Moviehouse – The Film Studio Tycoon

Review

Have you ever thought that you could produce better quality movies than the big film producers? That you could bring in the big bucks and change your life forever? If this is you, then keep jogging on as this game won’t do that for you, at least for me it didn’t but maybe you’ll have better luck.

The game begins with you choosing which decade to start in, either the 1960’s or the 1980’s.  You give your company a name, choose its logo and choose your boss. You have two options: The Director and The Patron. The Director is the standard film studio management, while the Patron supports the arts and gains critical acclaim while sacrificing profits and comes with a host of positive and negative attributes, whereas the Director only comes with a positive attribute for General Audience Appeal.

Once that’s done you’ll head on over to the game screen where you begin with a bank balance of one hundred and fifty thousand bucks. You will then have to choose a Writer and Director, both of which will cost you some pennies, including an initial cost and a monthly cost; they are all about the same price with the only difference being their Craft and Creativity Skill scores.

Once you have a writer you can then start writing a script; your goal is to create the best movies possible. You do this by selecting three Plot Cards, which cover the topics of Setting, Hero and Villain. To begin with you only have a handful on offer but you will unlock more as you progress. You will have four on offer to you, but you can swap with others from your plot card pile. There are six categories of Plot Cards which you can use towards creating a script.

You will want to try and match the topics as best you can, according to the type of movie you want to write. It’s no good having an action movie with no action and with a plot that doesn’t make sense. For as long as you have limited Plot Cards, creating a movie that’s good enough to make some decent money will be a bit hit-and-miss.

You must decide how long you wish to spend writing a script, and you have three options: Rush job, Industry Standard and As Long as It Takes. You’ll also have to decide the Genre of the film but to begin with you only have a couple of options to choose from that are randomly generated each new game. New genres can be unlocked through the Research tree.

Now that you have a script you can get your Producer to start creating the movie. You will have to set a Production Budget; how much of the budget you can spend will depend on how many pennies you have in the coffers. The minimum is $15,000 for a Short Film going all the way to $125,000,000 for a Blockbuster movie budget. In between, you have budgets for Indie ($75,000), Small ($1,000,000), Medium ($15,000,000) and Large ($65,000,000).

Once you have your film you can distribute it to cinemas or to other formats such as VHS Tape. This will then be judged and reviewed by critics and the public while hopefully bringing in some pennies and making a profit. You can also enter your films into film festivals where the public will create a buzz around your film and hopefully make it more successful when it hits the cinemas.

You can train your Writers and Producers once you unlock the corresponding research. This will increase their craft and creativity allowing you to create scripts and films with greater craft and creativity scores. You will also be able to create props and sets, and visit new locations that you can use in the creation of your films. While you are producing a film you may get into some trouble on the set, and you will be asked to help. This will come in the form of a question, and you will have a couple of options to choose from as an answer. If you are unsure how to answer you can pay a few grand to have the correct answer revealed to you but the questions are not that hard, and you could always google an answer if the old pennies are a little short.

Then it is a case of rinse and repeat, create a script, produce a movie, distribute, collect the pennies. This does get a bit repetitive, especially if you are struggling for pennies as you can then only create short films using the same actors etcetera.

I found it quite hard to make enough money to produce anything other than short films. The problem was I’d end up going into debt. I would be given a loan but again the money disappeared as I kept producing films even though I was in debt to the tune of a few hundred thousand quid. What made things even harder was that after receiving a loan and still losing money I was then bought out by another film group.

This would greatly impact my ability to create and earn as I had to make payments each month of ten thousand quid and pay fifty percent out of any profits I made. You can buy yourself out but trying to reach half a million quid when you’re struggling to make anything decent on a short film is just not going to happen. In one I reached the end of the game and collected my Lifetime Achievement Award where I had made nearly fifty films (short films) in forty-one years and had $11,000 in the bank.

I just haven’t been able to earn enough money to create anything other than short films, there has been times when I have had enough to make an indie film and splash the cash a bit more but then that movie tanks and I’ve wasted my money and now I’m broke again trying to flog a dead horse uphill. Once you get into a rut which can happen very quickly, especially if you start entering festivals as they cost fifteen, twenty-five thousand and upwards for each movie. Even without entering the festivals, the money soon disappears.

Training your writer and producers costs $15,000 each time you want to send them out for training.  You have to do this if you want to compete in festivals and create decent movies because you must increase your craft and creativity scores, which allows you to create better films. However, with no money you become stuck and fall behind the other film groups, which isn’t good as you need to own a certain percentage of the market share if you want to upgrade your studio and grow.

Now this could just be me being bloody useless at the game, but there’s nothing more I can do given the situations. Trying to gain information on how the game works and what things do would maybe help. While you can activate the tutorial to help you as you play, it is not that great and you cannot find any information on anything outside of the tutorial. You unlock new research with points and on the research tree sometimes you have multiple options to choose from, however there is no information explaining what each of the research categories does. Any extra information on what things do would be great and might help at times when you are flummoxed.

Now I’m not sure if the money problem is a bug, but I’m guessing it is. In the games I’ve played since I’ve still been able to keep playing while racking up debit and not paying back the loans etcetera. There is one bug I do believe needs fixing and that is the achievements; I should have unlocked at least eleven or so achievements, but I haven’t unlocked a single one so far. This isn’t a real problem for me as I don’t care if I get them or not but for those who want to one hundred percent a game then it will be a big issue.

Another issue I have is when I need to scroll down.  Say I’m looking at by back catalog and I want to scroll down to find a film, I can’t using my mouse. I should be able to use my scroll wheel and scroll down the list of films, but I can’t. Instead, I have got to go to my keyboard and use the arrow keys, after I have clicked my mouse in between a couple of the films. Clicking on a film and then using the arrows to scroll down wouldn’t work. It’s not a big pain but it is a pain that I shouldn’t have to deal with in this day and age. 

Hopefully these issues will get sorted out because I do want to like the game. The game is not too complex, and the graphics are nice.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com

Moviehouse – The Film Studio Tycoon Steam Store Page