Box Office Tycoon is Hothead Games’ latest mobile game, which stands as yet another addition to its growing roster of idle clicker simulation games. Within a month from its release, Box Office Tycoon has already earned well over 500 thousand downloads from the Google Play Store alone and continues to make its mark on the top lists of new games in countries where it is available. With the plethora of idle clicker games in the mobile gaming market, Box Office Tycoon still provides a variety of features and mechanics unique to itself, along with the usual elements of idle clicker games that fans of the genre love and enjoy.
Starting off as a new owner of a budding theater business establishment, your ultimate goal in Box Office Tycoon is to grow your entrepreneurial venture continuously as fast as possible. There is the usual complexity of having to attend to a variety of matters relative to the business but Box Office Tycoon, much like any idle clicker business sim game, makes it so that you will never incur losses.
Every action you do leads to an improvement in the business and profits continue to pour in regardless of how active your are. Like businesses in real life, though, active participation and actual time spent on the business leads to more profits, and making the right decisions lead to operations that are more efficient.
Box Office Tycoon comes with the simplest of game mechanics and interface. It becomes even easier with the quick tutorial session at the start that guides you through all the basic tasks you need to handle as you manage the operations of your growing theater.
Considering everything, Box Office Tycoon is a game that easy to pick up and play for players across all ages. If you are looking for the best way to grow your box office business, then read on as our Box Office beginner’s guide comes with a bunch of tips, cheats and strategies, so you can become a film industry tycoon in no time!
1. Keep The Profit Multiplier Active
An intrinsic feature of Box Office Tycoon, much like all other idle clicker games, is that profits continue to stream in before you even do anything. The proper way of handling your business does not necessarily mean avoiding losses and going bankrupt but rather, ensuring that you earn the most amount of profits with each passing second.
With the number of facilities to manage and upgrade, chances are that you would be itching to some checking here and there, with a solid intent of enhancing your theater business’ performance and increasing profits generated at the soonest. However, before doing so, it is best to activate the marketing boost feature first, and double your earnings for the next 10 minutes.
The free income multiplier boost activates after watching a short video ad. Once you click on the “Free Boost” button, a 5 to 30-second video ad will play and you will have a 10-minute profit boost immediately after. You can actually watch or play video ads continuously to rack up to 2 hours of boost. If you have upgrades you can afford, however, it is best to purchase them before spending time playing video ads as the upgrades will result in a higher income that gets doubled with the multiplier active.
What is important to note is that you should keep the multiplier active for as long as possible. If you will actively play, then the best course of action to take is to purchase upgrades in between watching ads or tend to other tasks available. If you are about to leave the game, however, it is best to stack up 2 hours-worth of profit boosts as this will be in effect even if you are offline and away from the game.
2. Follow The Goals As Much As You Can
Box Office Tycoon actually leaves a huge amount of freedom to players in terms of how they manage their growing theater business. You can choose to focus on a particular area within the theater rather than split your investments across all of them. You can opt to not have managers or hold the opening of a new feature if you prefer to. As you will continue to earn profits regardless of your business decisions, it is as good as saying that there are no ground rules in the game.
Being a top box office tycoon, however, dictates that you should always go for maximizing profits. Visiting each available area in the game and performing upgrades based on whichever you can afford is not entirely wrong, given that it will still contribute to a permanent increase in profits. Box Office Tycoon makes it easier for you to decide which upgrade to prioritize, based on its goals feature, which you can access through the checklist icon at the right side of the screen.
To start off, there are 72 goals you need to accomplish. You will only see 3 of the goals at one time within the list but you should know that each of these 72 goals, relate to upgrades you need to perform across all available areas within your theater building. In this sense, you may also accomplish some goals before they appear if you have already performed some upgrades prior to seeing the actual goal itself.
For best results, though you should choose to focus on one of the 3 goals you see on the list. As soon as you satisfy the requirements of the goal, claim your cash or diamond rewards so the next goal will appear. In effect, you will raise the profits your theater earns just like you would if you chose to ignore the goals feature and went on upgrading randomly but the cash and diamond incentives that you will earn as a reward is what makes this move more efficient.
