its fun and quirky simulation. The art style is charming, and the mechanics of managing your own game studio are enjoyable, though the pacing can feel a bit slow at times. It’s a great choice if you enjoy casual management games, but don’t expect complex mechanics. For those interested in the world of game development, it’s a lighthearted and accessible experience. :))

OMG, I did not see that ending coming. I could compare it in some aspects to another greatly popular game I've played, but I won't, because it would give too much away if I made the comparison. There's a good deal of content here, enough to keep me playing for over a dozen hours. The game plays much like a visual novel. There are portions where you can walk your little avatar around the area, or use a map to get around quickly, and I found it more convenient and expedient to use the map.

I enjoy games where the main character builds relationships with other characters, and that's what drew me to play this game. The main story line in the game is all about creating a video game with four fellow high school students as part of a game development club. Each of the others in the club have a particular role (Art, Music, Design, or Programming), and it falls to you to help whoever needs it the most at any given time. Play is broken into time slots within days of the week. You get to choose where to focus your efforts within free time slots, while other time slots are fixed with regards to certain main events, though even within those fixed events there's plenty of freedom to make choices.

Quizzes pop up in the game on a regular basis, and the answers typically deal with one of the four game dev stats you're so keen on raising (Art, Music, Design, and Programming). Correct answers increase related stats. If you know the correct answers from your real-life experience, then great. Otherwise, you can pause the game to do a web search and likely determine the right answers. In this regard, the game becomes an educational opportunity, something I've rarely seen to this extent in other video games I've played.

Mi♥♥♥ames pop up on occasion, and doing well at these can also increase your game dev stats. Some of them are timed, and the quicker you finish the mi♥♥♥ame, the more the associated game dev stat increases. I did decently well on most of them, but sometimes only got the minimum amount of points available. Save the game before playing a mi♥♥♥ame so you can try again if necessary.

Nearly every in-game Friday, you're asked to have one or two game dev stats at some minimum level. I always managed to do pass the check, so I'm not sure what happens if you don't. As long as you put in the effort and do decently well on quizzes and mi♥♥♥ames, you should make the Friday checks. Toward the end of the game, I had a close call, but still made it.

The humor in the game had me laughing more than any other game I've played recently. You may need to know certain things to get the jokes, and it might help to be a game dev or at least an aspiring one yourself to get all the humor. But if you get it, it's great. If you don't get the in jokes, there's still plenty of other humorous moments. The banter between the characters is awesome, and all dialogue is well-written. It was a pleasure to read it, and a welcome change from so many other visual novels where the English is translated from some other language.

This is Act 1 of the game, with a promise of a continuation. Act 1 ends on such a cliffhanger, especially given how the game starts. When you start a new game, pay attention to the week number and who you're talking to. That's all I'm saying about it here.

Pretty much every named non-player character in the game has a relationship stat which you raise by interacting with that character. As the stats reach certain levels, you can get new stories unlocked for that character. While playing Act 1, I unlocked several stories, but there were many that I didn't have a chance to actually open and play. I'm assuming I'll get the chance to continue open and play the unplayed stories once Act 2 is released. Even if that's not the case, the missed stories could be played during another playthrough, which increases the replayability of the game. A skip feature is implemented to help with replaying the game.

The game includes background music and sound effects. I typically turn off background music in a game and listen instead to music from a paid streaming service. That's just how I operate, unless a game's music is so integral to the experience that I'm compelled to listen, and that wasn't the case here except for a couple of places in the story. So I won't comment on the music in this game, even though my Music score at the end of the game was higher than any of the other game dev stats. I did keep sound effects turned on, and those included in the game helped with immersion. I really liked the ocean waves.

Sometimes the character sprites or background images were displayed at times or in ways that didn't quite match what I was reading, causing minor breaks in immersion. Also, I don't remember seeing (m)any CGs or animated cutscenes, and having a few of those strategically placed in the game would have been nice.

Some scenes have characters in skimpy swimsuits, but there's no nudity as such. The game doesn't have mature content per se, but there is some colorful dialogue that parents might not want younger children reading. This game really isn't intended for kids anyway.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game, and will be among the first to buy and play Act 2 when it's released. I'm more than ready to see where this game goes from the twisted ending of Act 1. For me, the game rates 9/10. Throw in some CGs and/or animated cutscenes, and maybe I'd give it 10/10.

I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH, THE DEVS BETTER MAKE ACT 2 :c

i think the game is going a bit too hard on the gpu for no reason, i have a gtx 1060 it's getting around 1900 rpm and peaking around 71 degrees(celcius) very quickly.

EDIT: i made the mistake of leaving the game for a while in the background when i came back to play theo's story the game crashed and now i'm left with a corrupted save file that i cannot load into and a bunch of wasted time :/

Great game can't wait for act 2. The ending pissed me off tho...

This game WAS beautiful. It's a slice of life game, where you hang out in a club making a game and getting along with everyone, even the conspiracy theorist. However, I regret getting to know them. My life will never be the same. This was trauma incarnate.

As a newcomer to the VN, or Visual Novel, genre, I wanted to test out a few games to see if this type of story-driven games are interesting enough for me. Thankfully, it seems I stumbled upon a gold mine.

I Wanna Be A Game Dev managed to make me laugh harder than any of the self-described "comedy" game I've played before, made me more invested in its characters than I thought it would or could, and left me salivating for more even after my 11 hours of playtime (which seems to be a well above-than-average runtime for a VN).
I wanna breakdown this review into sections as I got a lot on my mind.

GAMEPLAY:
From a gameplay standpoint, I would compare this game to Persona, but I wouldn't know since I never played Persona. But by that, I mean that the game is divided into days, which are bundled into weeks, for a total of 8 weeks (at least until Act 2 comes out).
Each day is divided into:

1. Class-time where you have to answer trivia questions on a seemingly random subject each time to gain game-completion skill points, which are useful for...
   
