The importance of news in a time of crisis can’t be overstated. When there are moronic and despotic self-proclaimed leaders who show no ability for the role and are given power, it is important that the news stands up and informs people. It’s 2025, the chances of that happening are like watching pigs fly – which I’m sure there are AI videos of now. The point is, despite having so many advancements in technology and the ability to share information, no matter how horrific and true, or false and baseless, we’re so far removed from a time when news felt important.

Sparrow Night and Twin Sails Interactive’s News Tower was originally released into early access back in February of 2024. A management-tycoon title with everything I love: the production of an everyday essential in many people’s eyes. Set in the fallout of the market crash of 1929, you inherit the family newspaper business in one of a few ways. The point is, literally from the ground up, you build a newspaper empire between two World Wars, in the wake of the Great Depression, and countless other historical events. The difference is, will you be a tabloid or will you be a broadsheet?

From reporting on the Lindbergh baby, typesetting the story, assembling it for the presses, and doing so efficiently, placement and time management are important. Just as important in News Tower is keeping staff happy – something I did find a little difficult among a few things that maybe are explained to some degree, but I don’t think it is entirely done well. That sounds like I’m about to write a thousand words on why I somehow dislike News Tower, but I don’t. In fact, it has a great “one more week/month” feel that I didn’t initially have at the early access launch.

I can try and be grand about everything, like I was in the opening, or I can be honest – news and news media right now are heavily distrusted for several reasons. In the 1930s, the smoky rooms filled with the click-clack of typewriters and the general air of sexism had more trust because it was honest, to a degree. Now, everything is a conspiracy or lies have been fed to change the truth just enough that people distrust empirical stats for an empirical feeling you’re told to feel.

As the publisher and editor-in-chief (of sorts) for the Crime Times, your job is to select the writers for each story, build up the business, make a profit, work with New York-New Jersey high and low society, and every week print a newspaper. I say week… Time is a construct of human perception, after all, so while you work on a weekly schedule, each week advances a month in the calendar. So instead of 520 chances to complete the campaign’s various goals, you have 120 chances, more or less.

120 does seem like it is still quite a bit of time to run rival newspapers out of business or sweet-talk the mayor, but News Tower is all about balance. Take the office, for example. You don’t want too few writers for stories in case you need multiple writers on one story, or something were to happen to them. You see, News Tower isn’t just about placing certain objects in the right place and waiting for time to tick along; there are dangers, there are business issues, and you need to keep the building from falling apart at the seams.

With a cartoonish set of mafia figures basically on your doorstep of the initial paper, you are often accosted by nice young gentlemen with baseball bats and bad attitudes. Or the Mayor could casually file a couple of lawsuits you’ll have to pay for – and $200 in 1930 isn’t cheap. Despite going in with an intention on where your paper will lean, you have elements pushing you in certain directions. I say elements because I don’t think “story” is really appropriate with this very loose narrative structure.

Working with the Mafia, the Mayor, the Chief of Police, an Admiral in the Navy, or some wannabe toffee-nosed woman with more names than brain cells under the pretense of high society, they all have hidden agendas that unlock other parts of the town. The Mafia lets you launder influence points, talk to the unions, and get access to the church, for example. Meanwhile, the Mayor’s office enables you to access things like Wall Street, eventually. However, favor one over the other, and you’ll lose access to the counterpart; the Mayor counters the Mafia, while the police and the Navy impact high society, and vice versa.

However, through updates and later game elements, that’s not all. As I’ve hinted at, there are other newspapers you’ll face off with and hopefully take over, eventually. Adding a bit more of a clear target, certain areas already have a popular newspaper, so you’ll chase after stories that a rival paper might also be trying to work on, so you have a nuclear arms race of sorts to print stories quickly and well. However, with these two rival papers, you also have spies trying to infiltrate your tower, and in certain cases, these papers will take 20% readership.

