Present in my Steam wishlist since its announcement, News Tower is the first game I have seen at gamescom 2022. It is a management game where you have to create and grow a press organization during the Great Depression. Not the happiest of contexts, then, but a rich period for the press, which can write thanks to/because of rising crime, organized crime and the rise of extremes across the Atlantic.
The creator of the game, a bit nervous (at least as much as me!) explains to us that he wanted to create a game that makes us live the life of a press media during the 1930s, in New York. The brick building presented during the demo (with a progression already a little advanced) is indeed quite clear on the place where the action takes place. By observing a little more inside, we quickly notice that different rooms are distributed here and there between the various floors of the building. A quiet room is set up next to the newsroom, where several desks are stuck together, with a "graph" on the wall, indicating the average noise in the room. Because yes, to work effectively, our journalists need a calm environment, far from the tumult of the printing room which makes a monstrous noise on printing days.
We therefore see quite quickly that each new part must be correctly positioned on these levels, so that access is easy for everyone, that the prerequisites are met and that everyone can work efficiently. A week in the game lasts between 20 and 30 minutes. The creator of News Tower, also dad, wanted the game to fit most players, all of whom have distinct play time. A 20-minute session is both short enough for everyone to enjoy without interruption, and at the same time long enough for us to manage our journal properly. Because yes, placing newsrooms, toilets and other break rooms is only a small part of the game.
The most important thing is the choice of subjects to cover and the fact of being on time so that the front page of the newspaper is ready when it goes to print, fixed for Sunday (not modifiable). Here, several possible choices: we can deal with economic subjects, criminal subjects, foreigners, people... several categories to cover, and editors to select modulo their skills. We cannot, for example, assign a journalist specializing in the economy to investigate a crime. Recruitment will therefore be particularly important, to be sure to cover a wide range of subjects and capture different audiences for your newspaper. When we entrust a subject to a journalist, we will have different paths, some of which can be dangerous. The example shown during the demonstration was that of a journalist going in front of Al Capone's house to find clues concerning a potential crime... The latter was grilled, which launched a guess between 3 options : survives and gathers information / injured and taken to hospital / death. Depending on the skills of your employee, you will have more chances of survival or grayed out options... The system seems relatively rich and offers a fairly complete narration to captivate during the first hours... the only reservation point concerns a remark from a developer indicating that he no longer read what was written by force, which could be a sign of a repetitiveness of options as progress is made.
Note that you can choose to orient your journal towards investigation or sensationalism. One will take more time than the other to obtain sources, the other will test your ethics, but save valuable writing time. As it stands, however, we could not see what caused the writing of less qualitative articles.
The articles are written, Sunday arrives and we choose our front page before going to print. A superb animation of printing newspapers then activates, and we see our newspaper land, which we will put up for sale. This is followed by a summary of the sales which makes it possible to see whether or not the finances are good. Here again, although not shown during the demo, we can manage the way the newspaper appears, with the addition or not of ads. In the example provided, the newspaper was able to make a profit without ads, but you may have to use them if you want to make more money and be able to expand your outlets throughout New State. -York (which you unlock district after district).
No release date unfortunately at the end of this presentation of News Tower which thrilled me. We will therefore continue to follow the news via the Steam page, hoping for the soon arrival of Early Access. What is certain is that the game offers an interesting mix between tycoon-game and journalistic simulation, and that even if many gray areas remain, we are faced with an engaging title.
