Idle Hollywood Tycoon is the newest idle clicker business sim game from Original Workshop Company. Although the game is still in its early access version, it already has tons of contents and features to offer players. Idle Hollywood Tycoon is designed like most conventional idle business sim games in that your will continue to earn profits regardless of how you run the business. That is basically where the similarity ends as Idle Hollywood Tycoon gives you more decision points to act on, creating a more challenging gameplay.
The first minute of your dive into Idle Hollywood Tycoon might make you think that the adventure is all about managing a cinema. You will come to find soon enough that your responsibilities as a new owner of an entertainment company spans from hiring actors, writers, and directors, down to managing a constantly growing cinema. Despite the tons of responsibilities in your hands, Idle Hollywood Tycoon is a type of simulation game that can be played and enjoyed by casual players who do not have a lot of free time in their hands.
Idle Hollywood Tycoon certainly offers a lot more depth when it comes to the business management aspect of the game. The introductory story and the tutorial session helps a lot in grasping all the basic mechanics and, again, Idle Hollywood Tycoon is a game where the chances of losing is zero. If you have just jumped into the world of Idle Hollywood Tycoon and want to build the best entertainment kingdom, then check out our comprehensive guide for some much-needed tips, cheats and strategies!
1. Follow The Welcome Missions
The tutorial that greets you as you embark on your entertainment mogul career in Idle Hollywood Tycoon walks you through all the basic processes that you will constantly be attending to later on. It starts from setting up the box office and the lobby until you are ready to play a movie in the first movie house. If you have played numerous idle clicker business sim games before, you might be convinced that this is the entirety of what you will handle throughout your adventure.
Each room within the theater can be upgraded in a variety of ways but the theater, in its entirety, is just a fraction of the responsibilities you have as an entertainment company owner. Once you step out of the cinema, the bigger world waiting for you to explore certainly provides you with more activities to engage in on a regular basis. There are actors and actresses to recruit and train, directors and writer to hire, scripts to write, and movies to film and publish.
As the plethora of tasks you need to cycle through may appear overwhelming at first, you have to remember that profits are the only possible outcome of every action. Regardless of which tasks you prioritize over the rest, there will never be any occurrence of loss for your growing firm.
For ease of progression and efficiency as far as your entertainment company’s growth is concerned, the best way to take on tasks is realigning them with the Welcome Missions.
You will consistently see your current mission at the upper right side of the screen. Tapping on it will reveal the Welcome Mission Event, which is essentially a limited event to guide you through the next steps of progression and earn you rewards as well.
Although missions may only appear one at a time, you can actually unlock rewards for hidden missions if you accomplish them. Each mission is directly related to the usual activities you should engage in as you develop your entertainment company, but following each one and having its entirety serve as your guide towards progression is what really makes it important.
Coins, gems, and booster are common rewards for every milestone you reach and in some cases, you get to obtain scripts and movies to help ease down the production line in creating more movies. It may take a long while for you to accomplish all the Welcome Mission objectives. The list is long but it does come to an end. Surely enough, you will no longer be a beginner by the time you clear all the Welcome Missions.
2. Keep As Little Idle Cash As Possible
One consistent game mechanic that comes with every idle clicker business sim game is the continuous inflow of cash. Even just after a few clicks adherent to the tutorial instructions will start money from rolling into your hands without any succeeding effort at all. Likewise, a few upgrades here and there will noticeably increase the amount of dough flowing in over time, and at this point it should become evident that you should keep as little idle cash as much as possible.
In any case, following our first tip and adhering to the Welcome Missions will regularly have you go through a series of upgrades. Typical mission objectives will require you to reach a certain level of upgrades for a particular section of the cinema. Any of the available upgradable features will result in an increase in its level so there are basically no room for errors as far as upgrading goes.
Although we will talk about the most efficient upgrading procedure later on, for now, what matters is that you keep a mindset of how to properly manage idle cash. Regardless on where you put your money on, it will lead to higher profits and you will soon get back the money you invested. Keeping the simple chain of spending and earning leads to higher profits enabling you to start purchasing the bigger, more expensive unlocks and upgrades.
