It has that addictive gameplay loop like most games of its kind, where you're releasing one movie while producing a second one and writing a third one, so you're constantly on the verge of finishing another movie or putting a new movie into production. And you're constantly unlocking new technologies, story elements and buildings, and your movies just keep getting better and earning more money, so you never wanna stop. I jumped into this game and got lost in it for 6 hours. I'm actually going to delete it for now because of how damn addictive it is.

But man, as an aspiring filmmaker myself, I've always wanted a good moviemaking game. There was The Movies by Peter Molyneux, which wasn't a great strategy, but you could actually create movies in it. It took you like 2 hours to create a 2-minute movie, and it was ridiculous, but as a kid I loved it. Hollywood Animal is much more focused on its strategy and RPG elements, but still lets you flex some creativity. It's kinda like Game Dev Tycoon, except here the process is not rigged. Your decisions and stats actually matter.

And I just love the aesthetic, the atmosphere, the jazz music playing in the background, and the game taking you through actual cinema history of the 1930s, with memorable characters and events. It has a bit of Crusader Kings in it, with you having to manage characters that have their own traits and stats.

As of now though, the game is not finished. There are bugs, and missing features, and I'd say some mechanics are not well-explained or the interface is not always the most intuitive. But really this has the potential of being amazing. I'll come back to this when it's finished and when I have more free time to be wasting 6 hours a day playing video games.