
News Tower stands out as one of the best Strategy/Simulation titles in recent memory.
94
Verdict
94%
Steam
95
IGDB
Verdict score based on confidence-adjusted Steam reviews?
Very Positive on Steam (94% positive from 4.2K reviews)
Critically acclaimed (95/100 critic average)
Still in Early Access — content may be incomplete
News Tower is a newspaper management simulation video game developed by Rotterdam-based indie studio Sparrow Night and published by Twin Sails Interactive. The game entered Steam Early Access on February 13, 2024, for PC and Mac platforms, and was fully released on November 18, 2025.

Runs well on modern hardware.
Last updated 2d ago
I’m sitting at 289 hours in this game, so this isn’t a first impression. Overall, I think News Tower is outstanding. It feels like a game where a lot of attention was paid to the details, both in how it plays and how it looks. The UI is clean, the systems make sense, and when things are working, it feels smooth and intentional. One thing I’ve consistently liked is how much the setup actually matters. Layout, movement, and flow all play a role. It’s not just assigning stories and hitting print, you actually have to think about how your operation is put together. There are also some smaller touches that land really well. Watching the skyline build over time, like seeing the Empire State Building go up, and then being able to run a story on it, is a cool detail that adds to the whole experience. The only reason I’m even bringing up the next part is because everything else is so dialed in. Sorting and managing stories can feel a bit awkward: Sorting by quality, the star system, doesn’t always feel consistent Influence isn’t something you can easily sort by direction, so it’s harder than it should be to quickly see what’s pushing where Managing active vs completed stories works, but gets awkward once you’ve got a lot going on None of this is a big issue, it just doesn’t quite match the level of polish the rest of the game has. At 289 hours, I’m obviously getting my time out of it. If you like management games where setup and flow matter, this one’s absolutely worth it.
I enjoyed the first ~30h because I was regularly unlocking new mechanics, decorations, or equipment. Story events were also fairly regular. After that however the game slows down significantly, and I simply found the 2nd half of my playthrough completely uncompelling on a narrative level, and passable on a gameplay level. Every week is simply more of the same - assign your reporters to X story and wait until they get back and the rest of your staff processes the reports. At first it was interesting to optimize the process and figure out how many workers to employ, where to put them, etc and I love the strategy and basebuilding genres so that was fun. But you reach a certain point where there's not much more to optimize, and in my opinion News Tower reaches that point way too early relative to the length of a full playthrough. In ~6 years I completed the High Society storyline, 75% of the Mayor storyline, defeated both rival newspapers, and completed all districts once. For the next 2-3 years it was just a slog to conquer all the districts again with literally 0 variation in the gameplay. There just wasn't enough to keep it interesting. The problem is less about the variety or depth of upgrades but more about the length of a playthrough. The last few sessions I played were unnecessarily slow and frankly boring. I can't see any reason that you need to complete like 40 weeks of printing that play out almost identically just to complete 1 storyline. The storylines could be condensed into about half of their current length and it would accomplish the same, if not better, narrative impact because I could actually remember what was happening lol At this point I'm only playing to finish out the achievements, but I won't be returning. No disrespect to anyone who enjoyed it though, I understand the appeal of the News Tower theme and if you enjoyed it, that's great. This just wasn't it for me
Great game. End game gets a bit tedious. Love the touch of having real 1930s news scoops to chase down. I look forward to the updates throughout this year adding more geographic areas and news stories.
Reviews sourced from Steam. All reviews belong to their respective authors.
Data sourced from RAWG, Steam, IGDB, CheapShark, Wikipedia, HLTB, and GX Corner. Sources: rawg, steam, cheapshark, igdb, wikipedia.
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