Do not forget, however, that beyond the upgrades to invest in within the cinema, there are plenty of other investment options to spend your coins on. There are managers and staff that you can hire, actors and actresses to recruit and train, and casting for film production has its costs as well. There will always be more aspects of the business to invest in than the idle cash you have in hand so keep on investing as much as you can in them and start earning bigger by the minute.
3. Go For Cheaper Investments First
One of the standard strategies we use across all idle business sim games relate to how you choose which upgrades or features to invest in. Again, there is nothing wrong with investing however you see fit or even without much strategy as any bit of improvement is always a positive one. For efficiency’s sake, however, the ideal way to go is to invest in the cheapest investment option first and get more upgrades done with your available idle cash.
Taking the Lobby as an example, there are 5 investment options to choose from. Suppose you can upgrade the lobby capacity from level 9 to level 10 for 14.2k; the concessions income from level 3 to 4 for 13.6k; the concessions speed from level 2 to level 25 for 31.7k; the admission line from level 0 to level 1 for 100k; and the first assistant speed from level 2 to level 3 for 56.3k, the one to go for ought to be the second option or the concessionaire income. This should however be compared to the other available investment options in the other sections like the house 1 and the box office.
Succeeding houses are expectedly more expensive than the previous one so it will take a while before their initial upgrade costs will be considerably lower than the initial sections. Like upgrades on the cinema facilities, you should consider looking into the availability of other investment options and invest in them if they are the cheapest available.
Of course, following this strategy would leave you with plenty of expensive upgrade options at the bottom of the priority list and as exceptions, there are some opportunities where you should instead prioritize the more expensive investment choices that you can afford. Idle Hollywood Tycoon leaves you some opportunities to earn instant bulks of cash and these instances should serve as your sign to finally purchase the expensive upgrades on your list.
For starters, there are ad boosts that can instantly earn you loads of coins as well as gems after watching a short video ad. You can occasionally see the reward icon pop up at the upper right side of the screen and, if you do, you can earn either 10 gems or a random amount of coins.
Although the coins do not offer a specific amount, what you can get will always be a significant amount, potentially based to the average earnings you earn after some time. This means that the higher your income per minute grows, the bigger the amount of coins you can grab for free from the ad boost.
Being offline and away from the game also earns you idle cash. This can accumulate for a maximum of 2 hours each time. The aggregate amount is based on your earnings, so the more upgrades you invested in, the bigger the chunk of profits you can claim after signing back in.
With this feature, it becomes even more important for you to expend all idle coins as much as you can before leaving the game as you will surely gain more of it back when you return. Also, take the opportunity to double the amount of idle earnings you can claim. You can do this by simply playing a short video ad before claiming the rewards.
4. Be Selective When Training Your Celebrities
The collective functions of an entertainment company owner can be a challenging one but Idle Hollywood Tycoon certainly squeezed in a lot of fun factors for players to get hooked on the game. A lot of these can be attributed to the familiar stars of the shows you create as well as the shows themselves.
Although there is a gacha system from which new stars can be recruited, with 4 to 6-star actor and actresses only obtainable with gem purchases, the wide variety of characters to collect and train certainly has an addictive element built into it.
Actors can primarily be classified based on their star grade or rarity, which ranges from 1 to 6-stars. 1 to 3 star celebrities can be obtained using only coins and special rewards can earn you tickets as well to recruit more celebrities. Naturally, celebrities with higher stat grades not only start off with much better stats, but they are also more well-rounded and has much better growth rates than their lower grade counterparts.
What serves as stats for each actor and actress is their innate ability to act within certain movie genres. There are 6 different movie genres available in Idle Hollywood Tycoon and every celebrity specializes in one of them. The genres are action (gun), romance (heart), comedy (clown), sci-fi (UFO), horror (ghost), and musical (note). A celebrity’s star grade basically determines how many genres they have talent for, except for Jack, your first talent, who can contribute to any movie genre despite being only a 1-star actor.
For a more well-rounded pool of talents, what you would want to do is plan ahead before initiating any training. Training may only cost coins but each higher level costs more. Likewise, there are plenty of other business aspects very much in need of the coins you earn, so training celebrities should be done sparingly from time to time.
What you should do is consider 1 celebrity for each genre to upgrade first. As you may initially struggle to recruit some celebrities who specialize in a specific genre, you should continue focusing on a one celebrity per genre scheme until you have a full set of 6 stars ready to lead their own movies. Wait until you finally recruit actors or actresses for the genre you need one for instead of investing in a different talent. The mix of talents you can recruit in Idle Hollywood Tycoon is well balanced and you will soon be able to nab 1 celebrity for each genre.
