News Tower

I really didn't want to give this a thumbs down. Honestly it's fun and the first 5 hours of gameplay were a blast. But it became stale FAST. Here's how I think the game can be improved: 1) Add competing publishers so we have big picture goals - e.g. to become the number 1 tabloid newspaper in Manhattan 2) More sandbox please! Let us take down the Mafia with news stories, or have an antagonistic mayor who is out to shut your business down and it's your job to make sure the newspaper's clout outweighs the mayor's (depending on who you side with, of course) 3) Have a credibility meter where you can embellish stories for a quick buck but over time this diminishes your reputation Basically, the gameplay loop, while fun, is trivial. The game badly needs more difficulty, deeper thinking, strategy and sandbox elements. Game's still in EA so there's hope.

In [b]News Tower[b], players take on the role of a newspaper publisher in 1930s New York City. The game combines elements of strategy and management as you build and operate your newspaper empire. Starting with a modest office, you hire reporters, assign them to various beats—such as Sports, Crime, Society, Economy, Entertainment, and Politics—and manage the production and distribution of your newspaper. The game challenges players to balance journalistic integrity with business interests, often presenting moral dilemmas, such as choosing between truthful reporting and yielding to external pressures from entities like the Mafia or political figures . The game captures the essence of 1930s New York with its art deco visuals and jazz-infused soundtrack, providing a nostalgic and atmospheric experience. Players must manage various aspects of newspaper production, including reporter assignments, article editing, and layout design, all while responding to weekly events and reader interests. The game presents ethical decisions that impact your newspaper's reputation and relationships with different factions, adding depth to the management mechanics. Beyond assigning tasks, players must also ensure the well-being of their staff, addressing issues like workplace comfort and satisfaction to maintain productivity. The more you play, the more things you'll unlock, meaning you'll never run out of ideas on what to do next. For now, employees didn't have the ability to upgrade skills (except for items that do so) and have not been as independent, but it is expected that this will all work normally in the full release. Rather, the Early Access version will contain one part of the main campaign (up to 6 hours of gameplay), Sandbox mode that allows you to create your newspaper the way you want, 100+ objects to build from printers to luxury decorative items, 24 types of jobs, more than 1000 news to report on. [b]News Tower[b] offers a compelling blend of historical context, strategic management, and ethical decision-making. While still in Early Access, its strong foundation and positive reception suggest a promising future for players interested in unique simulation experiences. [h1]8/10[/h1] DISASTER | BAD | MEDIOCRE | OKAY | GOOD | [b][u]GREAT[/u][/b] |AMAZING| MASTERPIECE [quote] Reviewed on: Win11 Home 64-bit, Intel i5-11600K, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB TUF, 32GB DDR4-3600 RAM, 2 x Kingston NV1 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, Internet Broadband 1000/1000 Mbit[/quote] [quote] If you like this review, then please consider giving it a thumbs up. I've also reviewed other games that you might find interesting. If so please follow [u][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27418263/] Top of the Chart.[/url][/u]

love this game! addictive little unique game. can't wait for the next updates. If you are remotely interested in management games, just go ahead and buy it. The game has way more depth than the price would suggest.

first of all it's a quite addictive game as you can see the time I spent on the game. im a perfectionist when it comes to tycoon games like this. So I'm always focused on the next level and how everything gets done correctly. I think it's well thought and and more detailed than classical tycoon games. I only have 2 negative things to say about this early access: employees satisfaction and map requests. Firstly, I think it's hard to satisfy the employees needs with decorations and food because I literally filled all the spaces I could to make them feel prestiged or wtv. However, they still have issues and especially after they became prestiged it's impossible to make them happy. The hardness of this can be reduced maybe, because it looks extremely full and complicated (especially the walls) after trying to increase their rate. Secondly, requests from mayor, mafia etc. is so hard to fulfill because you never know what's gonna show up, then you're waiting for that news to accept the quest but it won't come. So, I think there should be a "keening" system after you chose the quest. So news shoukd pop up with that quest in it. Otherwise, it's so hard to get a new quest and use it as an advantage. Moreover, maybe quests could be changed after not being fulfilled for 2-3 weeks. That was all my ideas and I think it would really help. Other than that, it's really a good game with it's graphics, story and flow.

