Mad Games Tycoon 2 – Gameplay Tips for Beginners

It can be daunting to get started with a lot to do. With this guide, hit the ground running in the right direction.

Getting Started

The first thing to do is sell the sportscar and hire anyone without flaws. Research the starting Genres so that you have all four. Then, you need to research the Trending Topic and a few others.

Of your genres, check the other guides and determine if one of them is a good match with the Trending Topic. Set your sliders correct, use all features for your first few games to get your experience up. I only make games for Byte I – if you are starting at any other time, release for the PC. If you wish to make your own console now, you must commit to ONLY release games for systems marked as “Computer”.

You want to research the Quality Room as fast as possible. Make your first 5 games and be sure to:

• Use their trending topic and correct sliders. Later you can make sequels and spinoffs, so get your genre matches correct from the get-go.
• Collect game report from quality after every game you can.
• Remove bugs before release.
• Start and finish a free patch immediately, before Week 1 is calculated if you can.
• When unlocked, make a Paid Update to release around Week 5-6 after.

I like to use two development rooms – one makes games, the other makes game engines, updates, and paid updates.

When releasing games, follow this pattern and pick a genre to be every third release – in this case, I choose Adventure, one of the first four genres:

• Adventure
• Puzzle
• Racing
• Adventure
• Puzzle
• Skill
• Adventure

If your last 5 games, 3 of them share the Main Genre, you will get a “Bored Fans” penalty. This release pattern allows you to maximize the use of Adventure and Puzzle: while occasionally releasing a Skill or Racing game. Once you get your trending genre unlocked, you can change things up – assume your genre is RPG, you can do this:

• RPG
• RPG
• Adventure
• RPG
• RPG
• Adventure
• RPG
• RPG
• Adventure

By doing this, you are protecting Adventure from Bored Fans by making it every third release.

Intermediate and Advanced Tips

Tip #1

When making a game, check your Development Progress. You will get an idea of how good your game is expected to be. When you set your sliders, you might recall the percentile ones for RPG, it’s 40/30/15/15. You want to shift around the people in your room so your final score is a good match for this expectation. You might remove a Programmer or Graphics person if you check the development report and see you have too much Tech or Graphics and not enough Gameplay.

Gameplay Features, Engine Features, and Consoles themselves can skew your games toward a certain score (Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, Tech) and you want to adjust where you need to for your genre. Your prior game scores for the same genre. will clue you in if you need this one to have more gameplay or fewer graphics, for example. If you know you’re getting a bunch of techs and not enough gameplay, you can remove all programmers. If it’s a genre with 50 gameplay sliders and it’s still happening, you can cut out features that add tech and use all features with high gameplay.

You don’t need to super micromanage everything – and even if you get it perfect, RN-Gesus will have something to say about it. This also means if you’re not 100% perfect, you can still get 97-100% percent scores by coming close enough.

Tip #2

Have as many 90+ game devs as possible. Later in the game, there should be nobody else in the Development room unless you have a genre that skews toward graphics or sound. If so, then you can put 1 of each in the room. Usually, you will have too much “Tech” compared to everything else; which can be a symptom of gameplay features and the use of Programmers in the Dev Room.

I don’t worry about having every special sound/graphics/quality/etc room improvement. I check the gameplay report and close and reopen and when I see it as close to 99/99/99/99 as it will be AND has zero bugs, I release it. The other graphic/sound/quality/etc can be added by making a paid update and using those rooms to enhance the paid update.

Tip #3

Give every game one free update, one paid update (with a free update) ASAP. Then, a second free and paid (with free) update at the Week 5 mark if possible. If you release console exclusive games, this can keep them around longer. If you port that game to Arcade, it helps the IP for it a bit. Like I mentioned – paid updates can be used to add in features from the sound/graphics/quality/etc rooms.

Also, with Arcades – if you release an Arcade game and then port it, its sales will help increase the Arcade sales. Another good reason for a paid update to the port.

Note: I do not know if this works in both directions. When I port a console game to arcade, then release a paid console update on Week 4 or Week 5 (after the first 3-week rise), my Arcade sales did increase. This might just be an unrelated random increase or a placebo effect – or, even better, it might work in both directions that the port helps the sales of the original.

Tip #4

Paid Updates, Sequels, and Spin-Offs are great for increasing experience and building IP. At some point, literally, everything you release will be either a Sequel, Spin-Off, or Paid Update to something. This is why you want to make good genre matches early – your first game, even ranked at 60, can be your first lucrative IP down the road.

I wait 2 years after release to make a sequel and change the number to the most recent issue. Dragon Fantasy becomes Dragon Fantasy 2 and Dragon Fantasy 3.

Tip #5

Watch for market oversaturation. On the left side of Topics, is a bar that moves green, yellow, red. Avoid releasing topics that are red. Fans are sick of them, and they will sell less. Release high-experience games that are green.

Later in the game, you can release a B+ game with a new genre, then give it 4 Paid Updates to master the genre now. This is a good method to quickly collect a group of genres to use later. You want to be aware of the Topics your Genre uses, and release your Sequels when their Topics aren’t oversaturated.

You can stick a bunch of bored do-nothings into the Research room and have them research some topics. This can be used with the above tricks to stave off “I am bored, I quit!” for a while.

Employees

Training Rooms as quickly as possible. If you get someone early with good perks, pop them into the training room and keep them forever. You can also use training rooms to keep people like researchers and technicians busy in-between stuff so they don’t quite as often.

Technicians, when not making consoles, can slip to the workshops to make arcade cabinets. You can just port one game per Workshop and leave one more for contracts. It will take up space, but it’s a great way to keep Technicians busy so they aren’t quitting right before you need them to make a new console. Otherwise, they could go years at a time without work.

Always leave a few extra desks in your Support and Office,. These seats can be used to place bored employees during periods where they wouldn’t have work and it won’t hurt you that they are “misplaced” into the wrong role.

Create a separate 4 or 6 desk or so room for Development, Console Development, Sound, Tech, Quality, Video – set them to auto-complete all contracts and don’t wait. This will give a LOT of money, better contracts, better-contracted games – and contracted games can be console exclusive for your console, which is always worth doing. Earlier contracts will be done with 4 desks. Later ones might require up to 8-9 but will pay over 100k. And by building these rooms, you aren’t hovering your mouse over the contract icons on the bottom left of the screen, because as soon as they come up, they get started and completed automatically.

Training employees to 90 in their skills is important. You should have your Dev Team at minimum 70s before doing a B+ game and 90 before doing A games. When starting in the 1976 start, I stay with B games up to 1986 and pump them out like crazy. You want highly skilled employees in the correct room.