Developer: Odyssey Studios
Publisher: Assemble Entertainment
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Moviehouse – Review
If there’s a type of company in the world, then there’s a simulation game based around running it. We have had a chance to run everything from theme parks to apartment buildings from behind our screens, and Odyssey Studios’ Moviehouse isn’t even the first time we’ve taken a shot at running a film studio. It sounds pretty glamorous to be able to micromanage everything from writing the script and choosing the actors to doing the marketing for your movie. But sadly when it comes to the execution of a simulation game, Moviehouse might need to learn a thing or two from the real stars.
Story
As is typical for this genre, Moviehouse does not really have a story. You start the game with a small indie studio that barely manages to scrape by, leaving you to build it up to a thriving producer of blockbuster movies. How you do that is up to you. You can make movies or buy up other studios and let them do the hard work. You can also choose whether you want to make action movies for the general public or artsy drama movies that win tons of awards. It’s entirely up to you!
Graphics
Moviehouse is not the most polished game at first glance, with a rather bulky UI that can be confusing at first. After you follow the tutorial, you’ll be able to make sense of all the buttons but at first, they feel like they just clog up the screen. The portraits of the characters (such as writers, actors, and producers) are creepy more than anything. Thankfully, that’s balanced out a bit by the rather nice-looking setting of your movie studio. Watching everything grow and change as your studio blossoms and you upgrade it is a lot of fun.
Sound
The soundtrack of this game is overall pretty bland. The background music is constant and not very diverse, so you’ll grow sick of it easily if you play for long stretches of time. It’s nothing terrible, but it’s just not catchy either. It sounds very similar to a ton of other simulation games on the market and doesn’t make Moviehouse feel unique in any way. The game has no voice acting but there are sound effects. Hearing your directors cry action or the scribbling of your scriptwriter’s pen can be quite amusing and breaks up the monotony of the soundtrack.
Gameplay
Moviehouse is a simulation game that seems to take a ton of inspiration from the by-now classic Game Dev Tycoon. The premise is exactly the same, just with movies instead of video games. And a lot of the execution is very similar too. You start the game with a sparse plot of land and a decent chunk of money. You hire your first scriptwriter and director from a very small pool of employees that don’t have the best stats yet. Then you start making and producing movies. It’ll be simple at first with not as many mechanics to keep track of, but with every movie you release, you earn research progress that you can spend to unlock new features and upgrades for your studio. With some patience and a clever approach, you’ll be the next Disney in no time.
The movie-making process starts off with a script. You pick from one of your unlocked genres (two at first, but more later) and your writer gets to work. From a series of cards, you pick a setting, a hero, and a villain. These choices don’t seem to do much, but if you pick cards that fit the genre, your movie gets a boost. When the writers are done, the director gets to work. Once again you can give input on the process by choosing how much money to spend on various parts of production, who will act in your movie, and so forth. When this is done, you release your movie and rake in some cash.
At first, the only way to reach a wider audience is to enter a music festival. This will cost money and delay your movie’s release, but it will make it earn more later. As you research, you unlock various other features such as movie posters, more special effects, or brand-new sets. You can also train your staff and balance their skills with their creativity to make for bigger and better movies. It sounds like a lot, but most of it is incredibly straightforward and only requires a click or two. After only a very short time, the game gets incredibly repetitive, and the long stretches of waiting in between do not help at all. What should be a game that occupies us for hours ends up becoming tiring very quickly, especially since the progress through the research tree is incredibly slow.
Conclusion
While Moviehouse is fun from the get-go and doesn’t require hours of tutorials to start playing, it adds nothing new to the formula. The gameplay is very repetitive and requires long times of idly waiting for the next thing to happen. Some of the features aren’t well-balanced either. What should be a fun progress through the ages becomes a slow slog that annoys more than it entertains. If you’re a really big fan of movie studio tycoons, maybe this will keep you busy for a little while. Otherwise, it’s fine to skip it.
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