When comparing Adventure Bar Story vs Game Dev Story, the Slant community recommends Game Dev Story for most people. In the question“What are the best Android games with economics-based gameplay?” Game Dev Story is ranked 2nd while Adventure Bar Story is ranked 6th. 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 Well-balanced mix of entrepreneurial and combat-RPG mechanics
While the dungeon-crawling and recipe-management components of Adventure Bar Story could each get tiresome on their own, alternating between the two keeps both fresh.
Pro Gameplay is balanced without in-app purchases
The premium items available in Adventure Bar Story are most accurately described as optional cheats. The game is not overly difficult or otherwise restricted without them.
Pro Impressive strategic depth
Purchases must be balanced between adventuring gear and cooking supplies. Adventuring is the cheapest way to get ingredients and the only way to advance the story. But adventuring will never provide enough of certain stables (salt, milk, etc.) so you'll need to spend a lot of your cash on them, along with additional kitchen equipment and (optional, but convenient) recipes. You can't just ignore cooking, either -- in addition to being your primary income, character levels are gained only by eating!
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 Recipe discovery doesn't always make sense
Trying original recipes is not completely essential, but definitely an important game feature. Sometimes, ingredients go together exactly as you would expect based on other in-game recipes or real-world equivalents. Sometimes, all the things that should work don't.
Con Aesthetically bland
Graphics, sound and dialog are adequate but nothing more.
Con Progression is slow
It takes several hours just to encounter all the core gameplay elements.
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.