News Tower

Barely recommend. The art style is nice and the music/sounds give it a good atmosphere. Story is the usual "inheritance, now you run the shop" idea, which is fine because nobody plays these types of games for story. The issue is the gameplay. The gameplay loop of clicking leads, assigning reports to leads, holding the fast-forward button, click to go through the mandatory transitions - gets old really quickly. After playing for 1 year (ingame time obviously), you've experienced all you are going to experience. The remainder of the game is spreading out your influence, with the same gameplay mechanics, until year 10 or you get bored.

我必须得称赞这个游戏的叙事部分对上世纪三十年代的美国风情的还原非常吸引人，游戏系统确实很有深度，操作量非常密集，让人总归一直有事在做，不会感到厌倦。 但是，这个游戏的地区地图推进模式简直称得上丧心病狂。我不知道为什么其它很多很优秀的同类作品都用得很顺畅的数值解锁系统和制作组有什么仇，非得把它做成一个浩如烟海的任务清单式的推进模式，然后在各种设备都还没解锁的时候给你塞一堆意外事件进来，再假惺惺地说来我告诉你上哪去解锁这个东西。这套莫名其妙的交互元素的叠加简直会让人恼怒。仅就这个理由我就没法推荐这个游戏。

没有多周目继承，每次重开都要从头去获得物品，每次获得物品都要重新改变布局，需要更新沙盒模式

It's not terrible per se. It's well made, pretty and the music is nice if a bit short. The only bug I encountered is the tutorial being very obnoxious and repeatedly appearing to tell me things it had already told me. But there is just very little "gameplay" here. Like don't get me wrong, i'm nowhere near completing it, however i'm just finding myself bored and all the unlockables don't advance the game in a meaningful way as far as i can see. The entire gameplay loop devolves into 1. drag journalist onto report 2. drag report into newspaper Everything else is a tiny, tiny fraction of your playtime. Which sucks cause, while 2 is vaguely engaging if a bit repetitive, 1 is just boring. There is no choice here, if you have to prioritise one over the other, you hire more reporters and till you can do all stories. None of the "dangers" matter, they just need you to have some staff to deal with them. It's shoving shapes into holes. This is not gameplay, this is tedium. But i do understand why they don't let you automate it, cause there is nothing else for you to do. The challenges given by missions and districts are okay, but they only affect 2 and they are either easy or complete RNG. To be a management game only, this severely lacks scope and complexity, so it sorta has to have some "hands on" step. The building mechanics are genuinely well done and interesting and use the isometric view well, but i find myself very hesitant to expand, because any expansion means more "shapes into holes". And it's at this point i realise that this game has utterly failed for me. I don't want to expand. In a Tycoon game.

[b]ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS.[/b] It’s the history. The journalism, too, (and sports, movies, law and the like) but really the history. Every simulation game reaches a point where the mechanics become rote. The challenge for the devs is to add something at that point that maintains interest, continues the challenge. It is a critical stage and the devs can lose players at that point as well as keep them going. [i]News Tower[/i] handles that stage reasonably well, adding competitors, graphics, a European beat so you can follow the rise of Hitler’s Germany (omg, Night of the Long Knives? I was buried in Wikipedia for the next ten minutes). But you get all that and you are only about halfway through the 1930s, the decade covered in the game. It’s the history that drew me in, kept me going right through to the end. When it comes to history, I can hold my own in the local Pizza Palace Trivia Night. But the 1930s never interested me. Eh, it was the Great Depression, people were hungry and broke, what a dismal time. [i]News Tower,[/i] however, introduces you to the many fascinating things that occurred during that period, in a very granular way. Bridges and dams that are landmarks today were being built, Babe Ruth stood at the plate and the pitcher’s mound (that generation’s Shohei Ohtani), issue number one of the first superhero comic was published, the ban on Sunday sports was lifted enabling the NFL and PGA as we know them today -- the first Sturgis motorcycle rally, the first cannabis prosecution, the first NFL draft, and so much more. You read of Herbert Hoover’s philosophy that impoverished people should just help themselves, and you begin to really appreciate how the stage was set for the New Deal. Admittedly, [i]News Tower[/i] does all of this merely in the form of headlines (and the grammar and word choices can sometimes be regrettable; Katharine Hepburn “wares” pants, really? Fourteen wounded, no deads yet!). But if you are anything like the history nerd I am, it is enough. The other aspect, of course, is the journalism. I cannot help but think the game would appeal to any journalist or journalism consumer. (I am in that camp and was initially wary of a game that might caricature a field important to me, but my fears were quickly allayed.) Whatever your background, though, you might find appealing the constant tension between publishing what you think is important or interesting and what is going to make you the most money. It’s not quite the intensity of the city editor ripping the paper out of your typewriter after every paragraph to send it to the back shop with deadline mere minutes away. But the tyranny of the presses rolling every Sunday whether your favored story is ready or not probably comes about as close as any computer game can. I do wonder if Gen Z, Millennials, or even Gen X will relate to this game. I subscribed to five newspapers at one point, but I could never get my children to read any of them. For them, learning about newspapers likely will be part of the history lesson. But there is perhaps an unexpectedly large contingent of Boomers who play computer games, and for whom newspapers were an integral part of the daily ritual. If you are at all a fan of buying ink cheaply and selling it dearly, this game might resonate with you. If interested, you might consult my Ten Ledes to Getting All the News that Fits guide on Steam. Postscripts: The clocks on the wall keep actual game time, which is one sign that somebody poured a lot of love into this game. Achievements are not for the faint of heart. Some devs might toss you an achievement for finishing the tutorial or publishing your first newspaper, but that is not Sparrow Night’s approach. Be prepared for multiple playthroughs and much grinding with generic stories after 1939. But there is one easy achievement that is hidden: Name your newspaper [i]The New York Times.[/i] Finally, headlines announce all the major Supreme Court cases of the era, a number of them controversial and starkly at odds with the popular sentiment of the times. It is an eerie reminder of current cases handed down by the Court – and of the last time court packing was seriously discussed. Enjoy.

Great game! Captivated me at the demo stage, so I had to buy it. It has a great variety of game systems so you will not get bored for quite some time, without getting too numbers-driven. ALSO the game has a great UX! I can't imagine how much effort and time went into polishing it, but the tutorial was really REALLY good! I wish more things would be explained later too, e.g. how to connect printing modules from one level to another, how training works (didn't get it that you have to drag'n'drop a character card *into* the folder to start training, how pneumo tubes need to be attached so they would be used etc). Anyway, I love it!

This isn't a newspaper publisher simulator—it's a simulator of the characters' needs. You have to set up a trash can, hang a picture, and build a bathroom. There's very little actual newspaper work involved—it's mostly micromanagement of the building.

News Tower, c’est le jeu qui te fait comprendre que diriger un journal dans les années 30, ce n’est pas juste écrire “IL SE PASSE DES CHOSES” en gros titre et aller boire un café. Tu commences en mode “petit journal indépendant”, et deux heures plus tard tu es en train de restructurer trois étages à 3h du matin parce que ton service politique bloque la production du numéro du lendemain. Le principe est simple : envoyer tes reporters couvrir des histoires, gérer leur moral, leurs compétences, leurs caprices… et décider si tu veux informer le public ou vendre du sensationnel bien croustillant. Éthique journalistique ou gros titres scandaleux ? Le jeu te regarde droit dans les yeux et te dit : “Alors, patron, on fait de l’information ou on fait de l’argent ?” Un jeu qui te rappelle que l’information est un pouvoir… surtout quand elle doit rentrer dans le budget.