Ever wanted to run a film studio in the Roaring Twenties where your most useful negotiation tool might be a bribe—or a well-kept secret? Hollywood Animal early access is not your typical management sim.
With a sharp adult tone and a flair for the dramatic, it lets you build your dream film empire while making questionable moral decisions along the way. It’s stylish, layered, and just chaotic enough to keep you guessing.
Hollywood Animal early access is available on Steam for $19.99 USD.
Story – Build Your Empire in the Glamorous 1920s
Hollywood Animal early access begins with you choosing a new name and logo for the studio you’ve just acquired. Beyond the tutorial, a linear story is practically nonexistent.
However, various events—though seemingly isolated—can lead to one of several chains of consequences that directly impact movie development or major occurrences.
Depending on your decisions, you might gain allies or make enemies, earn goodwill or strain relationships. These choices affect your options in future decisions and can trigger or lock certain events later on.
Business is ruthless; the strong always devour the weak.
Gameplay – Can You Handle Your Own Film Studio?
The general mechanics of Weappy Wholesome’s new game are quite similar to those of other management titles. You start with a new business and a limited budget, which you must carefully manage to cover the expenses of your project while keeping your staff happy and improving the quality of your films.
There are many detailed aspects to handle—ranging from staffing and research to cast compatibility and staff personality traits. All of these variables directly influence your films’ final ratings and, consequently, your revenue.
Selecting Staff for the Film.
However, as mentioned earlier, Hollywood Animal early access distinguishes itself from most management games with its decidedly adult tone. Reflecting the darker side of real-world industry dynamics, the game features elements that would likely be controversial in a title aimed at younger audiences. These include offering illegal perks to employees, covering up or exposing secrets to sway outcomes, engaging in corruption and shady deals, and using unethical marketing strategies—alongside dealing with some rather unpleasant personality traits.
What’s a favor between friends? And he’s someone you want as a friend.
You’re in charge of every aspect of film production. That includes hiring staff—administrative, cast, and crew—and developing script ideas. You’ll assigning team members to specific projects and casting. You’ll also manage the services and quality of props, costumes, and filming locations. In addition, you’ll choose the technologies for shooting and determine your film’s release scale. Planning the promotional campaign is also your responsability along with many others.
Scheduling distribution and handling media coverage.
Each production step has its own dedicated building, and you can select different traits or upgrades for each one through a sort of skill tree system. Some of these allow you to unlock or manage more specific features of that particular process.
There’s also an employee management view. Here, you can closely monitor how many people you have in each role, along with their happiness and loyalty levels. This is where gifts come into play. You can use them to boost morale and loyalty. This boosts impact both the quality of your films and the outcome of contract negotiations.
This is an example of the negotiations and the many factors that come into play.
In the Hollywood Animal early access, negotiations are a whole system on their own. Many variables influence a candidate’s demands, and loyalty plays a significant role in tipping the scales in your favor. On your side, you can leverage money, gifts, benefits like extended health insurance—and, in some cases, secrets the candidate would prefer to keep hidden.
There are still many things that could be improved. For instance, the tutorial is currently unskippable—though this is projected to change. Some scripts don’t accurately match what’s happening in the game, particularly during media critiques. Optimization could also use some work, and in my experience, the game feels rather difficult at this point. A more balanced progression system and clearer explanations for some features would go a long way in improving the overall experience.
Hollywood Animal Early Access Roadmap
That said, let’s remember the game is still in early access, and the developers could fix many of these issues in future updates. This is a great opportunity to share your feedback with the developers and help shape the final version of the game.
Graphics & Sound – Elegant Graphics and Sound Design Set the Mood
The graphics are beautiful and capture the essence of the era without aiming for realism. The golden accents throughout the menus and overall UI strongly evoke the opulence of the Roaring Twenties, enhancing the game’s aesthetic appeal.
Overall view of your small empire.
The sound design is equally well executed. The music serves as a pleasant backdrop throughout gameplay, never becoming grating—even during long sessions. Thoughtful sound design enhances immersion—from the chime that signals a new film stage, to thematic sounds when selecting buildings, distinct audio cues when initiating tasks, and crowd ambience paired with animations during the setup of a new development phase.
Hollywood Animal supports English, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Russian, German, Japanese, Korean, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Belarusian, and Ukrainian.
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- Buildings to manage every stage.
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- Ability trees to unlock upgrades and increase your chances.
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- Each decision impacts your film in different ways.
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- There’s almost no limit to the level of management you can achieve.
Hollywood Animal early access was previewed on PC with key provided by Weappy Studio.
