The wait is over. The full version of Game Dev Tycoon is available now on the Windows Store. You can visit the Store page here:
http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/app/game-dev-tycoon/4f09063e-be82-49bf-8051-0650cbef707e
To find out more about the features of the full game visit our updated website:
http://www.greenheartgames.com/app/game-dev-tycoon/
Have fun playing!
We have been very quiet lately but that’s only because we are focused on getting the game done. We have said all along that our plan is to release Game Dev Tycoon later this year and slowly but surely our time frame is closing. As it is often with software projects we are a bit overtime but we used the time well and made the game bigger and better than we initially planned. Now, after a year of hard work and some very intense months recently, Game Dev Tycoon is feature complete.
Since Microsoft is the last deciding entity we can never guarantee a date but our estimate is that the game will be available for PCs and intel-based tablets later this month. For an up to date estimate you can visit our status page.
Right at the moment we are testing the game extensively and tweaking some balance-related things to make sure that the difficulty is right and that different play-styles work well. We estimate to have this done this week by which point we will prepare the release and submit it to the Windows Store. When this is done we just have to wait for the game to pass submission. Usually this takes around 5 days but in case it gets rejected for some reason (which we don’t expect) it could take another 5.
Please see the updated Game Dev Tycoon page with a lot of new information and new screenshots.
The lite version is already available on ARM devices and running quite well but we are seeing some performance issues in the full game, particularly in the later level where you have many characters on screen. We are optimistic that we will be able to deliver the full game for ARM devices soon but since we currently do not know the exact cause for the issues we see we cannot tell for sure. Once the first release is out the ARM version will be our priority. If we are lucky we can solve everything before Christmas, if not it will be early next year.
Once the first release has settled a bit and we have the ARM version sorted we will start to make the game translatable. There is a surprising amount of text in the full game so this will take some time to prepare. At first we will likely translate the game to German (because we are both native German speakers so this makes it easy to test) and then we will consider other languages based on demand.
Last night a small bug-fix update to Game Dev Tycoon Lite went live in the Windows Store.
This update is of special interest to players using the new Microsoft Surface device. We have fixed a number of performance issues which slowed down gameplay on the Surface.
Here is the complete change log:
v1.1.1 – 03.11.2012
– Gameplay adjustment: For some games, PC sales were not strong enough compared to other platforms.
– Fixed: Trashing a game does not apply experience gains.
– Fixed: Rarely buttons do not respond in notification windows.
– Fixed: Double clicking a button can cause the game to close.
– Improved: Greatly improved overall performance on Surface.
– Improved: Enhanced typewriting animation performance on Surface.
– Improved: Slider and time allocation preview performance.
– Improved: Skipping tutorials now skips all previously displayed tutorial messages, not just the first few.
Meanwhile progress on the full game is good. We have the artwork almost wrapped up and there are only a few features to finish/polish before we can go do some extensive testing. Our plan to release it ‘later this year’ seems to hold up well.
To celebrate the Windows 8 release we leave you with this image (click for large version):
Microsoft not only released Windows 8 to the world today but they also accepted a little update to our Game Dev Tycoon Lite app to the Store. Thank you Microsoft 🙂
You can get the update from the Windows 8 Store. If you don’t have Windows 8 yet you should read up on it here. Until January next year Microsoft offers a fantastic upgrade offer that allows you to upgrade from Windows 7, Windows Vista and even Windows XP(!) for just under 40$.
The full version of Game Dev Tycoon is still under development. We will post some new information about the full game in due course.
Our little preview has just hit ten thousand downloads on the Windows Store and more importantly many of you have decided to give us a positive rating. We could not have wished for a better welcome!
We are busy working on the final game as we are on track for a release later this year. Hopefully you won’t have to wait for too long once Windows 8 has hit shelves around the world. We will announce when the game will be available through the usual channels (newsletter, website, twitter, facebook).
While we don’t want to spoil the full game by listing in-depth features and answering every question we wanted to give you a few answers:
If you want to provide us with feedback or suggestions you can simply send an email to support@greenheartgames.com – while we might not reply to every email we promise that we read every bit of feedback we receive. We are also happy to see your end-of-preview screen shots if you want to share 🙂
Patrick Klug