Hollywood Animal is a strategy tycoon game about managing your own sleazy film studio in late 1920s America. Read on to know what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if its early access build is worth trying.

Hollywood Animal Plot

Set at the dawn of sound cinema, Hollywood Animal places players in the shoes of a major Hollywood studio head, responsible for steering the studio through the glamorous yet tumultuous decades that follow. Players choose which way their playthrough’s story will go. The game offers the freedom to build a multi-billion-dollar blockbuster factory, a boutique studio focusing on avant-garde films, or even a controversial establishment producing provocative content.

Hollywood Animal Gameplay

Hollywood Animal is a management game that sees players assume the role of a film studio head during the dawn of sound cinema. Its gameplay encompasses every facet of the filmmaking process, from conceptualizing plots to distributing films in theaters. As such, players engage in tasks such as developing scripts, selecting actors and directors, managing budgets, and crafting marketing strategies, with their decisions ultimately impacting the studio’s reputation, financial success, and relationships within the industry.

The film industry is ever-evolving, but it is only one part of a much larger world. Hollywood Animal’s game world reacts dynamically to historical events like wars, social upheaval, censorship, and so on.

These external factors influence audience preferences and present challenges that require players to adapt by forming alliances or rivalries and making decisions that can lead to ethical dilemmas by choosing, for instance, between fair practices or engaging in underhanded tactics such as bribery and blackmail. These choices impact the studio’s success and relationships within the industry.

Hollywood Animal Release Date and Time

Launched in Early Access on April 10, 2025 at 9:00 A.M. PT / 12:00 P.M. ET

Hollywood Animal finally launched in Early Access on Steam this April 10, 2025. This release followed a series of delays.

Initially, the game was slated for a 2024 release. A firm date of January 16, 2025 was then announced, only to be pushed back a month before its intended launch to February 27, 2025. Ultimately, the release was postponed again to April 10, 2025.

Steam
Price		$19.99

Hollywood Animal Review [Early Access]

Being Awful Has Never Been This Fun

Though I’ve always leaned more toward city-builders, I’ve long handed the crown of authenticity—and commitment to the bit—to their close cousin: tycoon games. Because as much as city-builders try to sell a theme, the mechanics almost always end up devouring the concept, leaving it unable to fully become what it’s pretending to be—unless, of course, it was practically city-building-adjacent from the start.

First, we had Tropico, which is still the best (and, let’s be honest, basically the only) tycoon game about playing a third-world despot somewhere in the Caribbean. And now, say hello to Hollywood Animal. Where Tropico nails the performative sleaze of dictatorship, Hollywood Animal is a box of spiders masquerading as a tycoon game about filmmaking.

But enough with the pre-movie preamble. Settle into your seats, fire up that definitely-not-illegal camcorder, and get your popcorn ready—we’re about to roll the reel on how Hollywood Animal rewards the inherent awfulness of the early filmmaking industry without ever glamorizing the absolute worst of old Hollywood.

Building Dreams on the Silverscreen

Where to begin with this game? Well, I suppose we’ll start where most stories and movies do… at the beginning. Hollywood Animal is a game about humble beginnings—humble beginnings that, rather quickly, curdle and collapse under the weight of cold, hard reality. We’ll get to how that applies to both the gameplay and the overarching story soon enough, but for now, let’s focus on your humble beginning (and, as mentioned, how it promptly crumples like a poorly folded screenplay).

Things kick off with you buying a bankrupt studio, intent on building your film empire from its ashes. After a quick rename and rebrand, your first move is to release the final, unfinished project from the old regime—now under your shiny new studio’s banner. It’s here the intricacies of filmmaking start to sink their teeth in, and that creeping suspicion that you might be in way over your head starts to whisper.

With the script already locked, you’re thrust straight into pre-production—just one of the many phases required to push a single film out the door. From there, it’s on to production, post-production, printing, distribution, the premiere, and then a tense four-week window of potential profit. Sounds like a lot? That’s because it is. And you’ll be doing this for every movie. Often simultaneously. With overlapping schedules. And rising costs. Oh yeah—the landslide has already started, and you’re standing right in its path.

If you thought production headaches were the worst of it, then you’re about as delusional as an aspiring actor who thinks raw talent alone is enough to make it in Hollywood. Because the real chaos is in the pettiness and egos you’ll be juggling daily from both cast and crew. You’ll be wading through a swamp of lawsuits and scandals, slipping cash under tables, and turning a blind eye just to keep the cameras rolling. And just when you think you’ve made it out clean, some actor blows up over the wrong kind of accommodations—or worse, they show up in your office demanding a raise.

All of this while you’re trying to keep your crew loyal and happy (so they don’t get poached by the competition) and push your studio into becoming a major Hollywood player. At a certain point, it stops being about making movies at all—and that’s the brilliance of it. Because that’s exactly how it was back then.

