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Westworld’s mobile game trailer highlights animated violence

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

HBO’s popular Westworld drama is getting a mobile game, and it won’t be as cartoony as the game looks. A new trailer from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment shows that the game will have cartoon animations but also show the same kind of violence as is present in the TV show.

The trailer above (provided exclusively to GamesBeat) doesn’t show blood, but it does show the consequences of gunfights, massacres, and the collection of dead host (android) bodies throughout the landscape of the game, which debuts on Android and Apple’s iOS tomorrow, though it is out in selective Android territories today. In that sense, the cartoon mobile game doesn’t deviate much from the theme of violence — and why or why not humans have the right to perpetrate it on androids — in the TV show.

Westworld Mobile was created by the mobile game studio of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (See our interview with Warner games chief David Haddad). The game is a good way for fans to stay engaged with the fiction of TV show, and it’s also a good way for the companies to make money, as mobile gaming has become a $70 billion business worldwide, according to market researcher Newzoo.

Westworld’s hosts are disposable.

I’ve had a good look at Warner Bros.’ Westworld mobile game. It is based on the hit HBO show, and it translates the fantasy of Westworld to the small smartphone screen, allowing you to take part in the dream of being God over your own park full of artificial intelligence inhabitants.

The WB Games San Francisco studio started working on the title before the first season premiered, meaning before October 2016, or around two years. The game has a far different look from the TV show, which is a gritty and realistic science fiction tale that pits androids in a theme park in a rebellion against their human masters, who allow human guests to treat them as play things.

The game, on the other hand, is a cartoon-style game where you train new employees in the Delos-owned Westworld theme park. It fits in the timeline of the first season and it takes place prior to the Delores and Teddy timelines in the show.

Turning the tables on the scalpel man in Westworld.

In the second season of the TV show, there has been a lot of blood spilled as the park androids rebel against their masters. The hosts are killing off their masters, and the masters are showing no qualms about dissecting the bodies of the androids in search of clues to why they are rebelling.

The game has the Westworld theme music, and you can go into familiar places like the saloon, Escalante, Abernathy Ranch, Pariah, Ford’s Cottage, and Las Mudas. The further the guest strays from the center, the more mature and dangerous the narratives become. The game will be rated for ages 12 and up.

The game is free-to-play, but it includes in-app purchases that range as high as $99.99 per item.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.