Extremely enjoyable game with tons of content for the price and an amazing demo, game is just straight up good. Wood be interesting if competing newspapers were added, possibly with online multiplayer so you can play as a competing newspaper against your friend, or in my case fiance. Overall an amazing game that deserves the love it gets and cant wait for more to be added.

Right now, no I do not recommend. I do think that the devs are onto something good here, but maybe wait until it leaves early access - or if you want, buy now and wait until then to play. I'm not your boss. In the game's current state the pathfinding is a mess and you can agree to quests that rely on the game randomly giving you a story with the required tags. I have tried these and been screwed over by the random quality of them several times. Even if you do find the stories you need, it'll likely be late in the week and therefore cause you to sit there banging your head against a wall while your stupid employees dawdle about instead of doing their work, because they're "uncomfortable" - with literally no indication of what's wrong (because their other stats are completely full). Please follow the game if you're interested, because I really do believe it can and will be improved in the future. Just maybe don't buy it yet if you're after something you can play immediately, frustration-free.

I've gotten my money's worth out of this game and it's still in early access. It's a very fun little management sim. It reminds me of Sim Tower but with a lot more depth. As a history nerd, it was fun to see all the historical news headlines. I really enjoyed decorating the little rooms as well, I think it would be great to have more decor options and maybe some features that give your reporters even more distinct personalities.

Absolutely LOVE THIS GAME!!! Honestly the Developers have knocked this one out of the park! It is just such an amazing game already even in EA! Incredible amount of detail especially the accurate major timeline events. So excited for more for this game! One of my best purchases in a few years!

Perfect for history nerds who like management games, this charming game has so much to offer! It's got the growing pains you'd expect of an early access game yet it's totally worth getting to see it flourish. Thanks to the whole team for making this lovely game!

I've unlocked half of the map, and I'm ready to expand past my seventh floor to optimize and expand production. This is the most simulation fun I've had since City Skylines. Mixes 1930s headlines and aesthetics with engaging mechanics. At first, you learn the ropes. After that, a floodgate of new features and challenges open up. The base mechanic of printing a newspaper has that special simulation zen to it, and the balancing act of all the tags, traits, risks, etc. makes it fun.

there's a really great amount of content for early access. I find myself replaying this game regularly as the gameplay is almost addictive.

Really fun game with a lot of unique personality and vibe. Could do with more in certain places, it definitely does get a bit repetitive. Overall though, super fun game - Great Music, Great Gameplay

Love this game! Refreshing and original game play, they've done a really good job. I played the demo and about 6 hours in the full game so far. So many new items to unlock and the game keeps get more depth. I recommend.

Highly recommend this one. Not only a fun and easy to pick up gameplay loop, but decently deep simulation as well. Great visuals and an OUTSTANDING soundtrack put it over the top for me. One of my favorite games that I've played in years and can't wait to see what else the developers add.

This is a great game if you only have short periods of time to play. It has a perfect level of complexity. Great connection to real history.

So much to do, a refinement and expansion of the dispatch-style game, a new benchmark for those sorts of games.

Demo was good, game is even better and addictive af

News Tower's The game loop is fun and addicting, creating the 'one more turn' feeling. There is a little story to go along with gameplay that is easily engaging for 15 hours. The game is far along, despite being early access. I am excited to come back to it, as the developer adds more content.

For an early access game, it already feel pretty polished. The gameplay loop is solid, the graphics is charming and the music is very groovy (I like how the background music and the end of week result music uses the same motif). A few things I'd like to see: - More furniture in general. - More wallpaper design. Currently the set of wallpapers serve specific uses but there's little variety in them. I want to see more set of wallpapers that grant similar bonuses so players can choose between one or the other designs. - Make The Mayor, The Mafia and High Society more gameplay relevant. Currently they serve as quests giver to the player every week, but other than that they don't provide any other effects. It'd be nice to see if they could interact with each other or have an effect on the long term gameplay (perhaps at some point once you hit the midgame?). I think there's a lot of potential to be have here. Other than that I look forward to what this game is going to be like at full release.

