Once upon a time, I trained as a journalist so news video editing is actually the kind of thing I’m supposed to be able to do. So when this game which puts you in the chair of the editor of a news program came out, I just knew I had to play it. A full playthrough isn’t really supposed to take very long but I agonized over improving my score and rewatched the full broadcasts and the rushes, so I took much longer than necessary. I felt unnecessarily stressed about doing a proper job, was enthralled by the emerging stories of all of the characters and, needless to say, had a great time.

The game takes place during the 1980s and is set in a fictional European country that is a parody version of the United Kingdom. The player is Alex Winston, a janitor for the National Nightly News, who is thrust into the role of broadcast engineer when his predecessor flees the country on election day. The reason becomes clear when the far left party Advance is announced as the surprise winner. They immediately cancel the passports of the rich and enact plans to confiscate their wealth. Alex does a decent job in the editing room and his position is made permanent. Over the next several weeks, the Advance government becomes increasingly authoritarian and you are ordered to comply with their censorship requests. The world’s equivalent of the United Nations responds by imposing sanctions and a blockade, resulting in rising tensions and eventually warfare. As the editor, your decisions help shape how the public views Advance and influence the image of the celebrities who appear on television. Meanwhile the private lives of you and your family are affected by this ongoing revolution and you need to make decisions that will affect your fates.

At the heart of this game are the premade videos that have actors play as the news presenters, celebrity guests, politicians and so on. So for a guest interview sequence in the studio for example, you might have several video feeds representing the cameras pointed at the host, the guest, the both of them together and so on. Your most basic job is to switch between the feeds as needed to create the best show for viewers, following rules like keeping the focus on whoever is currently speaking, not staying on any one shot for too long so that audiences won’t get bored, and so on. This sounds easy at first but then there are interviews involving a presenter and a large group of multiple guests, sports events and artistic performances and more. All this is rated by the game and for the musical sequences in particular, you’re asked to time your switches of the camera feed to the beat of the music. I must confess that I always mess up the musical cues and get chewed out by the channel’s director.

There are more game mechanics in addition to that as well. At certain times, the broadcast is affected by interference and there is a mini-game to adjust the frequency to compensate. Swear words must be bleeped out before the unedited sound goes out on the live feed. Later you’re also ordered to bleep out messages that Advance doesn’t approve of. You’re given access to sound effects button to add canned laughter, boos or applause as needed. On top of all this, some broadcast days feature special rules and conditions. On the heatwave day for example, the power supply is at risk of getting overheated so you need to babysit the fan to make sure it is turned on and pointed in the right direction. The game isn’t really that hard. It allows you to progress with the story even if you do terribly and you can turn off the most annoying mini-games that you dislike in the options. If you do treat it as a personal challenge to do well, it can be quite hard and, to me at least, a lot of fun.

The videos use visibly cheap sets and props, but the acting and the writing are great. There’s a lot of complexity and choreography in the reactions and movements of the characters so you have to scramble to work them in as part of your editing. I realize of course that this is nowhere close to how difficult the real job must be, but I’m very impressed by the diversity of the scenarios here. Editing a sports sequence feels very different from interviews and stage performances. The sense of humor is fantastic and I love how there are multiple, coherent stories running all through the game. Most of all, you actually do end up caring for the various characters as you watch how they adapt to life under the Advance government. Some participate eagerly, seeing it as a chance to rise and profit. Others resent their wealth and privilege being taken away from them. Yet others try to stand up for their principles and resist the increasingly extreme demands of the government. As the player, it’s similarly up to you to decide what to do, whether to openly oppose the Advance government and try to survive the consequences, surreptitiously undermine their messaging without arousing too much suspicion or even back them to the hilt. Since the videos are all premade, there are a limited number of permutations that are possible, but I was still impressed by how many different possible outcomes there are.

One problem with the writing in this game is I believe inherent in anything that is political, no matter how fair it tries to be or well thought out. I don’t want to spoil things but the story involves Advance doing something so heinous and unforgiveable that pretty much nothing else matters. It’s so bad that whatever good deeds they do, eradicating homelessness or achieving equality shouldn’t matter at all. It’s crazy that the critics are still talking about mandating identity cards and freedom of the press, ignoring the one huge atrocity they already carried out. It’s ridiculous that there can any kind of a both sides thing after such an atrocity for the sake of fairness. I also have serious problems with the Advance government being so explicitly evil, yet their public face Julia Salisbury the Prime Minister is kind of fuddy-duddy and unthreatening. Then there are the incongruous elements like using overpopulation as a plot point, or why most of the country seems so poor when they are treated as a superpower and so on.

To me, the fact that this is a one of a kind game, with nothing else like it available on the market, is reason enough to play it. But I actually really liked the story, the characters, the jokes and just about everything else as well, despite my misgivings about some of the political choices. Its message is very heavy-handed but it does get the point across of how much of a difference biased media coverage makes and what it means if someone just follows orders blindly. They’re still making DLC for it and I may buy them once they all come out as a collective bundle. I’m sure I’ll be very stressed playing them but I really want to reward these developers.