Players: 2-5
Time: 45-60 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Hollywood Blockbuster comes with:

• 1 Gameboard
• 5 Studio Screens
• 22 Screenplays
• 93 Production Chips
• 50 Contracts
• 30 Film Tokens
• 11 Film Awards
• 1 Movie Camera

Gameboard: The gameboard is a sturdy, 4-panel linen-textured board. It's really simple, and just provides spaces for eight different "locations" which represent auctions (where one person wins a bid on production chips) and "parties" (where everyone gets given production chips). Though it's simple, the design is very attractive, with various Hollywood locations depicted in simple pastels. You could actually do without the board, but it provides a nice focus for the game.

Studio Screen: Five heavy cardstock screens, one per player. They're just used to hide your contracts--and also to identify which screenplays each player gets at start. As with everything in the game, it's designed in attractive pastels.

Screenplays: The focus of the game are these heavy cardstock strips. Each one represents an individual movie, and shows what type of movie it is (adventure, drama, or comedy) and lists which elements are necessary to create the film--a combination of directors, special effects, film crews, music, and stars. The requirements are all listed as grayscale pictures, and I had some concerns initially about matching those up with the colorful production tiles, but it turned out that they worked fine.

Cardboard Bits: All of the rest of the components are printed on linen-textured cardboard, and they all generally feature simple colors and pictures which together combine to give the game a very coherent look.

These include: 93 production chips which you place on your screenplays as you work on a movie; 50 contracts which act as currency; 30 film tokens which show the values of completed films; 11 film awards which give bonuses for various films; and a camera which marks the first player (and which we were always forgetting to pass on).

Also worth discussing is the theming of the game. This is a game about making movies. The film stars, directors, and movies are all based upon real, modern movies, but they're satirical. Thus you could end up "Demi Less" starring in "Tomorrow's Golden Eye Never Dies", directed by "Steve Spellbark". Some folks who think that games should be serious don't like the satirical names, but our group generally gaffawed at them, because Uberplay was pretty clever in their punning. (The reason for the satire rather than using real names has to do with a right that celebrities invented whole cloth called "the right of publicity"; it prevents other people from using their names without permission.) Beyond that, the theming of Hollywood Blockbuster is actually quite good. The mechanics of parties and the redistribution of currency (which I'll talk about shortly) both really feel like the gears of Hollywood in action.

On the whole Hollywood Blockbuster has good quality components that are attractive (though not beautiful) and easy to use. As such I've given it a high "4" out of "5" for Style: very nice.

The Gameplay

The object of Hollywood Blockbuster is to create great movies--and maybe one really bad one too.

Setup: Each player chooses a studio and is given the three default screen plays for that studio. Each player also takes 10-12 contracts (depending on the number of players), which is his starting "money".

The board is laid in the middle of the table and the initial set of production chips is placed on the board: one named 4-star director is played in the first space; two to three face-up chips are randomly placed at each "location" and a number of face-down chips equal to the number of players are placed at each of the two parties.

Screenplays: Screenplays define which production chips a player is trying to collect. Each screenplay is either an adventure, a comedy, or a drama, and each starts off with 2-4 stars (depicting the quality of the screenplay). Each screenplay also has 4-6 spaces for production chips. These typically include 1 space for a director and 1 space for a guest star. The other 2-4 spaces can be any of: actors, special effects, film crews, and music.

For example The Lord of the Bling is a 3-star Drama that's a default film for studio 5 (Old Line). It requires: a director; 2 actors; and 1 of anything. There's also an optional place for a guest star.

Nightmare on Crystal Lake, on the other hand, doesn't need actors at all. it has spaces for: director; special effects; film crew; music; and (optionally) a guest star.

Production Chips: The producting chip fill in these spaces. They're valued from 0- to 3-stars, plus the special 4-star directors, plus a -1 star guest star (Keanu Breeze) who you might use if you're trying to make a stinker (e.g., "cult classic").

Order of Play: The game is played in four quarters. During each quarter: you auction for a great director; then you have two other auctions; then you have a party; then you have three other auctions; then you have a party. (Isn't Hollywood fun?)

Auctions: Auctions are simple roundabout affairs. Starting with the first player each player bids contracts for the one-to-three chip lot which is up for bid. Each additional player either ups that bid or drops out, and when there's only one person left in, he wins.

