News Tower Review — Hot Off The Press

Simulator or tycoon games are pretty simple to execute. Often, developers will choose a real world job, industry, or production chain that excites those who might otherwise never get the chance to work in those fields and dumb it down to a fun gameplay loop that can suck you in for hours. There is something inherently addicting about a game with a progression loop as simple as working at a production line, selling what you create, and using the money to become better at creating it, as it is an oversimplification of real world jobs that drives the pursuit of entire careers.

While it is simple to create a decent title in this genre, it can be hard to make a truly good one. Doing so requires both good game design knowledge, which is obvious, and a niche worth exploring. Often, to make an exciting tycoon game, you have to find an industry nobody has really explored in the genre very well and explore it yourself, which often requires a lot of research into the industry itself and some clever gameplay design to create a very immersive portrayal.

News Tower, put simply, is one of those few tycoon games that just seem to get everything right. It explores a very niche industry, explores it thoroughly, and provides a game that has a fun, addictive progression loop without feeling overly repetitive.

Set in the New York City of the 1930s, News Tower sees you inherit a failing news tower built by your esteemed father and run into mafia indenture by your sleazy and now missing uncle. Managing every aspect of the business, it is your job to grow a successful weekly paper.

You will notice I said managing every aspect. In addition to choosing who to hire, you are in charge of sending reporters out to cover specific stories, deciding which demographics to try and appeal to each week, making the final edits on your paper, and even building the physical structure. The latter mechanics take into account the comfort of your employees and the noisy or smelly, in the case of the bathroom, facilities of an industrial workplace. To keep your workers performing at their best, thus leveling up and improving your paper, you want to build walls and noise suppression between toilets and printers and generally keep the workplace tidy, organized, and efficient.

You will also notice that I said a successful paper, not necessarily an honest one. The game very quickly dips its toes into the rather dark reality of for-profit journalism. From the very beginning, you are not rewarded for being an honest or accurate news source but an entertaining one. The game prompts you to chase stories that would grab readers attention, and often, in order to grow and capture the readership of different neighborhoods, you have to publish specific types of news in order to capture that demographic. Sometimes, you also have the chance to publish specific types of articles to gain influence with the mafia or political figures, using your journalistic power for profit.

Something else the game does a great job of is exploring the historical realities of its setting. Spanning between the Great Depression through the Second World War, News Tower explores a very interesting and tumultuous period of global and American history. The peak of the mob’s power in New York City and Prohibition makes particularly interesting impacts on the story. You can, and probably often will, have mafia raids on your building, busting up your equipment for not doing something a local don asked of you.

The game’s progression loop revolves around improving the skill of your workers, reaching out to new markets and gaining subscribers, as well as unlocking new blueprints to further upgrade your building. Generally speaking, it is your typical tycoon game’s earn money and get better loop, but spread out in such a manner as to give the game a lot more diversity. I also found that the economy in the game is much more complex than simply buying stuff for the office makes you earn more. If you are not careful, you can very easily end up in the red in this game, and I really liked that.

If I were to give the game any kind of criticism, it would be that the loop can feel rather slow and repetitive, especially early on. Before money is rolling in, you are very gatekept to basic newspaper functions, which means that the week to week between publishing a paper can feel like the same thing over and over again, and often like you are missing the deadline on half of the stories you want to publish because of the limitations of your office. Again, this is a really cool part of the economy, but if you are not really invested in the game it can tire you out early.

While far more of a subjective opinion and not one that reflects the game’s score at all, I was not really a fan of the game’s art style. While it is certainly reflective of the times, I found the game’s 1930s art deco style to be a bit too modern and clean of an interpretation, and I was not overly fond of the game’s puppet rig animations. Again, this is totally subjective and did not take away from the experience in the end.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of News Tower. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! News Tower is available on Steam.