Blockbuster Inc is a newly released simulation game all about managing and operating your own movie studio. Developed by Super Sly Fox (a 3-person team) and published by Ancient Forge, the game is reminiscent of games like Roller Coaster Tycoon or the 2005 game The Movies, where the player is tasked with building offices, hiring actors and crew, managing budgets and schedules and more.
I got to spend a few hours with Blockbuster Inc but I should mention at the top that these sorts of simulation management games are not in my typical wheelhouse, so the following impressions will come from a primarily newbie perspective.
I started where most people might naturally begin, the tutorial. Blockbuster Inc is a very systems-heavy game and as a result of that, there is an extensive tutorial. Not only do you learn about different office types for different professions (producers, writers, marketing, etc.) but you also learn about customizing those offices, hiring staff, managing employee happiness, setting a strong work schedule, managing funds, and where to spend money when issues arise, purchasing new equipment, researching new upgrades, and the list goes on from there. The breadth of systems here can feel a bit overwhelming to a new player like me. There’s a lot of menus which is to be expected with a systems-heavy simulation game like this, but it can be hard to parse through everything and find out which information you should be paying attention to at any one time. However, fans of tycoon-type games who love getting into the nitty gritty details of managing all these different moving parts and systems will likely find some enjoyment here.
The moment-to-moment gameplay moves between two main phases, a building/customization phase and the film production phase. If you want to make a movie, you first need to hire employees. Employees need a place to work, so you will need to build a number of different offices and other necessities like bathrooms and maintenance rooms in order to make sure your employees are happy and doing their best work. Your studio is placed on a large flat piece of land that allows you to build to your heart’s content. Building and connecting rooms is fairly intuitive, you click a given room type from a list and click on a clear space of land to place it. You can rotate rooms, add additional doors or windows, and even zoom in and customize the wall and floor colors and furniture in each of the given rooms.
Once you have your required offices built and staff is hired, it’s time to move onto the film production stage. You begin this by opening a menu and selecting the type of project you wish to create, film is available at the start while TV show production can be unlocked later. You continue to fill in various elements of the production from the genre, to the budget, as well as assigning your staff to their given roles. There is a sub-menu of sliders that allow you to fine-tune certain elements like “lore”, “intimacy”, or “dialogue”, but I could never really tell how this was impacting the final result of the film. Once your parameters have been set and you have selected the sets you will use, you can begin production.
At this point in the game, you can set the simulation to fast forward as different progress bars begin to fill up. If you are so inclined, the game does allow you to zoom into the individual sets and change things like the placement of actors, the camera angle, and different animations the actors can play out. You can even pull up a simplified version of a video editor and add sound effects to a timeline. While it’s a nice novelty inclusion, the feature isn’t robust enough to actually create meaningful sequences or short films. During filming little side events might pop up on screen such as some equipment being stolen in a burglary or an actor causing problems on set. These usually require some sort of decision being made in order to progress forward, such as choosing to confront the actor causing problems or just deciding to fire them and hire a new one. These decisions can have an impact such as needing to pay some extra money or ruining an employee’s happiness rating, but the decisions at least in the early hours didn’t have drastic implications on the gameplay.
Perhaps the disappointing aspect of this system comes from the game’s setting. Blockbuster Inc allows you to create a movie studio at any point in cinema history, from the 1920’s to the 2010’s. You select which decade you wish to start in at the beginning of the game, and depending on which decade you choose, certain visual elements will change like the cars on the street or the equipment and wardrobe reflecting the era they are placed in. I started one game in the 1940s and another in the 1980s to see if these little story moments played out differently between the two eras, but as far as I could tell I got the same pop-ups in the same sequence, starting with a robbery and eventually having to settle various quarrels during production. It’s a neat detail that the visual elements change from era to era but the gameplay feels nearly identical regardless of which era you are playing in.
Once your film is finished it’s time to release it to the world, and with that comes the critics. The game will randomly generate critic reviews and a final score for each film you create. Most of my films didn’t exceed the 50’s range of scores. There is also a breakdown you can look through to see how individual elements like writing or technicality contribute to the overall score. You get an influx of money from the release, then you start again with building more offices, hiring more people, and upgrading your equipment, and unlocking new product variables to play around with.
For someone like me who doesn’t play many games of this type, it was hard for me to focus on all the different systems in the game without getting distracted. The gameplay really boils down to a lot of menu management and building up and customizing your movie studio lot. While it was satisfying getting to set up these productions, that satisfaction was a little bit deflating to see them come out with low scores.
As I mentioned above, if you are interested in tycoon-esque management games and are looking for something to fit a specific movie game niche, then I think there is some fun to be had with Blockbuster Inc It’s a bit light in customization options in some areas, a bit overwhelming with a lengthy tutorial at the start, and the visuals and music are a little flat, but the team at Super Sly Fox seem dedicated to further iterating on the game going forward. If nothing else, it’s certainly a game for simulation fan’s to keep an eye on for future updates and additions. Blockbuster Inc is available on PC via Steam. A review code was provided by the publisher.
