Dev Game

What is this?

An in-depth developer simulation that focuses on staff and products. The only graphics are a simulated window based OS, no placing furniture or spending time designing pretty offices. This game is being made by a solo dev, Jerry, the main aspiration behind it is wanting a simulation/tycoon game with real depth that limits the amount of magic items that so many other games rely on.

No magic, it's just simulations all the way down

In other sim/tycoon games you pop into a build menu and buy a desk and computer for your staff to work at, that computer doesn't actually belong to any company, you can't build your own to replace it, and it can't run the software products you develop.

In this game if you want your staff to work on a computer you'll have to buy or create one yourself, you'll need to install an OS and suitable software that your staff can use. They'll even simulate running the software and hardware every turn, meaning if it's slow or buggy their productivity will suffer. If you completely overhaul the UX of the program it'll impact their productivity and they'll need time to learn it.

Your first computer

Making the first computer involves developing an Instruction Set for a CPU, GPU, a fabrication plant for manufacturing them and then a Kernel and OS. The ISA generates machine code but you'd soon want to create a programming language to speed up your software development. You can freely mix languages in a single software product to balance optimization and productivity, it'll be wise to use a scripting language for your game's level designers and to hire an assembly-like expert to speed up that killer graphics routine.

Following the OS you'd make a design app and a programming IDE, then assign all the products to your staff for their use. Each turn your staff simulate running the programs on the OS down to the CPU, determining the performance, bugs encountered and work output. Customers all do the same when they buy and play games.

Patch those bugs and add those features

Bugs and updates are vital to this game, want to be generous and update your game to a new game engine free of charge? Go right ahead, add in those shiny new features without restrictions, you're always free to make your own Daikatana or DNF.

Porting your game to multiple consoles and computers is available and you're free to add and remove features to optimize for each release. You can also help fund your project by having timed exclusive content on one system, or you can stick to your ethics and release the game's source code for others to learn and mess around with. They might even use it to create their own game that dominates the charts.

There are some limits to your powers.. If you're hoping to make a bug-free OS maybe set your aspirations a little lower! QA is vital and bugs are everywhere, the more complex the software the more bugs there are waiting to be discovered. Just like in real life you need to acknowledge that your software is always abandoned, never finished.

When can I play?

I have no firm release date in mind, I do have an intention to keep it free though so no need to save up for it. It's been in development since 2020 and the product simulation and design parts are shaping up nicely with plenty more work to go and there's no economics being simulated yet. It'll take a few more years but I will probably look into alpha/beta releases when there's a good chunk of gameplay available.

I'll try to post a dev log here every so often to keep you updated on my progress, the first one will give some details on what is possible right now and what I'm aiming to achieve over the next few months.