Above the Fold Reviews

Eh. It's alright. Bought it way back when because the concept seems cool. But now I've had two crashes in less than 2 hours, just playing the game. Full release? Pfah.

(Update): The game has had development, and I can see they are on the right track. One thing I would suggest changing is how stories are collected. I don't know what a better option is, but I know that the current method hurts my eyes. Concept: 100% Work in progress: 100% I think this will be a fantastic game! The developer has a long way to go though. I haven't played much, but I feel like until there is more work done, I will get aggrivated at the lack of work done so far. I look forward to the future development and will probably check back in a few months.

There is so many tiny little things you have to do in this game and it really ruins the experience. You cannot automate almost any part and it is way too overly specific.

I almost feel bad giving this game a negative review. It seems like a very fun and enjoyable game and has quite a bit of potential. The big issue, and I do mean BIG issue, is that the game is virtually unplayable. I have played this game for about 5 hours and in that 5 hours, this game has crashed at least a dozen times. I want this game to succeed because what I was able to play was fun, however, I cannot recommend a game that is this unstable. Do not waste your money on this game until the developers can fix the crashing issues.

I've played many simulation games and it usually isn't my favorite genre. I also didn't expect to be interested in a newspaper theme. But I'm EXCITED to keep playing! They've got a great game here! Well done! I was surprised by the depth and freedom of choice. Especially considering that each day's actions are pretty simple and easy to learn. Nice icons to easily identify the type of news. Easy to scan the details of each lead and decide if I liked it or not. And I could choose how much time and effort I wanted to put into each day. Use every available second and max out the day looking for the best possible choices. Or make decisions quickly and fast forward to the end of the day. Interesting in game events and challenges to spice things up too! I got completely absorbed between day 2 and day 3. Each day is nice and quick. As I learned more from the tutorial tips, I started to realize how much freedom and strategy was available from day 1. I'm looking forward to starting another play through with what I've learned so far. But I want to keep going with my current run first to see what else happens and how far I can take my newspaper. Some of my reporters have become friends! I love the personality of each reporter and am doing my best to match stories they're passionate about. They nailed the gameplay and progression. I like the music, so maybe that's changed since the early access reviews. I do wish I could pause during the day of picking articles. But I always want to pause any game that has short days. Fortunately, I figured out that I could strategize in-between days and that helped a lot! The info menu when you're at your desk has tons of info! The check marks next to your reporters mean they are currently working on an article. (only shows up if they are working on a several day long article) That may be obvious to others but was very helpful for me once I figured that out. You can reassign them to a different article but be careful! They got mad at me when I switched their articles too many times! But really, I sympathize, I wouldn't want my boss telling me to drop everything and start over 5 times per day. So then I was more patient to wait for a good article before assigning them something and that's working well. So far I've been playing on a laptop without a mouse and I feel like I'm scrambling to scan the news leads for headlines. But there's still enough time to assign good articles to all my reporters each day. I think that stress would be gone if I played using a mouse. But I was too absorbed to get up and plug in a mouse. The keyboard shortcuts for switching reporters are a godsend! And WASD is great for moving around the map so I'm getting by ok with just my laptop keyboard and touchpad.

At this point the game is clearly unfinished. Yes, it is an Early Access Game, but I did expect a bit more. The music is horrible, but it's not a big deal. You can turn it off, but first you need to find out where the Options are. (Hint: You have to press Esc!) The graphics are old-fashioned in a bad way. Some of the design is nice, though. I particularly liked the reporter portraits and story type icons. I can see there is a lot of work to be done with the user interface, though. It is currently hideous. The gameplay was the biggest disappointment. It consists of nothing more than scrolling around on a very small city view and clicking some unrewarding buttons. I have played browser games that have more depth than AtF! In addition, the game crashed a little too often. This was not at all entertaining.

In its current state i wouldn't recommend, £11 for game that needs so much more to even be worth a buy, as a free game i could see it being fun but for now id say stay clear until its more fleshed out

Don't do a lot of early access but this is a fun little game by an indie. I enjoy it a lot so far. Hunting the best stories can feel a little bit like a clicker game, but it's relaxing and I like the theme.

The game is in alpha so I'll try not to bash it, but it's not that good yet. Somethings that would make it more strategic are, allowing the user to pause so they can scan the map, allow the user to get a newsfeed of stories on the right side of the map, allow the user to zoom in and out, make the map 3d instead of 2d so that their is more obviousness and it is easier on the eyes, also, allow the user to read the research options before they are unlocked. One big problem I have is not having a good way of sorting through all of the available news stories and picking the right reporters. If you were to incorporate a news feed and then allow a drop down menu that sorted by the best reporters that matched it and showed how much time it would take to report on that would help. The UI is not very friendly right now, and could really be improved a ton, I don't like having to click through the different employees. If this layout were more like This is the police it would make it more fun, but you can replicate that layout without the complexity, by pausing the game when a user clicks on a news story and allow them to view a menu that has more useful information giving relationships with the reporters that have good fits. Also, overall the whole strategy of matching the reporters to story that they are interested in and politically related to is not cool or fun, and I wish the stories were more obvious when it's important (e.g. they show a star ranking right on the map before clicking). I like the concept of the game but it is not well implemented, it would just make it more fun to have a UI that was more intuitive and gave more relevant information where it was needed, i.e. show less information all at once and have more compartmentalized information that can be shown when users have to interact. The game is also all randomly generated which is less interesting to me than one with a story that unfolds over time, the headlines are cool, but I don't get to read about the story behind them so it seems really one dimensional, maybe hire a writer (not many coders are also good writers). I will keep the game but I will wait for some quality of life improvements until I take it seriously and play it through to the end.

This is the game I’ve been waiting for, for a while. I love the concept of running a newspaper, and I love that it’s dated back into the 90’s. For me the game play is addictive and I find time flys by when I’m playing. The developer is so pleasant if you’re having an issue in the game which makes the experience even better knowing that you’ll get proper support. 10/10