Confusion and guesswork lost in a land of happy bubbles.
1. To see a bunch of dots float towards the sky
2. To see random numbers appear after their game
This game doesn't bother to explain much of the reason behind anything. They recently patched it to try to help a bit more but it still doesn't really help. For instance, now it shows + or - under each category when making the game to let you know how important each is for the game you're making. But when you max and min the appropriate bars, you still end up with anything from a 6 to a 10 game. The amount of design and tech bubbles don't seem to affect the game at all. One game I averaged 600 in each category and got a 7 game. The very next game I averaged over 1000 for each and scored worse on the game.
Nothing is explained. Once I reseach and start using the next step in story (branching), do I still need to include linear in my engine? Do I need to use ALL the stuff my engine includes in every game? What about all the gameplay enhancements in a game that has minimal gameplay? And what is that percentage if I lower a bar too low? Do I need to update my graphics from 2D to 3D? It seemed to me that I could remain the world's premiere text-based games company. There's just a lot of inconsequential options.
The game topics are silly. School, rhythm, city, transport, evolution? These aren't game themes, these are just words. What is a "city RPG"? The booth options are annoying. Every few months you have to watch an unskippable animation of shadows appearing around a booth and an arbitrary number adding up. I don't care if it's 50 or 50 million. Can I please just skip it? And the game is "over" before you can research even half the stuff.
Finally, the texts are repetitive. In a game that is mostly text popups, you'd think they'd throw in a bunch of different ones for variety. Instead, you get notices like "If the game were a music album, it would have gone platinum." Adding different messages would only take a couple of minutes.
It's a small game for only 10 bucks and it's fun and enjoyable to mess around with, but I wish they would explain what the hell is going on.