News Tower News

• [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]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]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]

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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• [p] Build your Tower (printer to toilet): design departments, balance comfort, productivity, and costs. [/p]
• [p] Hire and manage your newsroom: assign tasks, juggle traits and stress, hit print day on schedule. [/p]
• [p] Overcome competitors: race to claim stories and expand your readership across districts. [/p]
• [p] Set your editorial line: tune perception, page design, and ads to your audience. [/p]
• [p] Decide the headline: choose what leads the edition, and watch the city react. [/p]
• [p]All of this from 1930 until the end of 1939 across the US & Europe[/p]

• [p] The Decade[/p]
• [p] Half-Decade[/p]
• [p] Beat The Jersey Beacon[/p]
• [p] Beat The Empire Observer[/p]

• [p] For each leaderboard, the players in first place for each game mode (Intro/Classic, Highrise and Lowrise) on January 1st will receive: [/p]
• [p] An in-game article about your victory, visible to all players—immortalizing your achievement.[/p]
• [p]A custom-made vinyl of the News Tower soundtrack signed by the developers.[/p]

• [p]No cheat codes in your save. Any use of in-game cheat codes excludes that save file from the leaderboards.
  [/p]
• [p]No cheating of any kind. Any detected cheating or tampering results in exclusion from the contest and leaderboards.
  [/p]
• [p]Name guidelines apply. Your News Tower name must not include profanity or obscenity. Keep it clean.[/p]

• [p]When does it run? From November 18 through January 1st 2026 (inclusive). [/p]
• [p]How are winners chosen? The player ranked #1 on each leaderboard in each game mode on January 1st at 15:00 CET. [/p]
• [p]Can I win more than one leaderboard? No. If you are #1 on more than one leaderboard, the board with the closest percentage difference will pass to the next winner. Only the board you have the largest winning lead on will stick.[/p]
• [p]How will you reach out to winners? Winners will be contacted through Steam after being announced on Discord. If you are a winner, we will reach out to you through your Steam profile - adding you as friend to get all required details to send your prizes.[/p]