I’ve played plenty of job simulators in the past, but none that involved my actual job — until now. Created by solo developer Augusto Salgado, Good News puts you in the shoes of a chief editor hired to make a newspaper grow.
Bad news? Your writers are awful. Your role is to correct their drafts, set the tone of the news to fit your audience, and make readership grow. All while building relationships with shady politicians that will push you to give them good press during the electoral year.
The demo offers an early look at the Papers, Please-like experience, bringing you through approximately one week on the job. Each day begins with a stack of submissions from your writers, which you have to manually cross-check with fact sheets and wikis to ensure that you’re publishing the news as factually as possible.
As the game progresses, you unlock more columns in your newspaper and research that informs the sentiments of your readers. Stay loyal to their interests and make the audience numbers go up, or you can even support important political figures to win their favour in this turbulent media landscape.
While you battle with your principles, you also have to deal with a temperamental department of writers. If you edit their writing in a way that goes against their preferences, they may become demotivated at work and make more mistakes; making your job as chief editor more difficult.
The full game features multiple narrative branches, characters, and even more motivations to juggle. Just don’t forget your ultimate goal — to keep readership numbers climbing — or face layoffs by the CEO of ‘The Citizen’. Maybe this game is more true to life than I thought.
Watch the full trailer here:
