News Tower News

It's time for our very own Christmas Update! (And some fixes)

[p][/p][h2]GREEETINGS NEWSBEARERS! [/h2][p] [/p][p]As we're hitting the holiday seasons, we too wanted to bring gifts to you all! [/p][p][/p][p]First of all, a little reminder that, beside our ongoing Leaderboard contest, we also launched a giveaway. Running until January 1st, all you have to do is take part and boost your chances to win one of those sweet vinyl of the soundtrack of the game. [/p][p] We also wanted to take a moment and thank you all as we reach 3,000 reviews! This is a huge achievement and helps the game get the visibility it deserves![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Let it print, let it print, let it print! ❄❄❄[/h2][p][/p][p]We came bearing in-game gifts! More items to customize your tower with some Christmas Spirit! Find those items and more in our detailed patch-note below:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2][/h2][h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

[p]Fixed “Print x the most” requirement still considering European and Quest tags. They will now only consider the 6 base categories[/p]
[p]“Print x the most” will now result in more items being added in the news pool with the requested tag[/p]
[p]Fixed Boycott risks not working correctly when triggered from calendars[/p]
[p]Fixed Boycott risk popup sometimes showing an ad deal was lost even though the boycott was dodged[/p]
[p]Fixed the calendar view on the prognosis board sometimes not showing the tooltip for events on the far right side[/p]
[p]Fixed top Perception rules displaying incorrect count and bonus sales[/p]
[p]Fixed an issue that could prevent the “Brain Drain” achievement from unlocking[/p]
[p]Fixed a couple desks having sitting idle animations when the desk has no chair[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug where telegraphers would be unable to go to the bathroom or grab a snack during the weekend (Saturday/Sunday), causing them to all go when Monday rolls around, when you actually need them to work[/p]
[p]The "Place above the fold" quest requirement could sometimes ask for a tag that wasn't present in the pool. The algorithm has been adjusted to handle this and this should never occur anymore[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug where the automatic ordering of resources like paper, food and coal did not cost anything[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Transport AI Changes[/h2]

[p]Employees that support floor assignments, such as Transporters, now will only idle on floors that are included in their assignments[/p]
[p]In previous versions, once you had at least one transporter that could handle articles, your production staff would not, or rarely, transport articles themselves. This hard lockout is no longer the case, but transporters are preferred to handle the work if they can[/p]
[p]A bug which could sometimes lead to pneumatic tubes not being used has been fixed[/p][p][/p]

[h2]Quality of Life improvements[/h2]

[p]Addition of a “Disable Screen Shake” setting[/p]
[p]Addition of new keybindings to navigate your tower more easily:[/p]
- [p]Page up: Navigate up floors (zoom sensitive)[/p]
- [p]Page down: Navigate down floors (zoom sensitive)[/p]
- [p]Home: Navigate to street level[/p]
- [p]End: Navigate to top floor[/p][p][/p]

[h2]Other improvements[/h2]

[p]Dragging and dropping employees now resets a small timer which prevented them from relieving themselves or eating[/p]
[p]Individual stories of a news item can now be prioritized ahead of time on the story files[/p]
[p]Addition of European news in 1935[/p]

[p][/p][h2]New content / Christmas update[/h2]

[p]Added 5 new wallpapers:[/p]
- [p]Blue Tile Wallpaper[/p]
- [p]Checkered Wallpaper [/p]
- [p]Green Panel Wallpaper[/p]
- [p]Reindeer Wallpaper [/p]
- [p]Snowflake Wallpaper [/p]
[p]Added 3 new objects:[/p]
- [p]Christmas Tree [/p]
- [p]Christmas Wreath [/p]
- [p]Christmas Lights [/p]

[p]The new objects, the Reindeer and Snowflake wallpapers may be obtained in Christmas themed news during in-game December months. The Blue Tile, Checkered and Green Panel wallpapers may be obtained from random object rewards from news and/or the calendar.[/p][p]The Christmas Tree is moody and will only show itself in full Christmas glory during in-game December months![/p][p][/p][p]One last mention, as the Steam Winter Sales are about to begin, News Tower will once again be 20% off until January 5th. It's the perfect gift I am telling you! As a reminder the Sales will start today December 18th on 10AM PT and run until January 5th.[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]Thank you all so much for the love and care for the game. We are committed to make it one of the best tycoon-management game ever. [/p][p]Join us on discord and X to follow all the news about News Tower! [/p][p][/p][p] [/p]

News Tower 1.0 - Second Patch is live! Fixes and AI improvements

[p][/p][h2]GREEETINGS NEWSBEARERS! [/h2][p] [/p][p]Just like our printers, we never stop working to improve the game and bring you the freshest updates.[/p][p][/p][p]Today we're coming down with a new list of multiple fixes along with some improvements to the AI/pathfinding system.[/p][p][/p][p]But before giving you all the juicy news, a quick update on the Leaderboard contest that is running until January. [/p][p]Considering the fact that for each leaderboard, scores can vary depending on if you play in Introduction/Classic, Highrise or Lowrise mode, we decided to bump the number of winners from 4 (1 per leaderboard category) to 12 winners! (3 per leaderboard category, 1 per gamemode Intro/Classic, Highrise and Lowrise) [/p][p][/p][h2][/h2][h2] Major Fixes:[/h2]