This is where I need to explain the moderate, informational, and sensationalist elements; I.e, my broadsheet comment. Certain stories, based on topics and headlines, will lean left or right (not politically) on a pendulum, which will influence whether the paper is a broadsheet like The New York Times or a Red Top. I think Yes, Prime Minister got it right on the latter, “The Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.” However, flipping the clipboard you have during printing gives you stats on this print’s performance, tells you which direction you lean, if you’ll unlock something, and if there will be repercussions.

Each week in-game (month), the spectrum shifts what exactly you get from it. For example, if you go either fully sensationalist or informational in September of 1934, you’ll get a reward to send journalists to a class to improve their skills. A month before, if you try to be moderate and balance between the two, there is a random chance of protesters showing up outside the offices. In other weeks, there are chance that either one of your rivals will take 20% of your readership. So sometimes you’re forced into these decisions.

Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. However, the more you print in one viewpoint, the more you progress to unlock rewards based on that style. An example is that the first moderate unlock increases the sales for each of the six base topics (sports, economics, politics, crime, society, and entertainment) by 25,000 sales. Only if you print in said style. Meanwhile, informational unlocks a boost for unique tags, and sensationalist printing unlocks a boost for hot topics.

More or less, News Tower feels like a lot is going on, and that’s intentional. There is a frantic nature to print media that somehow the time management title offers brilliantly, but I don’t think that’s what feeds that “one more run” feeling that I mentioned in the third paragraph. I think it is the whole package: Art direction, the stylization, the gameplay, the desire to progress, and the knowledge that maybe next week I’ll be able to climb out of debt.

Growing the business, especially during this time, isn’t exactly cheap, and I’ll be honest, I’ve messed it up a few times. While there are ways to game the system, I’ll admit that I haven’t exactly been the best at doing that. A good example is writers themselves. If you’re the type of anti-social psycho that min-maxs everything (I’m a different brand of anti-social psycho), you’ll decorate the office and place everything just right to boost journalist and employee stats. Without a spreadsheet or screenshots and better-defined character faces, I’m useless at this.

I’m having fun nonetheless; however, after I’ve started a good run with News Tower, I’ll be hard-pressed to say it sounds fun to start over. I might be on the verge of mountains of debt and a lack of paper to print next week’s paper, but I’m in 1936, and I’ve heard that Germany is having a lot of things happen; they also plan to hold a Rally just up the road in a few years in 1939.

There is a bit of history pulling me in, a bit of my weird fascination with production, particularly with media, as well as that 90s-2000s sort of tycoon/management gameplay. Yes, a lot of it is time management rather than people or business management, but there is a hint of those, too, albeit in the background of your time management. For fans of anything like Diner Dash and Deep Red Games’ Beach Life, there is plenty of management to do. However, certain aspects do feel like they hold you back a little.

For example, you can play News Tower effectively in real time as you normally would, or you can pause time and tap it along with the right arrow on the keyboard. Great accessibility for those who don’t love playing at the stressful rate of full speed. However, when lawsuits, protests, and gangsters come to have a chat, News Tower defaults back to full speed. It is a little, tiny problem to have, but if you’re finding that breakneck pace of the newsroom stressful, it is annoying.

It is little things like that – not being able to pin the Globe open when dealing with quickly moving news slates from typesetting to assembly – where you can be “frustrated.” Not entirely things that take away from the experience of News Tower, but certainly make you question doing another week of news. More or less, they are inconveniences.

Ultimately, Sparrow Night and Twin Sails Interactive used that year and some months in early access to refine a good time management game into something great. Could you argue about some things being annoying or frustrating? Sure, but that’s the nature of time management games. If you’re a fan of Not for Broadcast or even Above the Fold, then News Tower is both concepts wrapped in a 1930s newspaper via a 90s management game presentation.

A PC review copy of News Tower was provided by Twin Sails Interactive for this review.

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News Tower

$24.99

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• A 90s management game with modernizations.
• A great "one more turn" feeling.
• A little bit of accessability where it matters.

Cons

• A couple of quality-of-life things.