I missed my chance to write about Hollywood Animal when a certain Nic Reuben swooped in like a rival showbiz talent scout and pinched the summer Steam Fest demo from right under my nose, capitalising on the fact that I was stranded in an airport at the time. I wrote about a very rude Minesweeper “homage” instead. Hopefully that was for the best.
Anyway, it’s finally my chance for a bite at the apple, for developers Weappy Wholesome have just given their slice of throwback La La Land an early access release date: January 16th 2025. To celebrate, they’ve also published a new and fairly lengthy trailer. Grab yourself a scotch and a cigar and dig in.
As you might guess from the title and my cunning intro allusions, Hollywood Animal is a tycoon game in which you set up your own film studio at the dawn of sound cinema. You’ll buy and furnish buildings such as script and post-production departments, hire a bunch of actors, writers, producers and other minions, and get to work generating a little stardust.
It’s all very involved, and not just at the level of production technicalities. You can dispatch private investigators to gather dirt on your whiniest employees, and bribe the mayor to overlook your many, many crimes. You can time and market the release of your movies perfectly after studying your competitor’s projects, or simply ask the mafia to “clear the calendar”. This is Hollywood’s “golden age” in the sense that it’s shiny and cold and hard and people will kill for it.
Nic might be a dirty, no-good thief, but his demo write-up is a lot of fun. “Each film is rated for both ‘audience approval’ and ‘artistic appeal’,” he noted. “This may seem like an unnecessarily stringent binary, but remember this was pre-Boss Baby, so no-one knew you could master both yet.”
The devs are calling it “a box of spiders disguised as a tycoon game”. Good job, whoever came up with that line. I wish it was me. If you need further convincing, there’s a new demo on the way in December.