Recent reviews by jecko7

A game that is unique enough to fill a niche in the market, probably by default becoming the front-runner for best election/politics game on Steam. Right now the core gameplay is a little simplistic, even though there is clearly a lot going on behind the scenes, but I think that's a good thing. There is a very clearly defined core game loop, and what is left to be added is not so much new features as depth and variety for existing features. There is a little bug fixing and a lot of balancing that needs to be done, but that's the point of Early Access.

The target audience for this type of game often says they don't care about fancy graphics, and all they want is gameplay. This game takes that to the extreme, as some screens are literally just spreadsheets or bar graphs. That said, the UI is very simple and clean, making the learning curve painless. If you're not already an election/politics nerd, this game won't convert you, but if you are, there's nothing that scratches that weird itch as well as this.

No text. Restarting computer, reinstalling game, none of the suggested fixes work.

As far as I can tell, gameplay revolves around assigning a story - selected from a revolving pool of headlines - to one of your journalists. A progress bar will fill up twice, once for "writing" and once for "proofreading." A number next to “ready to publish” increments by one each time. You choose how often your paper is published (weekly, daily, etc), and every time it is published, “ready to publish” resets to 0 and you get some money based on the quality and relevance of your articles. The relevance is determined by a random number next to each headline – and you know it's random, because nothing exists in the game world besides your office building and the menus you use to put out your paper. Headlines with higher numbers are better. If comparing two numbers to see which is higher is too much for you, there is an “autosearch” button you can use to automate the entire process.

If there is more to it than that, it is well hidden. There is no tutorial or help menu, and there are no tooltips. You can upgrade your building so it holds more offices, or do research for passive buffs for things like increased speed or decreased rent. Leave the game on autosearch and fast-forward for a while to get enough money to do this. You can also hire more journalists to help you. They have various statistics (celebrities, science, politics, etc). I assume this matters behind the scenes, but the pool of “relevant” articles is so small it hardly seems worth fussing over. I took out a loan to get to the end of the game to try out things like “investigations,” but nothing shakes up the core gameplay of watching progress bars fill up (granted, many games focus on that, but there's usually some window dressing or decision making).

While half of the game is patronizingly obvious, another half of the features are just plain baffling. You can choose to have your journalists do “notes,” “articles” or “interviews,” for instance. None of these options are explained, and as someone who works as a newspaper reporter, I can confidently state that this lack of information is not helped with real-world experience. There are also random events. For example, you might lose $42 because people are upset over your paper's article on abortion, even though you didn't write about abortion. Or your article about tennis might cause some scientists to lose a grant. This also subtracts money from your account. The negative events are balanced out by positive events that are just as arbitrary and disconnected, so they don't add a gameplay challenge, they're just odd.

And while this won't matter to many, and I don't want to be mean about this because I'm certain the developers are not native English speakers, grammar and spelling are awful throughout. Given that it's a game about journalism (and even features proofreaders), I had higher expectations for the language localization than I would have for, say, a game about spaceships or pirates.

In summary, the gameplay is too generic and uninvolving to simulate anything, and attempts at making the game about running a newspaper are poorly executed. The developers say Early Access won't last more than 1-2 months, and while that might be enough time to fix existing issues, it's not enough to add the features that are needed to make this game unique or enjoyable.