When comparing Game Dev Story vs Golf With Friends, 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 Golf With Friends is ranked 76th. 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
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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
Pro Simple, but fun
The simple controls are easy to pick up, but hard to master. When you're playing with friends, it's a nice competitive environment with ample originality and thought put into the level design.
Pro Interesting ranges keep players enguaged
From rolling logs, rotating parts of the range, and super-speed convener belts, the more difficult ranges have obstacles which would be virtually impossible in real-world minigolf.
If you want to go even more interesting, you can change your golf balls out for cones, which will roll unpredictably and turns the difficulty up to 11.
Pro Active developers
This game is still extremely early access, but the devs are regularly updating with bug fixes and additional content.
Cons
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.
Con Hard to view the range before shooting
Some of the ranges have obstacles which are hard to see before shooting - for example jumps over a streams, drops, or other obstacles. You can zoom out and pan around from your starting position, but you can't preview the range from the top.
Con Non-ergonomic menu
The main menu isn't very intuitive, but it does look nice. After a bit of hunting you can find what you're looking for, but it could certainly be made easier.