Hello, and welcome to my Masters Guide!

This Guide is closely related to my "Game Development Guide" that is more of an "Information Source" than a proper "How to Guide". That first Guide was born from pen and paper clippings that I'd made for myself (as is the case with a lot of my other Guides) and quickly rose up from post-it note to notepad, until I decided to convert it into a proper guide.

This Guide has very different roots, it wasn't born from a "post-it note" taped to the side of my monitor, rather it was something that I've slowly cobbled together through long months of constantly playing the game, and slowly tweaking the 100% review method towards perfection.

In regards to my other Guide, I've recieved a lot of praise from the Community, and have been contacted by Members both on and off Steam personally thanking me for the hard work I've put into it. However, not everyone was pleased with the work I put into my other Guide, and a few of those individuals saw fit to voice their displeasure. Some of whom made several rude remarks, and used a lot of hate speech, all of which I quickly deleted from the other Guides comments section. However, most of the disapproval is coming from good decent gaming peeps that are just frustrated and upset at not being able to score high ratings.

I understand the frustration, and sympathize with it, however my other Guide is meant as an "Information Source" and not an absolute paint by numbers "How to Guide" that will lead to perfect 100% scores time and time again. I have worked long and hard on the other Guide so as to provide people with the knowledge to create perfect games, but I've never broken everything down to the base roots, that is until now.

The Masters Guide is the absolute brass tacks, ultimate grassroots, complete walkthrough on creating games with a perfect 100% Review score.

To clarify. I'm not creating this Guide solely to satisfy all the people who have complained. I'm creating this Guide for everyone who wants to achieve a 100% Review and isn't sure about how to get there. I've already acquired the knowledge to create this Guide just by playing the game, and I'm sure that you can get there too if you just put in the hours. However, if you either can't or won't put in the time or effort, then I understand, and I hope that you enjoy this Guide I created for you.

By the games very design it is impossible to get a 100% Review score 100% of the time. The purpose of this Guide is to max out your chances of getting a 100% Review score so that you get one every 3-4 games, as opposed to every few dozen games.

As this method requires a significant amount of time, lots of starting capital, and is quite labour intensive from start to finish, at least to pull it off with any degree of success. This Guide is intended for Intermediates that aspire to become Masters of the game, and is not intended as a Mad Games Tycoon: Beginners Guide to 100% Review Scores.

The following check list is a list of what I'll be covering in this Guide, it could also be seen as a hint list on where to look for answers for anyone who is still having lingering doubts about try to get the 100% score themselves. Further into the Guide I will be shattering many of the illusions the game has constructed to hide it's true mechanics and thought engine, for that which has been seen cannot be unseen, and much of the games magic and allure will be lost forever!!!

*Dramatic Pause*

The Check List
1. Company HQ Location = Genre
2. Characters Specialties = Genre & Feature
4. Character Skills = Maxed Out
5. Features = Maxed Out
6. Improvements = Maxed Out
7. Settings & Priorities = Flawless
8. Trending = Genre & Feature
9. Triple Stars = Maxed Out
10. Engine & Platform Optimization = Genre
11. Package Content = Maxed Out
12. Hype = Maxed Out

So it begins...

I'm not 100% sure that this is important because it's hard to guage a 5% varient, but seeing as you'll be releasing games for the same Genre over and over again anyways, the extra boost in sales doesn't hurt.

I recommend choosing either South Korea (Arcade) or Sweden (Puzzle) since both boost sales for starting Genres, which is useful if you want to increase your cash flow sooner.

Alternatively, if you don't mind waiting, you can choose which ever one you like. I ussually choose the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which has Sports as it's main.

Every character has a Genre Special and a Feature Special. During Character Creation you can choose which Specialties your character will have. I recommend choosing the same Genre you chose in "Chapter 2" so that they match. For the Feature, I recommend choosing Sprites as it is aquired early on and remains with you throughout the game. Though there are other Features that are aquired early on and never become outdated.

When Hiring Staff, only hire staff whose Genre Special matches either your main chosen genre or that of the Genre you intend to combo with. Their Feature Special should also be something that is either in the game already and will continue to be in the game, or isnt but will be soon enough.

In the early game you may be forced to higher staff whose Genre Special doesn't match up with your intended Specialization. However, since hiring more staff allows you to expand faster and easier, this is an oft accepted evil as one slowly climbs the ladder of success.

You can have a total of 35 Features by the late game, by this time you should have (or aim to have) at least 35 Staff members in Development who each have a specialization in one of those Features.

Ultimately, if your in a position where you can cover all those Features with Specialist by excluding Features from the game, this is the preffered route to success. Staff in Development who have a Specialized Feature that isn't in the current game should also be removed from the room, and if their Feature Special is outdated, should be fired.

