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Add to SafariWhen comparing Star Command vs Game Dev Story, the Slant community recommends Game Dev Story for most people. In the question“What are the best Android games without in-app purchases/paywalls?” Game Dev Story is ranked 8th while Star Command is ranked 20th. The most important reason people chose Game Dev Story is:
Nearly everything is self-explanatory, and the bits that aren't get explained by your secretary. This makes for a game that is easy to understand, even if it does not seem evident at first.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Beautiful pixel-art that shows off the care taken in the design of the game
A detailed, colorful and varied aesthetic throughout the game. Ships, menus, and cut-scenes are all beautifully made.
Pro Offers a great sense of humor, with a nod to many sci-fi classics
A lot of references to Star Trek and other sci-fi shows can be seen in dialogue and other aspects of the game.
Pro Very in-depth starship management, where you can customize your ship how you like
You get to decide which components go where, which crew members to assign where, etc.
Pro Frantic mini-game combat that compartmentalizes the action quite well
Star Command relies heavily on minigames and time management based gameplay.
Pro Simple and intuitive gameplay allows the game to be accessible, no matter the skill level
Nearly everything is self-explanatory, and the bits that aren't get explained by your secretary. This makes for a game that is easy to understand, even if it does not seem evident at first.
Pro Very engaging due to quick progression and frequent events
Contracts are measured in weeks and development cycles in months, but time passes at the rate of one day per second. Though the core gameplay involves watching little icons pop up over your employees' heads, rarely do five seconds go by without some player action being prudent, if not required.
Pro Fulfils a fantasy of creating a game studio
You get to choose what type of game you want to make, what tools you use to make it, who you hire to make it, what systems you publish the final product on and you get to watch how it is received by the world. Then you do it all over again bigger.
Pro A free demo version is available for anyone to try out
Game Dev Story Lite is available for free on the Google Play store. The Lite version ends after 2 in-game years.
Pro Entertaining business success model typical for Kairosoft games
Cons
Con Not free
Con Unstable
The game might crash often so save often.
Con Game gets repetitive quickly
Since the game is admittedly unfinished, the campaign is quite short and there's not really much to do besides ship combat. Many planets can't be explored and there's no real ending, you just start all over again with the same story.
Con Incomplete game
The developers themselves have said that the game is about 30% of what they envisioned.
Con Game is not free
Con Punctuation and grammar errors
Game Dev Story is a Japanese game that was translated to English, which shows, as sometimes there are a few grammatical errors in game. This shows a lack of polish, which may aggravate some players.
Con Unclear method of determining a game's success
Sometimes it is unclear how to find out how successful a game is.
Con It's very hard to fail
Your employees' salaries are waived the first year ("government subsidy") and you can go into the red to pay them after that. You can't develop a game without some initial funds, but since you can always take a contract to make money, there's basically no hole you can't crawl out of.