The game is really nice and well produced. From the graphics to the music, its all good. I just feel it could be a little morew elaborated in the publication options.

I do recommend this game BUT!!!!! i think you should wait a lil bit before buying it, the game in its current state is not finished and i think its going places, wait for a few more updates.

For those too impatient to read a longer review I rate News Tower a solid **7 out of 10** as it stands right now (June 6th 2025) For those with more patience (You ought to have become doctors, ba dum tis), here's a more in depth review: News Tower harkens back to that bygone age of Adobe Flash browser gaming. I think just about anyone who's had an interest in a side scrolling / 2D game has at some point looked for a sort of "build your own business" simulator. The game I remember best was Theme Hotel but I digress, this game certainly has more ambitious features than simply building a room and watching your money steadily climb while occasionally expanding your tower upward. News Tower manages to balance several layers of game play elements that make it feel more unique while still keeping it simple enough that a humongous oaf like myself can manage and even thrive at times while playing and learning new mechanics. Let me be a bit more specific, the game starts off with a fairly good tutorial which covers many of the basics leaving you to learn some of the more advanced features using what you know already later on, case and point you ought to know why your economics reporter despite being an economics specialist isn't able to report on a story that requires an **illustrator or photographer** to complete. The tutorial starts with you having your new-news agency building having been left in tatters as "your uncle" owed the mob money and ended up being unable to pay, thus your news agency is a wreck and you need to sell the debris and build from the bottom up. Much in the way of a phoenix you'll have to rise from the ashes and prosper the hard way. Once you've completed the tutorial you might feel a bit overwhelmed when you look at just <the area map> and see how many locations and potential customers there are for you to interact with and I think this part could probably be more emphasized by some sort of tool tip, the game really doesn't go out of it's way to address how important some of these locations are which is fine if you want to treat your players as though they're intelligent enough to think and breathe for themselves which I'm sure most of you are but some, like myself, struggle to juggle those two things simultaneously, again I digress the difference between poverty and prosperity in this game can really be achieved by focusing on which locations you want to prioritize with your specific and preferred game play style. Want to publish more news more quickly? Try unlocking a location that sells additional "page" sections for your newspaper printer which will give you an additional page to fill out with 3 more stories. Maybe you want to focus entirely on having a small but elite news reporting team? You ought to try to unlock one of the two universities which will allow you to train your crew with various skills (the skills I believe are randomized and change every week or two in game). The plethora of options can be a bit staggering altogether all of a sudden, you might think "I've just unlocked a sweeping station, I guess I'll build one but why would I need a "guard" station?, how many do I need? What are all these additional items like a megaphone rack or a soap bar stand?" slow and steady goes the race my friend, you can generally tell what is used where by checking the "folder" it's under, everything is fairly well organized and categorized in this game though again the sheer amount of options can lead to confusion so take your time and don't forget to pause the game to figure things out. I think some of my greatest issues with the game can be said like this: It's a bit irritating that my courier / carriers aren't using my dumbwaiter because there's an elevator about 5 feet closer to them and as there is no specific tutorial to show what a dumbwaiter, mailtube or even elevator do aside from the obvious, I have no idea how to make the dumbwaiter work. I also have another criticism, currently even with that immense plethora of options I mentioned earlier ... once you've "beaten the current iteration of the game", you're left to play endless mode which I completely welcome... but there's practically nothing to do aside from experiment with late game buildings and figuring out where your ideal layout lies. In conclusion I think News Tower has a spectacular concept, it's certainly fun in the beginning, tense in the middle and a bit of a deflating balloon at the end slightly disappointing but the good thing is that, so long as the developer(s) do indeed keep chipping away at this game I'm very eager to see where this game leads, we're ever so close to the "end game" year being World War II and I can't help but anticipate just how chaotic that'll be. I'm also hopeful to see more additions to that plethora of building options but I do think there needs to be a neater categorization system with larger "folders" so you can separate groups without getting lost in the sea of items, also it'd be handy to add a folder system to the stashed items folder as well. I'd highly recommend if you enjoy games like Theme Hotel or any other tower building business management simulator to give this game a try. The current standard price is $20 U.S.D. which is a bit steep considering the game isn't finished but frankly I can't say it's unreasonable, in fact if the content does rise and say, the walking animations are ironed out a bit more and made a little more aesthetically pleasing to look at, I think this game could get away with a $30 price tag easily though they've got to really add a hefty bit of content and particularly a <real> end game goal and point to this game before that time.

