Hello Hyverions (that's what i'm calling us people that use Hive now!)
So i'm trying this new SIM Management game about running a newspaper; we hire people for several positions, we gather stories in the office and we assign to a story, sending reporters around the world to investigate the stories we're interested in.
Then, once the reporter is back with the story, the news article gets written and finally, we choose what news we add to our weekly newspaper.
We choose what news we want because each news has its own type; crime, political, entertainment, etc - there are several types, including "special" types of news that our reporters might find out in the field when investigating another type of news. These special news boost our sales. Special news like inspirational news, which cannot be chased by our reporters, directly. There's a chance we run into them when investigation the "regular" types of news we can follow.
And we choose what news to go after and then print so we can complete quests, like unlocking surrounding districts which bring in more subscribers to our newspaper.
This because we start out in an area of the map, and we expand by unlocking districts. To unlock them, we need to write news that the people of that district want to read about. Once we write and print the paper with those news, we unlock the district and we get more subscribers to our newspapers - meaning more weekly buyers. Meaning more money we earn.
With the money we earn we can restock our stationary; paper to print the newspaper on, food for our workers, new items to build - like more reporter desks, bathrooms, lamps, walls, paintings, air conditioners, etc. These building items take care of the worker's basic necessities as well as boost their skill at the job they have, boost their happiness, concentration, etc; it's a lot like The Sims, in that aspect, having to add items to the building to manage the workers' mood to compensate for the noise in the office, or smell, heat, lack of lights, etc.
Along with following stories and printing newspapers, we can also build our office. We can add more floors to the office building, to accomodate more reporters and other workers, and add more machinery to print more papers.
Personal Thoughts
I've played some 7 hours of the game perhaps and it's fun. But until now, i find myself playing for about an hour and then exiting the game, as it is repetitive. It's cool to find those "special" news, hire people, and build the office but there's not much more to it. It lacks any story and i feel the only reason i'm playing is to repeat the process only to buy more upgrades and earn more money.
If you're into this type of game, then it's a good game as there are quite a few systems that are intertwined with each other, and bottom line: it's fun. There are choices to be made as to where you want to expand, and there's even Mafia in the game that'll come to the building and break shit if you piss them off, and not print what they want.
Not my cup of tea, as a game i can spend hours and hours in. It's very mechanics driven only and while fun, it's nowhere near as compelling to play for hours on end, like something like This War of Mine, for example. I know, TWOM set the bar very high, and News Tower leans much more into the SIM Management than TWOM, but for me, this game lacks a story to make me even care about anything else other than earnings, to keep the business from bankrupting. And that's just a shame.
Still, and like i said, it's a very interesting game and something different - you get to manage and build up a newspaper and there's a lot of systems, but for me it gets boring as it's just mechanics.
I'll be playing it more because the news hunting is fun but i'm betting i'll just play it for one or two hours at a time then save and quit and play something else; something with more than just repeat-and-rinse mechanics.
Also, i didn't find any difficulty maintaining a positive cashflow during the hours i played. Perhaps the difficulty increases with playing more but i didn't feel it was challenging during the first hours.
The game's worth a play for sure. To me, it has it's fun for a couple of hours then it falls flat!
If this mechanics driven game is your cup of tea, i recommend it!
Thanks for reading these first impressions!
PS - As i always do i play a game without reading anything about it, so i go in without preconceptions. I 've gone into Steam and seen the tags now, and it says "sandbox" so no wonder there's little to now story! Derp! 😄