Movie Theater
| Movie Theater | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Location |
| Address | Abandoned JojaMart or Joja Warehouse |
| Open Hours | 9:00am to 9:00pm |
| Closed | Most festival days |
The Movie Theater is the valley's biggest friendship machine. One film is showing at a time, a ticket costs a thousand gold, and a second ticket handed to a villager invites them along for the afternoon. Taking someone to a film they love is worth more friendship than almost anything else that can be done in a single day, and a snack bought at the counter on the way in adds to it. The building is the reward for finishing the game's central choice: on the Community Center route the abandoned JojaMart becomes the cinema, and on the Joja route the warehouse does. Only one film a week can be watched, so the schedule, the guest list and the snack counter all repay a little planning.
Area
The theatre stands where JojaMart stood, on the east side of Pelican Town, whichever route brought it there. Arriving by the Community Center route is the more theatrical of the two. On the night before the first rainy or stormy day after the Center is restored, a cutscene shows lightning striking the doors of the abandoned mart. From then on the shell can be walked into, and the Missing Bundle is waiting inside. Finishing that bundle has the Junimos build the cinema overnight.
The Joja route is blunter. Morris offers the conversion once every project on the Community Development Form has been paid for, and the warehouse becomes a cinema for half a million gold.
Inside, the lobby holds a ticket window on the right, a concessions counter and the Crane Game machine on the left, with the screening room beyond. Random villagers turn up in the audience whether or not anyone invited them, and they are there purely as scenery: their opinion of the film changes nothing and they pay no friendship.
Shops
The ticket is the only entry fee, and a second one bought at the same price is a gift rather than a purchase. It works exactly like handing over any other present: give the ticket to a villager and they will meet the farmer at the cinema. The invitation only lasts the day it is given, and a ticket that is not used that afternoon is forgotten.
The concessions counter offers five snacks at a time out of a long list, and the selection is shuffled rather than fixed. The game tries to put one snack the guest loves, two they like and one they dislike among the five, so there is almost always a right answer at the counter if the guest's tastes are known. A loved snack adds a modest amount of friendship, a liked one about half that, and a disliked one costs nothing at all, which makes the counter a free bonus rather than a risk.
Prices run from pocket change to silly money. JojaCorn and Joja Cola are the cheapest things on the board and are hated by nearly everybody, with Shane the exception who genuinely loves both and Pam happy enough with either. At the other end sits Stardrop Sorbet, which costs more than the ticket and the film put together and is loved by the whole valley bar two. For most guests a mid-priced snack they love does the same job for a tenth of the money. A cinema built out of the Joja Warehouse always has JojaCorn on the counter whatever else is stocked.
The Crane Game costs five hundred gold a go and gives three grabs for the money. Each grab runs on a fifteen-second timer that starts the moment the crane is moved, and a successful grab on the first or second attempt does not end the game, so one payment can win three prizes. The crane is lined up horizontally and then dropped, and it stops at the position of its shadow. Centring it properly matters, because a prize held near its edge is often dropped on the way back to the chute.
Prizes include plush toys, house plants, seasonal decorations and the poster of whatever is currently showing, along with some genuinely valuable pulls: Omni Geodes, a Mega Bomb, a Warp Totem: Farm, another Movie Ticket and a Dinosaur Egg. The rarest items can sit hidden behind the foliage in the machine and only come loose when the crane knocks something else about, which is why regulars keep feeding it.
Notes
The films run on a two-year loop of eight titles, four for the first year and four for the second, keyed to the season in which the cinema was built. Every villager has an opinion on every one of them, so the same outing is worth two hundred friendship points with one neighbour and a polite nothing with another. The Dwarf is the easiest guest in the game, because he loves all eight.
The weekly cooldown resets on a Monday rather than a rolling seven days, which means a Sunday film and a Monday film can be watched back to back. Walking into the lobby and leaving again without sitting down does not use the week up.
Festival days close the doors. Tickets can still be bought on a festival morning, but the cinema will not let anybody in, and trying to give a ticket away that day brings up a message saying the theatre is not open on festival days. Even the Key To The Town will not open it while it is shut.
Krobus comes with a condition of his own: he will not go to the pictures on a Friday, so an invitation on the wrong day of the week is a thousand gold wasted.
The concession list quietly rewards attention. Shane hates Joja Cola as a gift yet loves it as a cinema drink, and Pam is indifferent to the bottle but happy with the cup. The Personal Pizza behaves the same way in reverse: plenty of villagers who like an ordinary Pizza turn their noses up at the small one. A guest's gift preferences are a good guide to the snack counter, but they are not the same list.
Inviting Penny has one quirk worth knowing. She loves any film at all if Pam is in the audience, but Pam will never turn up in the crowd on a day when Penny has been invited, so in a single-player save the bonus cannot be reached. Two players in a shared save can each invite one of them and get the scene.
All Locations
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