3. Hire As Many Managers As You Can Afford
Every area or facility within your growing theater will operate and earn profits on its own and does not require you to install anything to collect profits from each of them automatically. If you have played a couple or several idle clicker business sim games in the past, the usual mechanic is that you need to assign managers to a profit-earning structure or facility for profits to be continuously collected and added to your funds.
Box Office Tycoon makes it so that the managers you hire are exclusively needed to further boost the profits of the areas or facilities they are assigned to. As you unlock a new facility, therefore, assigning a manager to it will result in an increased profitability. You can click on the person icon at the right side of the screen to access the office, which houses your current managers. You can choose to hire common (gray) or rare (blue) managers using cash or you can spend diamonds to hire a legendary (gold) manager.
Common and rare managers are similar in the sense that each one prefers to be deployed in 2 specific areas or facilities. Rare managers are better than common ones relative to the buff that they provide once they are deployed. Legendary managers come with having much better buffs and can be deployed with maximum boost on 4 different areas or facilities.
You are free to deploy managers to areas or facilities that do not relate to their preferences. Profits will still increase but hardly as much as it would if they are on the areas they specialize in. As you continue to hire managers using cash, the cost of each hire grows a little more expensive each time so at some point, you will have to halt hiring and shift your focus back at purchasing upgrades.
Note that while there are a lot of new managers to unlock, you can still get doubles or hires of the same managers you already have in your roster. This will result in an automatic upgrade of the manager and improves that manager’s stats in terms of boost given, longer active time, and lesser rest periods.
4. Keep Your Managers Active
In contrast with other idle clicker games where managers deployed will continue to work without rest 24/7, Box Office Tycoon brings it closer to reality and makes managers rest after spending some time working. The thing is, after they rest they will continue to be idle until after you make them go back to work using the “start” function.
Through the office button at the right side of the screen, you can check which from among the managers you gave assignments to are active or resting. Each one will also indicate how much time they will be active or how much time they need to rest. When fully rested, you can tap on the “start” button beside the manager to make him or her work again. Alternatively, you can click the “start all” button above the list and make all available managers start working.
There is a valuable reason in Box Office Tycoon to hire and have more managers than what you can actually deploy at one time. As your managers take time to take some rest, you may think that the only option is to wait for them to finish their break time until you can enjoy some boosted profits from the areas or facilities they are deployed to. There is actually a more efficient means of gaining continuous boosted profits, provided that you can actively sustain to do so.
As you check on your theater manually, you will easily notice and be able to tell which managers are active, which ones are resting, and which ones are idle even if they are not resting. The active ones have a very noticeable glow, bigger than the idle ones, while the resting ones appear to be snoozing. You can tap on the office icon and have the idle managers start working again but for the resting ones, you can visit them manually on their stations and tap on them to see their details.
At the managers window, you can just as easily replace the manager with anyone from among the unassigned list of managers you collected. As an added feature, you can visibly notice heart icons on each one’s preferences when it comes to deployment. As much as you can, go for a substitute manager that can offer boosts to where he or she will be stationed.
As managers have very limited active time when they are deployed, you will have to keep having them work in shifts for a continuous stream of boosted profits. This is yet again one reason why actively tending to your box office enterprise becomes more profitable than simply letting things run idly.
5. Always Tend To The VIP Guest
It is a common feature in most idle clicker business sim games to occasionally have VIP customers or guests to business your business establishment. Unlike regular customers that generate profit as they come in, VIP clients require special attention and care for you to earn something from them. In contrast, however, these special customers can give you a lot more cash instantly than any regular customer ever would.
You can actually see the VIP customer oozing with cash on your theater’s lobby. To make it easier for you to tap on him, a banner at the right side of the screen will appear whenever he is around as well. Just like the profit booster we mentioned at the start of the guide, you need to play a short video ad to earn huge sums of cash from him.