One detail you should keep tabs on is that celebrities with 2-star grades above will have a random second talent that will grow more than the rest. Although each celebrity’s growth when upgraded is largely focused on their specialization, there will always be a second random talent that can make them viable as supporting cast for a different genre. This means that you may recruit 2 similar celebrities, but their growth rate will be different as a result of their second talent.
On the map, you can recruit more celebrities by clicking on the gacha icon at the lower left side of the screen. For the most part, you will only be able to afford the green gacha, which can be purchased using coins and can give you 1 to 3-star celebrities.
As far as gem purchases are concerned, we recommend going for the blue gacha, which can give you 4 to 6 star celebrities at the cost of 100 gems. It will take a while for you to earn 500 gems and even the yellow gacha will not guarantee a 6-star celebrity. The sooner you nab a 4-star celebrity, the better quality of movies you can make, resulting in much higher profits.
5. Hire Directors And Writers From The Store
The store may not be as attractive to free players as there are plenty great stuff you can buy but the prices are mostly in gems or real money. As far as gems, which are the premium currency, is concerned, spending it on celebrities is the top priority. This means that you should probably shy away from the multitude of options to spend gems on the store.
There are, however, 2 important items in the store that you should regularly look into. One of them is the daily reward of 20 gems you can claim at the bottom of the page and the other is the normal chest under the “Hire Staff” category that you can purchase with coins.
Normal chests can grant you 3 to 4 cards per draw. You can obtain a mix of directors and writer, which are either common or rare by grade. Despite these 2 grades being the lowest, securing additional copies of cards will level up the staff, raising their proficiency to be closer to that of their higher grade peers.
As far as directors are concerned, you can only activate one of them at a time and each one has a unique buff that positively affects aspects of making a move. Directors may decrease the movie requirement by a certain percentage, speed up the filming process, or even reduce the filming cost. Naturally, higher grade directors have better buffs but if a lower grade one has been upgraded several times, he may offer a better incentive.
You will not be able to utilize your script writers until after the “Script” building has been unlocked on the map. Scripts made are random and will initially be 1 star by grade. Each writer has a certain level of idea based on their grade and level. For a 1 star script to be produced, for example, you need an idea level of 10 to start writing one. You can use up to 3 writers at a time to generate a script.
To start writing a script, tap on the “Script” building. Under the “compose” tab, you can simply tap on the auto assign button to fill the required level of idea needed to generate a script. All writers will be able to present you 4 random scripts at one time, with any of the 6 genres mixed randomly, meaning that 2 or more of the scripts may fall within the same genre. Be sure to pick one before hitting “ok”.
Under the “script” tab, you can view the list of scripts you have. New ones will also be generated over time. Under the “upgrade” tab, you can invest in specific movie genres. Upgrade costs are pretty much standard across all genres but the rate at which costs increase per star grade is exponential. The best approach is to upgrading each genre to level 2 first.
6. Keep Your Studios As Active As Possible
Tending to your cinema will most likely take most of your time especially if you follow our recommendation of leaving as little idle cash with you all the way. Early on, it will only take a few minutes for you to be able to afford a new upgrade and you may find yourself looking into the next set of prospective upgrades to invest in.
Idle Hollywood Tycoon makes it so that you will not be able to progress as much if you glue yourself to cinema for the most part of you managing your entertainment firm. Realistically enough, your customers will stop patronizing the movies you have lined up after some time. For this reason, one of the continuous cycles you need to tend to is switching in new movies for more patrons to be attracted to your cinema.
Each cinema house sports a bar that gauges how satisfied customers are. At some point, people will begin to lose interest in the movie and as the satisfaction gauge dries up, you should already have a ready film to switch in. Of course, this means that scripts should regularly be develops and new films must be produced and published.
We already discussed the procedure to generate scripts early on so to continue with the process of producing a movie, head on to any of the studios you have unlocked. You will start off with 1 studio and you can unlock a total of 7 as you make progress. For starters, though 1 is enough as producing a 1-star movie only takes 10 seconds.