2. Club-room time where the name of the game comes into play as it is the period where you and 4 other individuals, Amelia, Britney, Chloe, and Daniel; aka the ABCD squad make their guaranteed best-seller animal-indie-platformer game through a series of mini-games;
   
3. After-school hours where you are free to explore the small town and interact with either your club members or other townsfolk, and advance each of their story at your desired pace, making each of them grow more fond of you as you grow more "relationship points" with them by spending more time with them through progressing their stories or inviting to the park/cinema.

The After-school hours fully showcase the graphics of the game: a mix between the 2D/Anime artstyle for the characters, and a very pixelated/hard-to-make-out-what's-in-the-distance look for the world, which suprisingly manages to not be jarring and gives the game a unique look.

The music in this game, while nothing fancy, does a good-enough job of accurately conveying the emotions the protagonist/you are feeling during the present moment, so kudos.

On the technical side, my very competent rig was working a bit harder than I anticipated it would, as the game, after all, is mainly 2D/pixelated. I also noticed a big 10-20fps drop during the first few days of Week 7 during After-school hours for seemingly no reason.
But thankfully, the technical aspect of it is the only serious problem I have with this game.

Furthermore, as this is a VN, choices are very important, and lead to different outcomes and stuff in the like, but I got a small gripe with it.
The save feature (which I use and abuse in VN games) feels weird because when you save, your save point is created at the START of that section of the day, and not the exact spot you saved the game at. For example, there's a choice to make during Club-room time, so I save, but if I want to make another choice and reload the save to do so, I'm sent back to the start of Club-room time. I also don't like not being able to name save files, but that's just my nitpick.
It's just a little tedious and time-wasting more than anything but as I take the narrative of a VN game very seriously, therefore I take the choices I can make in said games very seriously...
Speaking of the narrative...


STORY:
The story in a VN is very important, right? I mean, it's in the name: VISUAL. NOVEL.
You either tell a good story good or get the boot, and thankfully, the game didn't disappoint.
The characters, from your club members, to your classmates, and to the various people in the town, all feel unique and interesting, and, with the exception of a few, ALL feel believable and act like real people.

The two perfect examples are Daniel, the only male member of the club (besides you), and Britney, your other childhood friend, who knows she's the other, and is angry because of it. Both of them have unique quips, humorous interactions, and engaging banter with each other and the rest of the club that they were what made me want to stick with the game the whole way through. They act and speak like real modern-day high-schoolers, and it helps you immerse yourself into the game ten-fold.

Let's analyse one character more in depth.
Daniel plays the archetype of the forever angry rich kid, seen numerous times before, but the developers managed to make his player-led evolution interesting by not taking the seen-before/easy-route where they make him NOT be an angry rich kid anymore, but by making him stay angry and rich while having also learned to trust the protagonist enough to let his real feelings and emotions out sometimes, before quickly going back into his comfort zone of being an angry rich kid again. Daniel goes through real character development, as he doesn't become another character, but instead learns to grow as a person.
BTW, please dont read this if you havent finished the game, but during Sunday Week 7, when you and Daniel are on the front porch, and you and Daniel finally huh-huh, WHY THE ♥♥♥♥ does the description of it only have 4 lines?! It just said that he spreads his lips and ♥♥♥♥, ♥♥♥♥ kinda description is that?! I know its at the tippy-end of the game, but IM ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MAADDD. ALSO, why does his body in his swimwear outfit look like the Charger from Left 4 Dead? anyway, rant over, sry sry.

Now, you may have seen the * next to IMMERSIVE (who am I kidding, you saw it), and let me explain why I put it there.
Some characters simply don't feel real, or make little sense. For example: Alexis. Why does she speak like that? Why does she care so much about you? Who even is she and how does she know you?
Same thing with Amelia, where it's obvious she's just an anime stereotype: the overtly-shy-of-everything girl, and doesn't really evolve beyond that, making her standout from the rest of the believable club members.

Some of these mistakes could be alleviated with an in-depth and evolving description for each character in the game if one were to forget details, and such a system is already present on the protagonist's phone, but it's just very bare-bones right now.


CONCLUSION:
Overall, I Wanna Be A Game Dev manages to achieve what I've rarely seen in VNs up until now where it manages to entertain the player through other means than its VN Anime-style brethren who just flash nudity and romance in the player's face.

It made me laugh, it made me deeply care about its characters, and the cliffhanger ending left me feening from more. This is also the first Anime game I'm not ashamed to have played.

From what I managed to find out, this is the studio's first game, and this is the product of 2 full years of development, and for them to simply give it away FOR FREE is insane.
Although, since it took 2 years for Act 1 to come out, the hopes of Act 2 coming out anytime soon seem grim.

Nonetheless, I recommend EVERY enjoyer of Visual Novels to try this game out, and you have no excuse if you don't, since the game is FREE (I still can't wrap my head around that fact.)

Bravo Lyko Studios, I wish them good luck in their future, and hopefully I'll be back here sometime soon just to give Act 2 another SCATHING critique from my part!

Have a good day, and thanks for reading!

date with emi update when??

tbh i didnt enjoy the game that much.. it was too long and got boring pretty easily.

I LOVE THIS GAME ESPECIALLY CHLOE. DONT U DARE NOT TO MAKE ACT 2.

looking forward for act 2!

I really enjoyed the story; I loved all the points of views of all the characters, the programming references and stuff.
I'm not good with words; I just wanted to express my happiness with this game

btw, it crashed on me 4 times, thank you for saving my ass, autosave