Playing a game about being in the newspaper business sounds a bit like a busman’s holiday to me, though with News Tower being set in the 1930s, at least the bus won’t be at constant risk of breaking down or steering into a ravine.
In any case, I’m always up for a new spin of the management sim, and that goes double when your managerial duties also involve dealing with the Mafia. Such criminal complications is one of several new features News Tower will add when it publishes its 1.0 edition this November.
News Tower sees players don the waistcoat of a newly minted media mogul aiming to seize control of Noo Yoik Ciddy through the power of print. Starting with just your own willpower and, er, an entire skyscraper at your disposal, you’ll build a functioning newsroom by hiring journalists and photographers, assigning them leads, and assembling your paper article by article before sending it off the presses every Sunday.
But News Tower is about more than what happens in the newsroom. Your magnate’s goal is to have total oversight of what the city reads. Your news tower exists in a larger overworld map where you can attempt to push two rival papers—The Jersey Beacon and the Empire Observer—out of other regions and claim their readers for yourself.
The 1.0 version will bring several extra layers to this. Within your tower, the perception system allows you to define your paper’s editorial voice, choosing between informational, moderate, or sensationalist styles. This decision will affect how readers view your paper, and enable you to boost your sales in as-yet unspecified ways.
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In the streets, meanwhile, there are two new mechanics at play. The first is that competition system I already referred to, though there’s a lot more to it than what I summarised. Your competitors only appear once you already control a sizeable chunk of New York, which you achieve by rolling out your paper into new districts on a weekly basis.
Once your rivals appear, you can choose either to prioritise empty districts, or muscle in on a competitor’s turf. If you opt for the latter, this will trigger a journalistic scuffle over that region’s news, with both papers competing over time-sensitive stories and one-off scoops that can be nabbed by a carefully placed reporter.
Beyond this, News Tower’s release version will also introduce a faction system. Here, you can align your paper with one of several non-media organisations in the game. These are the mayor’s office, the military, high society, and the Mafia.
Developer Sparrow Night hasn’t explained this in as much detail as the competitor system yet, but it appears more narrative focused, with set quests you can take on to build your reputation with a given faction. Those objectives might oppose the interests of another faction, though, so you’ll need to choose your allies (and your enemies) carefully.
News Tower leaves early access on November 4. Alexander Chatziioannou proof-read the alpha version in February last year, and found its approach to building a virtual paper to be both characterful and smartly implemented. “Sparrow Night has come up with an array of unexpected flourishes and tactical dilemmas inject considerable depth into the process, meaningfully interweaving individual assignments with the overall progress of your organisation.”
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