Game review: The Westport Independent
Wednesday, May 9th, 2018 15:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zimenaI'm not that good at posting personal updates here at the moment, so I might as well do something useful and post some thoughts about some games or other fun stuff instead.
So, I downloaded the game "The Westport Independent" about a week ago. It's a mainly text-based game where you are the editor of an independent newspaper in a fictional country where "freedom of expression" only applies as long as you take a positive stand to the so-called Loyalist government. Otherwise, you get into various kinds of trouble - fast.
The only graphics to speak of in this game are the elements needed to immerse yourself in the story. There's a desk where you need to drag articles to edit them, and each of your four employees has their own folder where you drag the articles you want them to write. Other than that, there are some silhouette-style graphics between each turn. Gameplay, however, is completely text-based. You pick from a selection of articles each turn, and of course you can edit them or change the headlines. To me, it seems like the article selection makes the biggest impact on your sales and success, though - editing seems to have little effect, other than in a couple of specific cases.
The game starts off with the announcement of a new Public Culture Bill from the government. When the bill comes into effect - in 12 weeks' time - all independent media will either have to be members of a government-controlled organization, or they will have to shut down. It's of course your task to decide what you want to do with your newspaper during these twelve weeks. A popular newspaper has a lot of power to influence the people and generate support for either the government or the rebels. Depending on the choices you make, the game has a number of different endings.
It also helps to keep in mind that the country is divided in four sections - North, West, East and South. Each section has its own unique tastes for what they prefer to read, they also start with different levels of support for one of the two political sides in the game. In short, the North is where the current political elite live, so they start off totally on the pro-government side. The South is of course the poorer area, so they are more likely to turn pro-rebel almost right from the start. The other two areas start off somewhere between these extremes. The biggest challenge in the game seems to be to sway the North to the rebel side, and it's apparently possible to get 100% rebel support even there. I've not managed yet, though.
Finally, you need to watch your step and take care so that you don't lose any of your journalists along the way. They can get jailed if they write too much pro-rebel stuff, and they might get unhappy if you force them to write things that are against their own political beliefs. From the beginning, you have four journalists, which means you can publish four articles each week. If someone leaves or gets jailed, you have one less article to influence public opinion with each week.
For me, this game is interesting in the sense that it explores some choices you have to make in this situation. Sometimes, you might not like the results of those choices. However, it also fails at making me care about the results of anything I do, especially after the first few playthroughs. I mean, you're probably supposed to feel a sting in your conscience if your journalist gets jailed, or if some article you published generates a negative response from the regime... but I don't get absorbed with the story enough to feel much for those things, beyond annoyance at losing an article a week or generating undesired results with regards to in-game popularity. It doesn't hit me at a more emotional level than that, though ideally it's probably supposed to do so.
Overall, I give it a 2/5. It's quite fun for a while, but it gets repetitive really fast - and it's also not emotionally engaging.
So, I downloaded the game "The Westport Independent" about a week ago. It's a mainly text-based game where you are the editor of an independent newspaper in a fictional country where "freedom of expression" only applies as long as you take a positive stand to the so-called Loyalist government. Otherwise, you get into various kinds of trouble - fast.
The only graphics to speak of in this game are the elements needed to immerse yourself in the story. There's a desk where you need to drag articles to edit them, and each of your four employees has their own folder where you drag the articles you want them to write. Other than that, there are some silhouette-style graphics between each turn. Gameplay, however, is completely text-based. You pick from a selection of articles each turn, and of course you can edit them or change the headlines. To me, it seems like the article selection makes the biggest impact on your sales and success, though - editing seems to have little effect, other than in a couple of specific cases.
The game starts off with the announcement of a new Public Culture Bill from the government. When the bill comes into effect - in 12 weeks' time - all independent media will either have to be members of a government-controlled organization, or they will have to shut down. It's of course your task to decide what you want to do with your newspaper during these twelve weeks. A popular newspaper has a lot of power to influence the people and generate support for either the government or the rebels. Depending on the choices you make, the game has a number of different endings.
It also helps to keep in mind that the country is divided in four sections - North, West, East and South. Each section has its own unique tastes for what they prefer to read, they also start with different levels of support for one of the two political sides in the game. In short, the North is where the current political elite live, so they start off totally on the pro-government side. The South is of course the poorer area, so they are more likely to turn pro-rebel almost right from the start. The other two areas start off somewhere between these extremes. The biggest challenge in the game seems to be to sway the North to the rebel side, and it's apparently possible to get 100% rebel support even there. I've not managed yet, though.
Finally, you need to watch your step and take care so that you don't lose any of your journalists along the way. They can get jailed if they write too much pro-rebel stuff, and they might get unhappy if you force them to write things that are against their own political beliefs. From the beginning, you have four journalists, which means you can publish four articles each week. If someone leaves or gets jailed, you have one less article to influence public opinion with each week.
For me, this game is interesting in the sense that it explores some choices you have to make in this situation. Sometimes, you might not like the results of those choices. However, it also fails at making me care about the results of anything I do, especially after the first few playthroughs. I mean, you're probably supposed to feel a sting in your conscience if your journalist gets jailed, or if some article you published generates a negative response from the regime... but I don't get absorbed with the story enough to feel much for those things, beyond annoyance at losing an article a week or generating undesired results with regards to in-game popularity. It doesn't hit me at a more emotional level than that, though ideally it's probably supposed to do so.
Overall, I give it a 2/5. It's quite fun for a while, but it gets repetitive really fast - and it's also not emotionally engaging.
