What does it take to win the "Worst Game" award in Game Dev Story?

Question

I was curious to see if I could win the "Worst Game" award. It is surprisingly difficult. My typical approach is:

• Hire the worst employee I can find and fire the rest of my staff.
• Never train or level up my staff.
• Pick the worst people available for use in proposal, graphics, and sound challenges. Burn them out.
• Use Speed mode to develop the game.
• Use unpopular and low-level types and genres
• fail Boost challenges to create more bugs
• Ship immediately at 100% without fixing any bugs

I had a game that got 13 points from the reviewers and was released with so many bugs that it got pulled off the market and I had to pay refunds to customers. That wasn't enough to win the award.

My "best" worst game fell victim to a power outage at about 85% complete. All the stats were below 20 and graphics was below 10. It got a total of 9 points from the game reviewers. (2/2/3/2). That wasn't enough to win the award.

What does it take? I'm certain at this point that you can't win it by accident, but is it winnable at all?

Answer 1

From my experience, the awards show is kind of random. I know Polish, Critical Score, Stats, etc. help increase chances of winning awards. What I did to get this award was save the game a few months before the awards show and return to the save and keep trying. Eventually I got the Worst Game "Award".

I was lucky in my attempts that it didn't take me too long but who knows how long it could take for some people. I know this may not be the most efficient method but it did eventually work for me.

Answer 2

Well, I would say to make a game with a random name like "cdj00392|=]][[", then have a text-based game on the mbox with absolutely the lowest story with no graphics at all and a totally random genre.