Back in 2010 Kairosoft (unexpectedly, I think) released a mega hit when they brought their game developer simulation title Game Dev Story to iOS devices. The game suited mobile perfectly, and it was so much fun trying to create a successful game development studio from the ground up, especially with all the humor and parodies of real life video game history peppered throughout. However, Game Dev Story was originally a PC game that came out in 1997, more than a decade before its surprising rise on iOS, and in a lot of ways the game felt outdated and, well, kind of janky, for lack of a better term. There was definitely an opportunity for someone to come along and do the “game developer simulation" thing but with a bit more modern flair. That is pretty much what Greenheart Games did in 2012 with the release of Game Dev Tycoon.

There were lots of little differences between Game Dev Story and Game Dev Tycoon, but the latter managed to capture the same sort of magic and whimsy of the former while still putting its own stamp on this particular type of simulation. The game was a pretty big hit on PC and arrived on iOS a handful of years later in November of 2017, and we were big fans of this new mobile conversion, awarding it 5 stars in our review. Just a couple of months later the game arrived on Android as well, and then it made its way to Nintendo Switch in the fall of 2020. Now, as announced this past December, Game Dev Tycoon has joined the ranks of the Netflix Games library and is available for all Netflix subscribers today. As you can see in the trailer above, it also features a few nods to some of Netflix’s properties, which is kind of a cool easter egg for fans. So if you have Netflix go give Game Dev Tycoon a spin as their games library just continues to get bigger and stronger by the month.