[p]The chances of two scoops appearing behind a Choose a Path branch have been reduced to almost zero[/p]
[p]Fixed Art Collector achievement being impossible to obtain due to 2 paintings being in the same calendar row and too far apart[/p]
[p]Fixed some calendar events rewarding objects never being generated on Endless calendars.[/p]
[p]Now truly fixed Turkish capital letter i not being rendered for people with Turkish system settings.[/p]

[p][/p][h2] Minor Fixes/Tweaking:[/h2]

[p]Fixed a bug where if your perception was completely left or right, you might not get the reward that is on the calendar. [/p]
[p]The automatic ordering of paper at the start of the week has been improved. It is immediately tuned to what your projected sales are instead of growing along during the week.[/p]
[p]Quality stars were maxed at 3 per reportable. This is fixed.[/p]
[p]Utility employees now have a slightly slower decrease of nutrition and toilet stats.[/p]
[p]Fixed High Society lady becoming a nurse in "The Price Of Privacy" story.[/p]
[p]In certain cases, it was possible that the ordering of coal wasn't unlocked yet, while you already got a tutorial about the power. This is now fixed.[/p]
[p]Fixed wrong ad categories at 16 ads. For example, some of them were marked as a Politics category but actually contained a Society tag and so on. Now all tags match the category.[/p]
[p]Fixed a possible error when trying to click through the recap[/p]
[p]Fixed tolerant employees complaining about stuff they're tolerant of. [/p]
[p]Fixed Darkroom not supporting drop targets directly on the desk for its items (e.g. you can drag an item directly onto the desk now instead of the popup UI)[/p]
[p]Patch for typesetting machines not having audio attenuation[/p]

[p][/p][h2] Pathfinding/AI:[/h2][p]The transportation AI has gotten some significant improvements. Decision making has been tweaked using community feedback and by thorough analysis of towers that were made by the community. Many small tweaks to prioritization, pathfinding and other decision making have been made. Some key points are: [/p]

[p]In some cases if you had specific assignments for employees, they wouldn't do anything. This has been fixed.[/p]
[p]Production employees are smarter about taking care of their own items, even when there's a pile of work at their desk.[/p]
[p]Smarter production employees relieve some stress from regular transporters, which benefits the rest of your tower.[/p]
[p]Regular transporters are smarter about helping production employees out with their items. They will attempt to but only if it's necessary for a higher throughput. [/p]
[p]Task "predictions" have been improved, since they are used in making transport assignments, this will benefit the entire system.[/p]
[p]You will see less "waiting" next to dumbwaiters and tubes because of better predictions.[/p]
[p]Bugs that could lead to hangs have been fixed[/p]

[p] Due to the system's complexity and the huge variety of possible tower layouts, it's nearly impossible to find a best size fits all solution. However, we do feel like this is a big step up from previous versions and would love to get your feedback, which we will monitor and use to keep improving on this part of the game. Thanks![/p][p][/p][h3]To summarize:[/h3][p][/p][p]The transportation AI has been improved, based on thorough analysis of a lot of towers you (the community) has provided.[/p][p][/p][p]Thank you all so much for the love and care for the game. We are committed to make it one of the best tycoon-management game ever. [/p][p]Join us on discord and X to follow all the news about News Tower! [/p][p][/p][p] [/p]

Our very first patch post 1.0 is live!

[p][/p][h2]GREEETINGS NEWSBEARERS! [/h2][p] [/p][p]News Tower 1.0 has been out for 7 days already, and we have been actively monitoring and listening to your feedback and concerns. [/p][p][/p][p]Below is a detailed version of our first patch note, addressing multiple feedback you shared on Steam or on discord. The most requested ones are marked with this icon in the list: 🐻[/p][p]We thank you for all your report, keep them coming! And if you haven't yet, we'd like to invite you to vote for News Tower as the Steam Awards just started and leave a review if you can as it really helps us out.[/p][p][/p][h2] Quality of life improvements[/h2]