The goal here is to survive all that chaos without the studio going under—and oh boy, it’s a lot. Maybe even too much. At times, it pushes past the whole “1930s Hollywood was awful” shtick and edges into territory where the gameplay itself starts to buckle under the weight. Speaking of, it’s time we get into the details of how this game plays because that summary, while helpful for the vibe, is nowhere near enough to explain this game’s innermost workings.

Schmoozing, Boozing, and Producing Like the Good Old Days

So, we know how the game starts, what it’s aiming for, and the general chaos you’ll be juggling as the head of your studio. Now it’s time to walk through the process, step-by-step—and what better way to do that than by following the full production of a movie from script to screen? Our journey begins at the writer’s table.

Every movie kicks off with a script, and for that, you’ll need a screenwriter. Most of the time, they’ll have a few ideas ready to pitch, which you can approve and send them off to draft. But as you work your way through the game’s branching research tree, more creative options begin to open up. The research system itself is fairly straightforward—it works on timed unlocks, and no resources are required unless you want to rush things. And if your assigned staff are actually good at their jobs, you can speed things up even more. But I digress.

Back to the writing desk—if none of your writers have anything compelling, you can head to the Story Workshop to craft a concept from scratch. Here, you’ll mix and match genres and story elements before locking it in for writing. If you’re short on time or inspiration, there’s also the option to buy prewritten scripts from freelancers—once you’ve researched the feature.

Let’s say your script is done and ready to roll. Next step? Greenlight pre-production. That means assigning a budget, choosing your personnel, and locking in key talent. From this point on, your film will carry a review score—one from the public, one from critics—and this score will ultimately determine its success. It’s not fixed, though. The quality can rise or fall with each phase, depending on your decisions and the competence of your crew.

During pre-production, you’ll assign a cinematographer, choose whether scenes will be shot on a soundstage or on location, make sure your stages are available (and up to spec), select your film and sound tech, decide on the number of extras and crew, set costume quality, cast your actors, hire a director, and finally give the whole thing your seal of approval.

Once that’s all locked in, it’s off to production!

Production is, as expected, the lengthiest part of the process—and the one where everything that can go wrong, probably will. For the most part, you’re hands-off here, letting the studio do its thing and the cast and crew “make art,” as it were. Your real job during this phase is damage control. And trust me, there’s plenty to clean up. Fires—both literal and metaphorical—flare up constantly, especially if your team is, let’s say, temperamental, addicted, racist, or otherwise problematic. When production grinds to a halt (and it will), it’s up to you to unstick it. Sometimes that means cutting a check. Other times, it means firing someone. And occasionally, you just throw up your hands, pause everything, and hope the mess untangles itself.

This is also where the game’s negotiation mechanic kicks in—along with some of its more... let’s call them period-accurate elements. Take a moment from my own playthrough: I had an A-lister and a D-lister cast in the same film. The A-lister, naturally, refused to share a frame with such peasantry. Enter negotiations. You can meet with them privately and offer up whatever bribes—sorry, incentives—will get them to play ball. Think Civilization VI’s trade menu, but grimier. You can offer cash, favors, and let’s just say... “relationships” that aren’t exactly above board.

Let’s say you’ve survived the chaos, the film wraps, and it’s time for post-production. Structurally, it’s similar to pre-production—you’re assigning talent and allocating workload—but this time to editors, sound engineers, and film printers. Once that’s locked in, it’s off to distribution.

With the movie ready to premiere, you’re now scheduling the when, where, and how long of its theatrical run—taking into account what your competitors are doing. Maybe you want to go head-to-head with a rival film in the same genre, or maybe you’d rather duck out of its opening weekend altogether. You’ll pay ad agencies to cook up trailers and posters, decide how long the marketing blitz runs before and after release, and, at long last, lock in the premiere date.

Years of work have led to this. The lights dim, the curtains rise, and your film hits the silver screen. But what do the critics think? Well, they’ll let you know—if they even think it’s worth mentioning. Their reviews translate into Reputation, a vital resource used across the game. The higher your rep, the more you can get away with behind the scenes, and the more likely you are to secure loans and deals.

Box office revenue is tallied, and you get the choice to extend your film’s run or cut it short. But eventually, the curtains close, the film’s life cycle ends, and you collect your earnings… all so you can do it all over again.

Everything we’ve covered so far only represents one side of Hollywood Animal. The other half—and that’s being generous, it’s more like a quarter—is the studio management itself. This part is mostly about buying, building, and upgrading your lot. You’ll construct new soundstages and key facilities that unlock advanced functions, streamline your production pipeline, and generally give you more knobs to twist as you chase that next great picture.

Sprinkled throughout are random multiple-choice pop-ups—usually from your ever-needy cast and crew—forcing you to navigate a minefield of decisions that range from mildly inconvenient to outright scandalous. Occasionally, your choices will land you in court for something you either did or had to do to keep the wheels turning. It's almost always illegal, sure—but with the right lawyer, it’s rarely criminal.

