Game Dev Masters

Game Dev Masters is a game development simulation in which you start as a new solo developer working in a modern 3D office. Train, research and acquire skills, then make games using over 4,000 topic-and-genre combinations. During development, you use the data you have gathered to make decisions about how to spend your time and meet minimum requirements that change as audience expectations shift.

Develop your company

After releasing a few successful games, you can move to additional offices and build a development team. Each worker has their own stats, skills and specialties, which you can improve and use as you choose. Offices can be customized in color, lighting and mood, and upgraded to boost stats or provide buffs. You can also customize your manager and select a one-time manager perk, and adopt, train and specialize a company pet mascot that provides stat perks.

As your company grows, you can acquire subsidiary companies from 15 dynamically generated AI competitors. Train, invest in and specialize your acquisitions, then use their studios to make games for you or work with them on AAA projects. You can also buy and sell stock, acquire AI companies as subsidiaries, negotiate to publish games for smaller studios and commercially license your engines for AI developers to use.

Make and release games

Create games of different sizes using more than 160 topics and 24 genres. You can also develop DLC, console ports, remakes, remasters and sequels. Research engine features to build custom engines, keep those engines up to date as audience expectations rise, and train your workers. You can delay a game to find the right balance and set its price.

Research lets you explore topics, genres and platforms. Workers can gain skills such as Slow Time and Crunch, while conventions, yearly awards and other dynamic events add further challenges. Loans, long-term investments and detailed revenue reports help you manage the business.

Choose a game world

At the start of a new game, you can choose a procedural world or one based on reality. In a procedural world, topic-and-genre matches are unpredictable, so you use in-game tools to discover what works and design games around the rules of that playthrough. In a realistic world, matches aim to reflect the real gaming industry, and you can draw on your knowledge of it or use the in-game tools.

Some requirements are randomized regardless of your choice. Many parts of the game are generated anew in each playthrough, so previous results and guides cannot reliably predict what will work. You need to make sound design and management decisions as the challenges grow more complex with larger games.

Compete for the top

As your company advances to larger projects, each brings added complexity, difficulty and features, leading toward AAA game development. Audience expectations rise over the years, so keeping your engines current and your workers trained becomes important to growing your company and its audience. Multiple scoring systems, global leaderboards and Hall of Fame events let you compete for high scores.