There’s no business like show business, and anyone with dreams of gracing the silver screen may think twice after playing Hollywood Animal, a game that combines the city-building elements of Cities Skylines 2 with the debauchery and sleaze of old Hollywood. The game has a free demo out now where you can try your hand at running a successful studio at the dawn of sound cinema. Get ready to get your hands dirty.
Finally, something that lets me combine my film studies degree with my job writing about videogames — my lecturers would have a field day with this. In Hollywood Animal, you’ll have to deal with more than just movies — they aren’t created in a vacuum, after all. As well as the standard city-building game fare of resource management, building, and upgrades, there’s also the muck of people’s personal lives, war, politics, and censorship to contend with.
Not only will you be making movies, but you’ll have to negotiate between stars, directors, and writers. Do you pay them more and affect your bottom line or blackmail them with some dirt you’ve dug up? A gorgeously animated and cel-shaded trailer for the game has two goons bully an actor into taking a low-brow role under threat of revealing his…personal activities. It’s dark stuff, but so is Hollywood behind all the glitz and the glamor.
The grim reality of the industry is reflected in the murky brown aesthetic of your very own Hollywood studio lot. On it, you can construct various buildings to help you get ahead, such as a security office you can use to tail people and dig up dirt on them. There’s also a tech tree that lets you unlock writer’s offices, a story workshop, sequels, and more.
You get to take your movies all the way from pre-production through release and the awards circuits, all the while dealing with issues on set such as actors throwing tantrums and refusing to come out of their trailers. All these problems offer you multiple choices for how to deal with them.
You can download the free Hollywood Animal demo from Steam now. You should also check the other best strategy games on PC, or browse the tycoon games to play in 2024.
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