As far as available genres are concerned, you should prioritize the ones that your best talents can have a lead role in. Once you click on a studio, the next thing to do is to assign celebrities to star in the film. You can see the movie’s main and sub genres at the top of the casting page.
This means that if you do not have enough suitable celebrities for the main genre, you can still make up for it by considering the next best thing. Note that classic movies will have more than 2 genres as well as more talents involved.
From the candidate list, be sure to toggle with the dropdown lists to delimit your choices for celebrities if needed. The compatibility of the celebrities assigned will determine the rank of the film, ranging from E to A, then S and finally S+. Meeting the required points across all genres will net you the S+ rating, which is very difficult but possible. The rank as well as the attributable cost will be displayed at the lower right side of the page.
A check mark will appear on the studio once the movie has wrapped up production. You can now head back to your cinema and switch the new movie in on your top-selling or highest earning movie house. It is recommended to always have ready scripts and movies in hand. Despite your busy schedule, there will be instances when you will stand idle as you wait for more funds to be generated so you can continue investing them again across various needs within your growing enterprise.
7. Remember To Hire Managers
It might take you a while to notice, but each section within the cinema has a cut-out silhouette of a person in them. These are actually spots where managers ought to be positioned in and having managers around can tremendously boost the section’s performance in a variety of ways. Naturally, hiring managers has its own additional costs but the effects they provide more than make up for those costs in the long run, especially if you actively manage the cinema.
If you click on the silhouettes, you will be taken to the manager page. Note that each section in your cinema has its own respective of managers you can hire. Each new hire will be more expensive than the previous one so you should prioritize first on ensuring that each section has a manager assigned.
Assigning a manager to his or her post, per se, will not have any benefits on its own. You will need to activate the manager’s special skill, which can be done through the start button beside them. Note that all managers’ abilities will only work for a short period of time, making it necessary later on to have extra managers who can take over the post while the other one is resting.
Managers very much work like directors and writers in the sense that if you happen to unlock the same person, that person’s buff will be increased. In this sense, you should not feel bad about hiring the same people over and over.
8. Take Advantage Of Collaboration Opportunities
Just when you thought Idle Hollywood Tycoon has filled your need for an engaging and challenging entertainment firm management sim, the features and mechanics we have discussed so far are still not the entirety of what the game has to offer. The collaboration feature will soon be unlocked after reaching certain milestones across the Welcome Event. You can access it via the “Collab” building on the map.
Collaborations give you an opportunity to produce classic movies, which reaps the best rewards as far as profits are concerned. These are movies that have more talents in them and span to include more than 2 genres. Before you can earn the movie rights, though, you need to accomplish a list of requirements first, and the offer will only be available for a limited period of time.
Most of the requirements work very much like the welcome mission objectives and should be fairly easy for you to accomplish at this point in time. Once all the requirements have been satisfied, click on the “Let’s Meet” button below the page. Once you finish the meeting with the familiar entertainment firm, you will have the script for the classic movie and start producing it.
Note that even a 1-star classic movie will take 2 hours to finish filming. If you only have 1 studio unlocked at this point in time, you may want to consider unlocking studio 2 or at least stack up on numerous films first before producing this one. Once the classic film wraps up, you will earn not just a movie but a special poster as well.
These posters are collected in the museum and beyond their visual appeal, each poster actually provides a buff that can permanently boost your profits. Note that various qualities of posters can be unlocked depending on the grade of the movie you produce. Securing a professional grade poster means that you have done the best expected production of the collaboration.
As an additional tip, securing a collaboration movie should not necessarily mean that you should immediately lodge it in one of your cinema houses. As classic movies have exponentially bigger returns than normal movies, you should prepare to make it so that you yield the highest amount of income from playing it on your cinema. You should definitely play it on the cinema with the highest rates. A manager or 2 should also help buff that cinema while the movie is in play.
Again, Idle Hollywood Tycoon is still in its early access version at the time of this writing. However, we can tell that more features mechanics will be added to its robust offering following its full release. Though we have not yet fully unlocked everything as well, this is where we conclude our Idle Hollywood Tycoon guide.
We certainly hope that you learned a lot from the various tips and strategies we shared in this guide. If it so happens that you stumbled upon some more tips, tricks, or strategies other than what we have mentioned, do not hesitate to share them away down in the comments!