FTW Staff Picks - Hollywood

Hollywood was one of the first games I Kickstarted - and paid an embarrassingly large amount for, considering the contents of the game.  I've always wanted to play a movie-themed board game and the offerings on the market were sparse. I put all my chips down in the Hollywood campaign and I was not let down.

Now Hollywood is far from a perfect game, especially mechanically, but it's one of those games that is a lot of fun with the right people. In Hollywood players take the roles of studio heads, hoping to create blockbuster pictures from year to year in order to become the most profitable studio. The game revolves around drafting and bidding. The drafting allows you to see what types of cards are available in the year, and thus gives an idea on what special cards will be bid on. 

To create films, players must assemble 9 cards every year into anywhere from 1 to 3 full-fledged motion pictures. What does a proper film require? A director, a script and an actor/actress. That's the bare minimum required, but there are plenty of other cards than can help your film reach critical acclaim or box office glory. Creating a leading duo gives extra cash. Genre-matching your director, actor/actress and script give big bonuses. And if you wanna chase awards, you can take your chances with a Cult Movie Script and Controversial Actors/Actresses. 

Sadly, the Kickstarter campaign for Hollywood didn't generate enough interest for the game to be distributed beyond its campaign. The only people who have copies are either backers or the few lucky folks who picked up a copy at a handful of gaming conventions. The original foreign prints of the game have Actor & Actress cards that resemble actual famous folks like Woody Allen & Meryl Streep. Unfortunately, due to legal concerns they had to scrap the idea for the final KS distribution. That was a tough pill to swallow. But still, whenever I bring the game out with friends we like to imagine the kinds of films we produce. It helps bring everything to life. Imagine a Scorsese romance film with its leads as Nicolas Cage and Jennifer Lawrence. Actually, that sounds more like a horror flick.