Above the Fold

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.