Namco rolls the camera with quirky match-3er Tinseltown Dreams
Mixing puzzling with film making
Namco is gaining itself a bit of a reputation for wacky hybridised games.
So following on from Solitaire: Deck of Cods, comes Tinseltown Dreams: The 50s, the iPhone version of a PC match-3 game has a meta framework of getting you to make films.
The match-3 elements works as you'd expect, with 35 tile layouts provided to make things progressively harder. There are also a bunch of power ups to speed the process including a fan to shuffles a 3x3 tile area, a hammer to destroy any tile, and a level shuffle.
The twist however is that the points you accumulate build up your movie-making budget.
This works in a separate user interface where you have to hire a professional cast and crew, and purchase props. Everything then switches to a set where you place your actors on the stage, arranging them all as you see fit, and scale your props to the correct size.
Seven themes are available from cowboys and indians, to sci-fi and romance.
Once you've created your film, it's released and depending on your budget, and how well you've used it, you'll get awards and box office success, or failure.
You can get an idea how it all works in the following trailer.