Characters Skills have a huge impact on the Review score, however, with the way Priorities manifest in the game, this can potentially be the most ruinious of stages. It is instead highly recommended that you max out their relavent skills to 100 before you start expecting to see reliable 100% Review scores. I recommend the Training Rooms for this, it speeds things along significantly.

Once they've been maxed out, you can apply the recommended Priorties from the other Guide as listed without going through the considerable hassle detailed in Chapter 17 of that Guide.

The important fact about Features that must be accpted is that the Features themselves are unimportant. The only things that matter is how they match up with the Specials of your Staff, and how much they cost.

I've already covered why Feature matching is important, which leaves the cost.

The cost of a Feature is equatable to amount of time it takes to build. This is important because the longer a Feature takes to build, the more build points that Feature will generate.

Build Points are broken down into four main groups.

Graphics
Sounds
Technology
Gamplay

Though each Genre has it's own Priorties, you will want to achieve a good score in all four groups, which if accomplished will grant you a considerable rating bonus.

This where a lot of people trip themselves up. Wondering which Features to include in their games, ditching more expensive Features in favor of cheaper Features they consider Genre necessities.

Another important point to make here in terms of Specials, is that it if you capable of producing more expensive Features, but only have Staff with cheap Features. Then it is better to ditch the more expensive Features, as the Special bonus will often more than make up for the difference.

Sadly this has lead some Players to conclude that Features aren't important to the overall rating. Stating that they have achieved better ratings with cheaper Features, ignorant of the way Specials work. Don't be one of those Players. The most expensive Features coupled with a full Staff with matching Specials, and the Settings from my "Game Development Guide" is more than enough to score well into high 90's. It's all the little touch-ups else where that send it over the 100% mark.

Much like the Features in the last Chapter, the Improvements are individually unimportant, and exist solely to generate Build Points. The more expensive the Improvements, the greater the number of Build Points Generated.

You don't know what Improvements are? I don't blame you. I've heard Improvements being called a lot of things. They've been called Features, Technologies, and I've even seen people mentioning them by name, which seems highly impractical, since it takes added time to type them and relies too heavily on other people being able to know them off by heart.

There are four Improvement Rooms that each specialize in one of the following areas.

Graphics = 6 Improvements
Sounds = 6 Improvements
Technology = 6 Improvements
Gameplay = 6 Improvements

The rule of Staff and Specials is still in full effect here, you should only have staff with the relative Spacial working in each room. Except now it's an additional layer of micromanagement as it only makes difference if their skill relative to the Room. So if you have someone with the "Cutscenes" Special working in the Music Studio, yeah your game might have that Feature in it, but since it's not a Sound based Special it isn't going to generate bonus Build Points for Sound.

See my "Game Development Guide" for information on each Genre's best settings.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616265616

You should always add all the avaliable Languages to the game, this can be expensive in the beginning, and may even require you to take out a Loan, but the return is worth it.

This where things get sticky. Trending awards a nice boost to Review Ratings, however your chosen Genre only has a 1 in 16 chance of being in play at any given time. The Topic is larger problem as it has an even lower chance of being in play.

There is however, good news. If you release a game withe your chosen Genre and contine to make succesor after succesor while doing everything else right. Eventually you're going to create a good enough game that it will prompt that games Genre and Topic to Trend. When this happens you will gain the dual trending bonus.

The trending bonus isn't a mainline consideration, but it helps to hedge bets when and where you can.

The impact is low, but in the interests of staking the odds in your favor, you should try to have a three star rating in all areas of Development that concerns your game.

That's Genres, Topics and Platforms.

Another two that often get forgotten. When you Develope your own Engine and Console, make sure that they are optimized for the same Genre that you focusing on. These bonuses are very minior, but if you ever get a 99% score and you didn't optimize... Well lets just make sure that doesn't happen.

This is actually a very nice bonus, and an excellent reason to produce your own games. Make sure you include everything on the list, with the exception of the Black & White Manual (first option).

I'm not 100% sure that Hype actually has an effect on the Review score, if it does, then it is a very minor one. This impacts sales quite a bit, so you may wish to include it anyway.

The Difficulty level of the game can also have an impact on the final Review Scores, with high scores more easily achieved on Easy, while playing on Lengendary will make high Review Scores a much rarer occurrence. Still this Guide was created with Legendary difficulty in mind, and so long as match everything up perfectly as detailed in the Guide, a 100% Review Score should be inevitable.

Update 1 (10/10/2016) - Added Chapter 13 concerning Difficulty settings.
Update 2 (10/10/2016) - Added new Chapter concerning Languages, and updated Chapter numbers accordingly.
Update 3 (18/10/2016) - Minor grammar fixes.
Update 4 (05/05/2020) - Cleaned up Introduction, and added a new Chapter to alleviate frustrations.

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Cheers!