Blockbuster Inc. is a simulation game that focuses on developing a media business. The developers for this game are Super Sly Fox, and the publisher is Ancient Forge. It was released on June 6th, 2024.
When looking into the game before playing it, I was intrigued and wondered how much potential it could have. I haven’t played too many of these games so I was excited to try it out. Upon playing it, I can say it does have a lot of potential going forward but what is here right now is very bare bones. At its current state, I would not recommend this game.
Building Your Business
The first thing I will discuss about this game is its building aspect. The building is quite simple and easy to get used to. Placing items and walls is easy thanks to the grid system in place. There are even pre-set rooms you can add to speed up the process.
You can use several tools in the build mode, which are the options at the top of the screen. These tools are convenient when it comes to building your business and make it a much smoother process. Each tool has multiple functions too. The most essential tools for me are the clone tool, which allows you to copy and paste sections around and the undo/redo tool. I also quite like how, with the selection tool, you can expand rooms out and make them larger.
Some cracks start to show when you look at the available items to build with though. It’s quite limited for a game that focuses on this, especially at the start of the game. It would have been nice for them to have included a few more options for the indoor objects and decorations in particular.
The building is probably the game’s best aspect, though its decorative options are still a bit limited.
Managing The People
Moving on, let’s talk about the people who will be working for you. You can hire characters for a set amount of cash per month. Each character has a role they will be doing for you in the media-making process. They also have different traits which can be beneficial or hinder you in certain ways. Because of this, you should check to see what each character offers before you hire them. Ultimately though, these traits don’t matter much at all, as they don’t have a big enough impact on the game, so you don’t need to worry about it too much.
The employees will follow the workday you have set up once you hire them and will complete the tasks assigned to them throughout the day. However, you need to make sure you are staying on top of each employee’s needs as they all have a happiness meter. This is affected by several things such as the food served, the hours they work, housing, or other more specific events that can influence their mood. Managing this can get quite tedious though, especially with having to rehouse the employees so often.
Something else to mention here is the character creator. This is a cool feature to have for the game, creating employees with their own attributes. Though, sadly, even this has its issues. There are just not enough options for this creator, it’s very limiting. It also feels like a cheap way to get good characters and make the game even easier than it is. That’s exactly what I did with it anyway.
There are some interesting ideas for the employees and how they work but it feels too tedious to manage them at times.
Media Making
Creating movies and shows is the game’s moneymaker, allowing you to keep growing your business and do bigger and better things. There are several aspects to note when it comes to making the media. This includes things such as assigning people to specific jobs, choosing the media type and creating the scenes.
When you want to make a piece of media a window is brought up where you input the details of the media such as if it’s a movie or show, who’s going to be assigned to what roles, and what genre/theme it is. When starting you only have access to 2 different genres and 2 themes. It stays this way for a long time too. This results in you making the same type of media often. It becomes such a repetitive chore to make these pieces of media.
When you have got all the details of the media done then you can go into the actual scenes and direct them. For this, you can assign animation to the actors and move them around as well as add in some effects and alter the camera. The actual options for these though are very lacking. The total amount of animations, while it may seem quite lengthy, is much smaller when you try to match the animation with the specific genre and theme of the media. However, I will say, you can make some funny scenes with the supplied animations. So I found myself having some fun with it, at least at first. This quickly changed when I had done quite a few.
The media-making aspect can be fun and has lots of potential but at the moment it gets very stale and doesn’t respect your time.
Editing The Media
Directing the scene is one thing, but this game also has a video editor to add more flavor to the media you make. This video editor has quite a few options for you and is quite easy to use. It also has the appearance of many other video editors, so people with experience will feel at home.
In this editor, you can move scenes around, edit scene length, add text, or even add sound effects. There are quite a few options for sounds which is nice. Though it would have been great if we could have a backing track too, not just sound effects. The text though is extremely limiting. There is just one font style and there is no option to move the subtitle around the screen. It would have been nice to have seen screen decals, such as thought bubbles to use in the editor as well.
I like its ease of use, but just like the scene directing, editing also feels pointless to do as it doesn’t seem to impact the product much.
Conclusion
Blockbuster Inc. is a game that is full of potential but is let down by its current state. There are many cool ideas here but the overall execution is poor. The good news is that the developers have indicated there is a roadmap for the game. Because of this, there is still hope for things to change and for it to achieve its true potential. I want to also mention that there seems to be some technical issues as well. From other accounts, there have been issues with crashing, framerate and pop in too, though I didn’t experience this myself. So do also bear that in mind.
If you would like to get the game, you can get it here on Steam.
