Daehawk wrote: Tue Feb 13, 2024 9:58 pm
How does it handle stories though? Does it give you a list of news items and you send out reporters to the ones you think will catch the public's eye? Then they write the story and you decide which on gets the front page and such? If its that detailed it might be fun.
The game is really big and I'm only a few 'months' in, but generally speaking here is an overview of the game:
You have a building (from a dead Uncle, with some favors owed to the Mafia, of course) that is your newspaper publishing company. Bare bones, two stories tall. (A tutorial holds your hand in getting everything up and running)
Every Sunday you must print your paper. At first, it's a 1 page paper with room for 3 stories. That quickly is updated to a 2-page paper (I'm about to become a 3-page paper).
Each week is composed of 7 days, and time is running (you can pause the game to get your strategy figured out and unpause).
During that time, you try and get 'stories' for your paper... but you are waiting for tips/news reports to come in - before you can send any reporters out.
So, the flow of a reported, completed, and processed "story" is such:
You buy a telegraph table and hire a person to man it. He watches for news on Crime, Politics, Sports, Society, Economy, and Entertainment (you can set priorities for which you want).
You buy a reporter's desk and hire a person to man it. You send this reporter out on the 'leads' from the above telegraph information... and he needs to spend a certain amount of time collecting the story (time is running).
Eventually, he comes back with his story and hands it over to the guy standing at the Typesetting desk (that you purchased, and hired a guy to man it).
The Typesetter spends a length of time preparing the story on a "Text Slug" that is then handed over to a guy standing at the Assembly Table (that you purchased, and hired a guy to man).
Eventually, that Assembly guy is done, and you have a complete processed Story.
You will do that with a handful of reporters with all the stories you can manage to find, report on, typeset, and assemble - in one week... That is a continuous cycle, and you will have many "Irons in the fire" that are not quite ready for this Sunday's printing... On Sunday - you must go to print... and then you go to
actually print a paper and select which of the completely processed Stories will be in your paper. You will only have room for 3 stories, per page. You will want to fill them, so in doing so - you will also have stories that you didn't use. Those stories become "old news" and will expire if you don't use them by "next Sunday". The layout of the paper matters too (explained in the game), so if you have two Sports stories, putting them on the same page gives them a bonus (for instance), or putting a Hot story on the First page, First slot - is ideal, vs putting a really old story of no interest on the front page... (duh).
Anyhow - you are also unlocking more and more 'Items To Place' in your building, earning 'stars' with the Mafia and the like, Relationships - and missions. At this early stage - I am basically following the requests that the Mafia has asked me to do ("Don't print any stories about Politics this week" type stuff). Doing those "quests" earns you progress in their story...
Additionally, you are growing your readership. You start with a single Newsstand, and you go out to expand to other Newsstands/Areas. Each of these areas has certain types of stories they are interested in, and you need to meet their needs "that week" to unlock that Newsstand.
You pick where you want to expand newsstands
while you pick your weekly "quest", so you can align the two strategically - so if you aren't going to print Politics stories this week, target a new Newsstand where they want to read about Sports and Society news.
The game looks quite large and I'm only at the very beginning. I've had fines from the police, there was a chance to bribe someone (I failed to pay enough, so I don't know what that would have led to) - but it was inevitably a 'hot story' or something.
Stories don't just have the tags Crime/Sports/ etc - they also have secondary (and I suspect tertiary) tags, like Tragic, Defeat, Adventurous, Gossip, Alarming, Gruesome - others... and those can also be requirements needed to be met to satisfy a given Newsstand's unlock requirements.
With each Newsstand your potential 'Handout' purchases grow, and all the while you are also earning Subscribers - making each paper run more lucrative.
I haven't unlocked it yet, but I suspect I'm very close to being able to add Ads to my paper soon too.
If the game idea and graphics look appealing to you, I would say this is very much worth the look. I can't tell at all what the EA nature of it is, as it seems enormous, great art style, fantastic music, and depth too all of it.
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. It isn't listed on the full product page. I've just installed it and will post some impressions to save folks (other than Unagi 
. Seriously though, do give the free trial a try, it is a very polished, interesting game.