Hands down, the most important part of your strategy will revolve around your review scores. This will have an effect on fans, sales, and whether your game is a Top Hit so this is the holy grail. How do you get a high review score? It's both more simple and more complex than you might think. The simple part is that your review score is actually just a reflection of the quality of your current game compared to the other games that you've made in the past (with the exception of in the garage where you are trying to reach a certain quality of game to get a hit and leave the "tutorial").
True Score and Review Score
The complex part is how this is calculated and how you take advantage of it. First, there are two slightly different scores at play, one that you see and one that you don't. The score that you DO see is clearly the Review Score. The score that you DON'T see is what we'll call the "True Score". The difference between the two is slight for the most part but there are a few key differences. Essentially, the game takes your "True Score" for your game and applies some modifiers to get your Review Score.
One of these modifiers is actually a random number that is generated but this has a slight impact on your Review Score for the most part. This does mean, however, that you can do everything right and still not get a perfect 10. There are other modifiers as well such as the size of your game, how many fans you have, and the number of specialists you have (a special training feature later in the game). These are just some of the things that can change your review score. However, for the most part, once you start the development of a game, these are out of your control except for the random number which can only be altered by reloading the game and trying again.
Most of these modifiers act more as ceilings that prevent you from getting perfect 10's right out of the gate. As stated before, there's little you can do about this and ultimately it's of little consequence because you can still get a 9.75 which is near enough to a perfect score for the most part. You won't be able to get a perfect 10 until you have unlocked Large games and have at least two specialists on your team.
The Strategy
So if you can't change the modifiers for your review score (save for a few major mile stones that you'll be striving for anyway) then the other part of the equation is the True Score. That is something you can definitely change. Your True Score is based on the sum of the Tech and Design points generated during game design minus any bugs and penalties. This score is then compared to your previous True Score high scores. This will give you a rough Review Score before it is checked against any of the modifiers and put against the random number generator.
In other words, while you may not have a whole lot of control over some of the modifiers, you have almost complete control over the True Score that your reviews are based on. You set the first High Scores and you continue to reset them. If you take care and control how you improve your games then there's no reason (with a little practice) that you can't have an 8 or 9+ game every time.
To really maximize your high score, you actually want to be CONSISTENT instead of amazingly good. If you raise your high score too quickly, it will become harder and harder to get a high scoring review time after time. However, if you are consistent and make moderate increases from game to game then you can slowly run up your High Scores over the 30 year period and never struggle to get the points you need. In fact, it is quite possible that your score may end up too high at times and you might want to release the game with bugs to lower the score.
Figuring out your score
First, remember that we want to be consistent. If possible, you want to try not to adjust your sliders and when you get to Medium games, try to not change who is assigned to which category of development. In fact, it will actually not be important who ends up in which category as long as you don't move them because we're striving for consistency and not spikes of greatness. To aid you in this, you can actually use the same genre over and over as long as you never use the same Topic twice in a row. It is quite possible to go through the entire game making nothing but Action games and using nothing but the starting topics (you could make Sports/Action, Military/Action, Sports/Action etc).
Your last game when coming out of the Garage is important because this will likely be your first True High Score. When you finish the your games, wait for the counters to count up your Tech and Design Points. Add the two together and keep that in mind. When you make your next game, you'll want to aim for about +12% to +20% above that score. How much higher you aim is actually dependent on the gaps between your previous games so if you start spiking with your games and have add 20% for the past few games, you can't start doing just a 12% increase without hurting the performance of your games. However, if you catch it early enough, it may be worth the slight hit for the next game or two to lower the amount you want to increase.
Keep in mind that when you change the size of your game, people will expect you to make that size of game so you'll take a severe penalty if you try to go back down to a small game after making a medium game for example. In addition, when you make the jump to a larger size game, you'll automatically generate more Design/Tech points because the game development period will increase. You can try and estimate how many points based on the amount of time it takes you (it's relative) or you can just do what you would normally do for a modest increase and you'll likely get that increase proportionally. After that, simply remember your new High Score and continue to add 12%-20% for each successive game.
