Troubletcat

Receiver is a very small game, and, in terms of the presentation, does feel a bit unfinished. This is understandable considering the very short dev time, but it bears mentioning. For the most part, though, it's a very interesting game. Weapons handling is modeled in a way that no other game (that I'm aware of) has done. Instead of having a reload key, for example, the game has separate buttons to remove/insert magazines, pull the weapon's slide, pull back the hammer, etc. Once you get the hang of it, it makes for a really interesting, tactile experience using the game's weapons. The game has a storyline told by finding 11 casette tapes scattered around an environment that's randomly generated each time you play. Finding all 11 tapes requires a fair bit of exploration, and the random elements of the game give it decent replayabilty, even with only a few weapons and enemy types. Overall it's an engaging, atmospheric game. It's also very small and somewhat half-baked the graphics will probably be considered unacceptably ugly by some (although I didn't mind the sterile environments particularly), but for $5 you could do a lot worse, and it's worth checking out for the interesting way weapons are handled. I'd love to see a more complete game with these kinds of mechanics.

In Game Dev Tycoon you control a game development studio from the 1980s to the near future, making games and, hopefully, making it big. The game is a rather simplistic management sim. You hire and train staff and make games, choosing how much to focus on different aspects of the game during development. You also perform research to unlock additional features for your games and some other cool stuff in the late game. It's a fun game for a playthrough or two, but doesn't really have enough depth to have massive replayability. If you like management simulator/tycoon type games you'll probably get your money's worth out of it at $8, but don't expect to be sinking a huge number of hours in to this one. The visual style and sound/music are simple, but appealing enough and serve the gameplay adequately. Ultimately Game Dev Tycoon is a good buy considering the low price, but would've been improved drastically by more depth and complexity in the game. It simply is not complex enough to be as fun or addictive as the games that have clearly inspired it, but represents a decent bit of bite-sized entertainment.