[p]Various performance optimizations have been done. This includes optimizations to the lighting system, employee rendering, UI, AI and much more. These changes will be noticeable in big and crowded towers. This area is still under active development and more optimizations will be made in the near future.[/p]
[p]🐻 The printer paper prioritization has been tweaked. Employees fill up the printer a bit earlier and better. The required amount of paper that is necessary to print has also been slightly lowered, making it a little easier to reach the goal. (The automatic ordering of paper required for printing is not completely fixed yet in this patch. Enough paper will be ordered automatically by the end of the week, but not immediately at the start. In most cases the automatically ordered paper will be sufficient to keep up with the demand however. This will be improved upon in the next patch.)[/p]
[p]🐻 The chances of multiple scoop tags appearing behind a Choose one path branch are now very close to zero. If you still encounter this, please send us a bug report.[/p]
[p]🐻 The algorithm that decides on next week’s news pool has been improved to lower the chances of tags not appearing. This could be the case when you were doing a quest that required you to print more than one of the same tag. If you still encounter this issue, please send us a bug report.[/p]
[p]🐻 We’ve added a “Disable Taxi Honk” setting in the audio section. Turning this on disables the taxi honk sound that is played when a reporter arrives back from a news item. The overall volume of the taxi honk has also been slightly lowered.[/p]
[p]Production items in your tower will be spread out more evenly over multiple work stations. There was a slight miscalculation that would sometimes pile up too many items at a single desk.[/p]
[p]Employees are a little bit less likely to wait for a long time at a tube or dumbwaiter. This is still an active area of development and if you encounter severe issues, please send us a bug report.[/p]
[p]The article drawer and the build menu drawer now also respond to the scroll wheel when the pointer is over the gaps between the cards.[/p]
[p]Durability and Cleanness desk icons now named as such respectively, instead of Info, which was shared by another button.[/p]
[p]The leaderboard window used to close when clicking on the column headers or when scrolling and releasing the mouse when out of the window. With this version it will only close when you actually click outside of the window.[/p]
[p]Reporter’s speech bubble comments in the newsbook hang around for a little longer. Making them easier to read. You can still click them away manually.[/p]
[p]The sales, illustrator and cartographer employees will now also transport their finished items to the next desk or tube if it is on the same floor. Similar to other production employees.[/p]
[p]The editing desk spawns a bit less trash.[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Spoiler change[/h2]

[p]There was a part of the story missing which is that your uncle takes over the Empire Observer. You will now notice that at some point your uncle attempts to and eventually succeeds in taking over the Empire Observer. This will not happen in games where the Empire Observer was already beaten. This change is only “cosmetic” and does not affect gameplay at all.[/p]

[p][/p][h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

[p]Fixed a critical bug where the game would enter an invalid state and your save game would become corrupted if you have the Item Allowance popup open via a resupply desk, but then stash or sell that desk with that popup still open.[/p]
[p]🐻 The sales desk is now buffable by items that can be placed on the floor. For example, the Ledger Cabinet.[/p]
[p]Fixed an internal error that could occur if an old score file was present in the file system. This could possibly cause your score screen to keep appearing and other unforeseen side effects.[/p]
[p]Fixed a critical bug that could lock the game during the recap sequence when you previously had an Ad Boycott active.[/p]
[p]In some rare cases it was possible for trash to appear in your tower which wasn’t cleanable until you restarted the game. This is fixed.[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug where the "Print completely left or right" requirements would not complete successfully in some cases.[/p]
[p]On some systems, for example if your system locale is Turkish, some letters would disappear in news article titles.[/p]
[p]Fixed mobsters arriving in a car having the wrong animation. They weren’t meant to be waving at you.[/p]
[p]Fixed the white squares appearing when making page combos with certain purple tags.[/p]
[p]Fixed competitor scoop tutorial never triggering on competitive districts. [/p]
[p]The newsbook introduction addressed your reporter with he but should be she. For now this is only fixed in English.[/p]
[p]Fixed Staff board unassigned toggle text not reflecting in tower employees properly.[/p]
[p]When you’ve beaten one of the competitors, the new tower unlocks immediately instead of needing a game restart.[/p]

[p]Thank you all so much for the love and care for the game. We are committed to make it one of the best tycoon-management game ever. [/p][p]Join us on discord and X to follow all the news about News Tower! [/p][p][/p][p] [/p]

Nominate News Tower for Most Innovative Gameplay!

Nominate Us!

[p]It's grey and cold outside, but this won't stop our reporters to go out there to get you the best news in the world.[/p][p]Steam is once again calling on each and every one of you to nominate the best games of 2025 and we would be absolutely honored and humbled to be considered for the Most Innovative Gameplay award! We poured a lot of time and research to craft an intricate game where new features synergize to bring your newspaper to life in order to create a memorable experience. [/p][p]And this is not over, as we are already planning the release of a big patch answering multiple requested changes/fixes from the community tomorrow.[/p][p]Please consider nominating us here! [/p][p]Also, if you haven't yet left a review, we would greatly appreciate it! They can make a huge difference the reach of the game! [/p][p][/p]

Launch Sale

[p] As a quick reminder, News Tower is 20% off until December 2nd to celebrate its launch in 1.0![/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

Thanks for your continued support!

[p] We've just officially released the 1.0 update, and could not be happier with the reception from the community. Thank you all so much for all the love and care for our game, from its very early access launch to today. [/p]

Join the Community!

[p] As usual, if you want to stay on top of the news, ask questions and/or share your favorite story, join us on discord and on the social media X![/p]

News Tower, a pre-war tycoon game where you become a media mogul in 1930s New York, hits 1.0 to a rave reception

I'm clicking the 'Add News' button on our site's back-end to write a news story about a game all about posting news the old-fashioned way, and I couldn't be more excited to see the Steam reviews for News Tower coming in hot off the presses, signaling the release of what's shaping up to be one of the best tycoon games of the year.

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