Note that the amount of cash you earn from the VIP visitor will vary each time. This will depend on how profitable your business has become and how soon you were able to entertain him from his last visit. In any case, any amount he offers will always be relative to your profits and needs and will likewise be worth grabbing as you will continue to earn your regular profits while watching video ads.
If you are online, even if not fully attentive to your theater business, it is best to glimpse at your device every once in a while to grab the cash from the VIP customer.
6. Less Idle Cash Means More Profits
One of the most important rules that come with every idle clicker game applies to Box Office Tycoon as well. As far as investments and profits are concerned, the less idle cash you have means the more profitable your business venture is.
As your earnings continue to pile up what is immediately impacted is the idle cash you can see at the upper left side of your screen. While this is all good and that the view of your earnings that continue to grow can be very motivating, having more idle cash in idle clicker games actually mean that you are earning less than you should.
This is one of the instances when you are free to deviate from prioritizing goals as far as investments are concerned. At certain points in your progress, the 3 different goals you have in line may require cash that is more than what you currently have. In such cases, it can be a better alternative to spend those cash on any affordable investment rather than wait for the time for your idle cash to reach the necessary amounts needed to complete any available goals.
7. Observe Basic Investment Strategies
Despite prioritizing the accomplishment of goals as you operate your theater business, you can still adhere to the basic strategies that apply to every idle clicker business sim game as far as investments are concerned. The idea is to leave as little idle cash as much as possible but then, you would still have to categorize all possible investment ventures as to how they relate to your cash standing and play style.
You can classify all potential expenditures into ones you can readily afford and others that require some saving before you can spend on them. Small and lower level upgrades as well as hiring the initial batch of managers may fall into this group. Higher level upgrades and some new facilities within your theater fall into the latter category. If you are actively playing the game, you can either spend the idle cash you have on whichever upgrade you can afford, especially if it takes a long while before you can spend on any goals you have.
If you have more time to play actively, however, profits will come more easily enabling you to save more cash at a faster rate. With this scenario, it may only take a few minutes of active playing to be able to afford one of the 3 goals you have lined up to accomplish. If this is the case, then it is best to push through with accomplishing goals so new ones will be unlocked.
Note that actively engaging in your theater business does not relate exclusively to the passive income you earn as well as the boosts provided by the marketing boost and the active managers deployed on the different facilities. This also means that you have more chances of tending to the VIP client and racking up huge sums of cash each time.
Now, there are extra facilities you can add up to your theater that cost a lot of cash. These additional sources of income may not catch your attention early on but you can easily view them via the office icon at the right side of the screen and clicking on the build tab. This can involve needing a couple of hundred thousand, which can be a challenge to save early on your career. If it will take you a while to save for the needed amount and you simply do not have the luxury of time to actively play and save up then there is still a great opportunity to unlock these investments.
As you spend some time away from the game and go offline, you will continue to earn idle cash. The amount of idle earnings is affected by the market booster for a maximum time of 2 hours and you can accumulate idle earnings for up to 12 hours. Once you log back into the game, you will be presented with an opportunity to double your earnings by watching another video ad or triple it at the cost of 50 diamonds. Naturally, you would want to save your diamonds for hiring legendary managers so the best option is to go for a double earnings boost.
As much as you would more often be challenged by the bigger investments related to adding new facilities, your should know that these actions serve as key to making the rest of the goals available. If you just logged back in, therefore, it is best to either purchase one of the more expensive investments or save for a bit longer if you still cannot readily afford it.
You will have to complete all the initial 72 goals for you to be able to unlock the next theater. Expectedly, doing so will take your business to a bigger location with more purchasable facilities and additional upgrades for existing ones. While it all looks like a complete restart, you will actually start earning more and will reach your previous status at a much faster rate. At this point, you can already consider yourself as more than a beginner and should continue on with the same strategies to reach the next level.
That wraps up our Box Office Tycoon beginner’s guide and we hope that you enjoyed reading our guide as much as we enjoyed making it. If you stumbled upon a different trick or strategy in addition to what we have already covered in our guide, do not hesitate to share it with us in the comments!