.  History Mode is a similar animal.  Taking you through a series of levels based around memorable encounters in previous Fire Emblem games, including some that actually aren’t Shadow Dragon, Awakening and Fates.  It’s a ridiculously replayable side mode with lots of levels to add onto the game and will probably have you picking the game up to clear a few History battles long after you’ve completed the main story.  And you don’t have nearly as much complicated guesswork because, thankfully, Fire Emblem maps are very straightforward.

     Despite all my issues with the game, I feel like Fire Emblem Warriors is a better game than its predecessor, Hyrule Warriors.  It blends the Fire Emblem mechanics into the Dynasty Warriors formula way better than Hyrule Warriors did with Zelda.  It’s a fun game and one I’d really recommend you play if you like this kind of game but want something a little more complex out of it.  I hope you enjoyed this look at Fire Emblem Warriors and we’ll be back next time with something that’ll develop the imagination a little more.  See ya guys then.