With the rise of Wordle, there has been a whole spate of new daily puzzle apps. I've started casually playing a couple of the ones related to movies, and figured I'd pass along my recommendations.
Hollywoodle.ml is for lovers of the old Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. Every new game asks you to connect a pair of actors, like Alec Baldwin and Andy Samberg, based on the movies they appeared in. So, Alec Baldwin was in "Boss Baby" with Steve Buscemi," who was in "Hotel Transylvania" with Andy Samberg. Or, Alec Baldwin was in "Men in Black 3" with Will Arnett, who was in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping" with Andy Samberg. Being someone who watches too many movies, I can easily spend hours working out the connecting paths. A recent development has been a new feature that shows the connecting paths with the fewest moves, and the most popular ones that people have played. The design is a little clunky, and it still feels like a beta version, but the idea is sound. I think there's plenty of opportunity for improvement.
Now, Framed.wtf is even more minimalist, but it's already probably the best version of itself that it could be. The gimmick is simple - you guess what a movie is based on a series of screenshots, starting with the most obscure. So, for "Blade Runner 2049" the first screenshot is a character's shadow, the second is of an empty set, and the sixth is one of the more recognizable shots of Ana de Armas as the hologram Joi. So far, the movies have all been very popular ones, and there hasn't been one yet where I haven't been able to figure out the answer within the first three screenshots. However, it's much more approachable for the casual movie viewer whose only exposure to some of these films might be through advertisements or other cultural osmosis. I've seen similar screenshot guessing games on many movie forums over the years, and I'm not surprised to finally see it in app form.
Boxofficega.me needs the most explanation out of all of these games, and is probably the most niche. The concept comes from the "Blank Check" movie podcast, where every episode ends with one of the hosts, Griffin Newman, guessing the five highest grossing films at the U.S. box office for the weekend when a featured movie premiered. Thanksgiving weekend of 2008, for instance, saw "Four Christmases," "Bolt," "Twilight," "Quantum of Solace," and "Australia" top the box office, in that order. Whenever Newman's impressive recall of box office statistics falters, a series of hints are deployed to steer him to the right answer, such as what genre the movie was, who starred in it, or who directed it. The app version invites the player to do the same, starting with a list of financial stats, and distributors for the five movies you need to guess. You start out with 1200 points, which are deducted when you make wrong guesses or have to use hints. Most of my games end up with scores in the 600-800 range.
Clearly, this game is aimed at the narrow group of movie nerds who keep up with the business side of the industry, and look at the weekend box office results every Monday morning. This happens to include yours truly. I'm nowhere near an expert, but I can usually figure out at least one movie without using any of the hints. That said, the hint system is great. You can pick and choose how much information you want to reveal. I can usually figure out the answers based on some combination of tagline and first billed actor, but there are a lot of other stats to fall back on, including second and third billed actors, director, budget, and final gross.
As with Wordle, a lot of the appeal of these games is being able to generate winning streaks, to look at your playing stats, and mark improvements. Boxofficega.me is the only one with a paid version so far, asking for donations of any amount to access an archive of past games.
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