The winner gets all the chips from the auction, and he may place them on his screenplays. Generally, chips go on the appropriate places shown on the screenplay. Anything but a director may be placed in a blank space and wild "agency" chips may be used to replace anything but guest stars.

Guest stars are special. Every movie except The Cybertricks has a space for one, but they're optional. If you place one before the movie is completed, you'll have a better movie, but if you don't ... you can't later.

Besides collecting his chips, an auction winner must also pay his contracts. Uniquely, these are given out to all the other players in the game, divided equally with extras left in the pot for the next division.

Finishing a Film. A film is completed when all the spaces (not counting the guest star space) are filled. At this point the film is completed. Its owner counts up all its stars, including the stars for the screenplay and for all the chips on the screenplay. Near the board are film tokens labelled 0-22. The player takes the token that matches the value of his film, or if it's already gone, the next highest one available.

In addition, there's a special bonus for the first comedy, drama, and adventure film finished in the game. The player takes a special 5-point marker if he is one of the first in the field.

When you finish a film you get a new one to make ... except that there's a very limited supply of screenplays to draw from, and if you're not careful you won't be able to get more at the end of the game.

Parties: When a party begins, the chips in the party are turned face-up. Then each player counts up the total number of stars he has on his actors and guest stars. In decreasing order of stars, each player takes one chip from the party.

Finishing a Quarter: At the end of the quarter the player with the best (completed) film, which is the film with the highest value film token, gets a +5 Best Film bonus.

Then the board is refilled with new chips for a new round of play.

Finishing the Game: At the end of four quarters, several additional awards are given out. There's a +10 bonus for the best film in each genre, a +10 bonus for the worst film overall, and a +10 bonus for the player with the highest star-value of directors on completed films.

Incompleted films are worth nothing.

Each player then totals up the value of all his completed films, plus his bonuses, plus his contracts on hand. The player with the highest score wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Reiner Knizia designs lots of auction games. He's well known for designing a set of games in 1995-1996 which included High Society, Medici, and Modern Art. They're all pretty simple but well designed games.

In 1999-2000 Knizia returned to the mechanic and produced Ra, Taj Mahal, and Traumfabrik. These were all more substantive auction games, with more originality in their mechanics.

Traumfabrik was a game of making movies back at the birth of the motion picture industry, and it was only released in Germany because of more fascist intelluctual property laws in the United States ... until Uberplay finally released it as Hollywood Blockbuster this year.

Like Ra you bid on sets of tiles, and also like Ra your currency slowly circulates back to the other players (though it's much more direct in Hollywood Blockbuster). The method of "scoring", however, is what makes Hollywood Blockbuster truly stand out because of the "formulaic" auction method, where each player is going for distinct, yet predefined collections of tiles. Though it's got unique gameplay, Hollywood Blockbuster still clearly in the same family of fast yet thoughtful and fun games as Ra and Taj Mahal (the first of which was reprinted by Uberplay last year, the second of which was reprinted by Rio Grande Games this year).

The Game Design

Overall Hollywood Blockbuster is a unique, fun, and well-designed game. I already mentioned the theming, but it bears repeating: the mechanics work quite well for what's being modeled, and the whole concept of placing actors in unlikely movies is a lot of fun.

In the auction, the formulaic collections and the redistribution of contracts are not only unique, but also quite interesting. They're much of what make the game.

There's also a lot of strategy in the game. You can go for quick movies to try and get the "first" awards or to try and get more movies to produce. You can try and make good movies to win the awards at the end, but you also have to think about finishing a movie before the end of a quarter, because there's a prize for that too if you're at the top of the heap. If you concentrate on actors you'll get better picks at parties, but if you concentrate on directors there's a bonus for you at the end.

Ideally you should excel at every one of these things, but ultimately you can't win at everything, so you have to make hard decisions, which are always the sign of a good game.

Hollywood Blockbuster is one of Knizia's best auction games, both for its uniqueness and for its excellent gameplay--and that's saying something because he's made a lot of very good auction games. I rank it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.

Hollywood Blockbuster

Reiner Knizia's Traumfabrik is finally available in the United States as Hollywood Blockbuster. And, it's a good thing because this is one of Knizia's best and most unique auction games.

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