I just started playing it. The premise is good, and the game is fun. But in early game (where I am right now) it is a bit unnecessarily grindy due to a week only having 7 days and reporters/telegraphers being able to work only so quickly.

I wish I had more time to play it, because this game is absolutely delightful. Not only the flow is smart, and the management is fun, but it has a way of rewarding with visual feedback every single action in such a way that even a simple click becomes a fun thing to do. At some point I shall really get it into it again, and the EA is moving on as solid as it could ever be! Well done guys!

I find management games very hit and miss because I tend to obsess too much over micromanaging my time and second-guess all my decisions and sap all the fun out of them. So I was pleasantly surprised by how good this one is. You create a news empire in 1930s New York, building a tower and managing all the various stages of producing a newspaper: starting with the basics like telegrapher → reporter → typesetter → assembler and ending up with a whole floor of individually specialised reporters, a team of various maintenance staff, lawyers, illustrators, security, and more. You expand your influence throughout the city to unlock locations where you can buy upgrades, and there are always new mechanics added whenever you start getting the hang of the old ones. Eventually you’ll be juggling your reporters across several complex stories, making sure you print what the new district you’re expanding into want to print, avoiding the topic of politics because the mayor is whispering in your ear, and trying to make sure the tone of your newspaper is consistent so that your readers become loyal to your brand. Oh, and your telegraphers are having trouble concentrating because that obnoxious chatty moron from marketing just walked through their office to go to the bathroom and made enough noise to raise the dead. tl;dr = solid management game, lots of interesting stuff here.

It's fun and remind me of SimTower. Need more content, but it is early access :) Well worth the money.

To świetna gra strategiczno - handlowa, która posiada ogromną ilość wyborów, combosów, opcji, ulepszeń. Gra przemyślana. Temat rozwinięty do granic możliwości. Ujęcie historyczne i oddanie lat 30-stych na wysokim poziomie. Muzyka jazzowa, ale mogłoby być jej trochę więcej. Nie wiesza się działa szybko i sprawnie. Grywalność duża, nie nudzi się. Świetna robota developerska. Polecam z całego serca. Grafika 7 Dźwięk 7 Grywalność 8 Pomysł 10 Wykonanie 8 Atrakcyjność 8 Stabilność: 9 ---------------- OGÓŁEM: 8,14 It's a great strategy and trading game with a huge amount of choices, combos, options, upgrades. A game well thought out. The theme developed to the limit. Historical capture and rendering of the 1930s at a high level. Jazz music, but there could be a bit more of it. Doesn't hang, runs quickly and smoothly. Playability high, doesn't get boring. Great development work. Recommended wholeheartedly. Graphics 7 Sound 7 Playability 8 Idea 10 Execution 8 Attractiveness 8 Stability 9 ---------------- TOTAL: 8,14

The first playthrough was quite frustrating. It started with slow animations of postcards serving as lore to introduce the game. Then the game jumps in a weird tutorial where it keeps asking you to do stuff and spend money in a quite fast pace before you even realize that maybe it is not really a tutorial despite the overwhelming bubbles explaining everything, just guidelines that might be not so wise to follow blindly. Then when you understand you can spend a bit more time to think about how to spend money efficiently, the game throws you an additional requirement to your house of cards like needing to add modifiers to your room or needing suddenly toilets for your staff where you didn't need any at the start or stuff breaking down. But then, what killed it for me was the toilet cleaner needing the toilets but, them being dirty, the game got stuck... I guess we know the priorities of this guy now... oh p_o_o_p... -_- It's early access so maybe it will be balanced later and I'm sure many of the game mechanics are interesting but kinda overshadowed by an unfun start and first contact. I will probably try again but later

Fun fun fun!

Too much diversity for 1930s NC.

A lot of fun!

great

great

Nice

It's Fantastic!

Newspaper