And through it all, the pressure never lets up. You’re balancing egos, dodging lawsuits, scraping funds together, and desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy while keeping your studio name from becoming a punchline.

And with that, we arrive at the full picture of Hollywood Animal. A cutthroat rat race of cash and clout running parallel to the creation of art—one that never shies away from showing just how grimy the Golden Age could get. But the question remains: as a game—as a product—is Hollywood Animal worth the price of admission?

Unafraid to Show Things as They Were

The most striking thing about Hollywood Animal is how genuine it feels. It doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of the era—it leans into it. Sure, some of it might be oversensationalized (and in other cases, maybe not sensationalized enough), but what matters is that it never sanitizes just how demeaning and predatory the industry really was.

And the best part about all this is the nuance. It would’ve been easy for the game to just be awful for the sake of accuracy—but instead, a careful blend of storytelling and gameplay reinforces that bleak reality without ever romanticizing it.

For one, all the underhanded dealings—the bribes, the cover-ups, the power plays—come with consequences. Sometimes immediately, sometimes waiting like a trap in the tall grass, ready to snap shut in the form of lawsuits, scandals, or even staff exoduses. You can’t just act unilaterally, either. You’ll need approval from department heads for more questionable decisions, like docking pay or greasing palms. Keep your people loyal, quiet, and under control, or risk bleeding out from legal fees or losing your edge to the competition.

And importantly, none of these dirty tactics are required. They’re shortcuts—crutches, really—that can make your life easier in the short term, but come packed with moral baggage and long-term consequences. The game doesn’t judge you for using them, but it doesn’t let you off the hook either.

Screen-worthy Art and Great Music…Most of the Time

Hollywood Animal has style for days, and it’s not hard to see why. The game leans all the way into its filmmaking theme, with slick transitions between production phases that add just the right amount of showbiz flair. It’s the kind of pizzazz you’d expect from a game about movies—a splash of personality that not only gives the game a unique identity but firmly anchors it in its era. The music follows suit: tinkling ivories, blaring brass, and some of the best big band tracks I’ve ever heard in a video game.

But both the visuals and audio suffer from the same issue: they’re too much, too often. Don’t get me wrong—I love the stylized UI, the snappy sound cues when you fast-forward, and the beautiful, era-specific architecture that still manages to look great from a hundred feet in the air. It’s all very good.

Until it isn’t.

The transitions, as pretty as they are, can’t be skipped or turned off. And you go through them a lot—especially when managing multiple projects. What starts as charming quickly becomes a chore. The music, while undeniably great, also starts to feel repetitive. A bit more variety, maybe a few tracks with vocals, would go a long way. At least the soundtrack can be muted.

Buggy, Somewhat Unwinnable, and Missing a Few Parts

The gameplay itself isn’t without its own set of woes—ones that go beyond the game’s already killer audio-visual presentation. Hollywood Animal is hard, with no easy mode in sight. But hey, that’s showbiz, baby—and it’d feel dishonest if it wasn’t a brutal uphill battle. That said, there are moments where the game doesn’t just feel difficult—it feels unwinnable.

I came into this with a background in similar genres, so I could treat the dirty tactics as optional. But for most players? They’ll feel mandatory, with how razor-thin your margins are and how often your studio teeters on the brink—even when things are going well.

There’s just too much to juggle at times: too many fires to put out, too many bills stacking up, too many egos to manage, palms to grease, reputations to salvage. Early on, when your staff is underqualified and underpaid, half your production budget ends up going toward damage control. And the movie you managed to squeeze out? Barely breaks even.

And then there are the bugs. Granted, it is early access—but still, it’s rough around the edges. Menu freezes are common, quality-of-life options (like skipping animations) are nonexistent, and the tutorial feels overly hand-holdy while somehow still leaving you underprepared for the chaos ahead.

Content-wise, the game’s clearly unfinished. Parts of the tech tree are cut off, there’s no standalone endless mode, and alternative difficulty levels are missing entirely. It’s a work in progress—and that’s okay. But it’s very much still in production. Until it wraps, I’d recommend sticking with Tropico after your first run-through. Hollywood Animal might have the style and ambition to walk the red carpet someday, but right now? It’s still backstage, trying to find its footing.

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Hollywood Animal Product Information

Title	HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL
Release Date	April 10, 2025 (Early Access)
Developer	Weappy Wholesome
Publisher	Weappy Studio
Supported Platforms	PC (Steam)
Genre	Strategy, Simulation
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	RP
Official Website	Hollywood Animal Website

Aaron Bruce Albert..

A massive fan of roguelikes, turn-based RPGs, and open world adventure games. His gold standard games include The Binding of Isaac, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Dragon Quest Monsters Joker.