There were a lot of really cool and interesting games on display at this year's Game Developers Conference, which made narrowing down this list extremely difficult. Just because a game isn't featured here doesn't mean it didn't impress me, but if you happened to be in San Francisco last week and saw an iOS game you'd like to mention then by all means please do so in the comments below.
And so, let's take a gander at 148Apps' top picks from GDC 2015.
I stumbled upon the weirdly fascinating newspaper censorship sim, The Westport Independent, on the show floor this past week and I'm very glad I did. I'd heard about Double Zero One Zero's project a while back but like most games that are still quite a ways off it sort of faded from my mind after that initial interest. And now that I've gotten some hands-on time with a still pre-release build, I'm interested again.
In The Westport Independent you act as the editor of a newspaper in a mid-20th century city that seems just a tad oppressed. Actually it seems like there's a totalitarian government in place, but your perception of the city and its citizens may change depending on how you write the news.
Your job as editor of The Westport Independent is to take a look at potential stories, decide how you'd like to phrase the headline, cherrypick important paragraphs to include (or cut out the ones you don't like), then pick a staff writer to put it all together. Different writers will have different thoughts on the politics involved, and sometimes they might not be happy about covering certain topics. They might get a little... suspicious.
You'll also be handling the distribution of your newspaper to the different districts of the city, but some will value one brand of news over another, which will mean that front page article on police brutality might not go over so well in the ritzy neighborhood. Your newspaper may start to sway the citizens' opinion of their city over time, though. And the types of stories that come up will occasionally tie into previously published articles, allowing you to follow along (and in some cases influence the outcome of) some small but significant goings on.
Of course as you start to get popular, you'll attract more attention. And the more attention you attract, the more likely you are to draw the eye of the police or even the government.
There's no definitive launch info on The Westport Independent yet, but it's going to make its way to the iPad sometime in the hopefully-near future. It's "probably" coming to the iPhone as well, although the smaller screen will require some interface tweaking.
Pocket Gamer reports that Double Zero One Zero has announced their Papers, Please-esque "censorship simulator," The Westport Independent, will be making its way to iOS. In the game you play the role of the editor of an independent newspaper based in Westport - a city of liars, politicians, and rioters. The citizens rely on your newspaper to get the truth, and it's up to you to decide what to print. In the meantime, you also have a guidebook from the government to follow if you want to stay on their good side.
Here, Game designer Pontus Lundén explains the newest addition of the game, with your decisions now also possibly affecting the lives of your journalists as well as yourself:
Throughout the game you will censor articles, pick out headlines, and layout your paper. Your actions will affect the peoples' opinion of both the rebels and the Loyalist government. At the same time, it'll also affect the lives of your employees. They have both their lives and the lives of their families to protect, so don't blame them if they don't want to follow you onto the Loyalist's or the rebel's hit list.
The Westport Independent will be coming to iOS, but no release date has been hinted at yet.
