Copychaser Games‘ “wholesome horror” debut visual novel Speed Dating For Ghosts did not release to fanfare in 2018. Nor did it bomb—it spread, slowly, amassing a word-of-mouth cult following for its witty, emotional, and hilarious writing style that examined, quite expertly, the weight of love in life and death. It now sits, between game storefronts Steam and itch.io, with over 1,000+ reviews, nearly all of which sing its haunting praise. Given how kind word-of-mouth praise was to the studio, it is perhaps no surprise that their followup game, Times and Galaxy, is about exactly what Copychaser Games knows best: capturing readers with the written word.
Times and Galaxy is a “journalism sim,” one that flaunts a much higher budget and level of interactivity than could have been possible without the success generated by Speed Dating For Ghosts. In it, you are a robot journalist intern, fresh off the assembly line and employed by the intergalactic newspaper Times and Galaxy. The paper has struggled to keep interns, partially because of the pressure of the job, but mostly because of the danger: your very first report finds you needing to travel to the scrapper-culture planet of Aug to report on crashed shuttle and you, as the first robot journalist ever, look like parts.
Once you’re assembled, it’s time to assemble a story!
A Fresh Take on Narrative Sci-FI
A less clever game would make this the setup for a wanna-be “Blade Runner” action-adventure game that we’ve all seen one hundred thousand times before. Times and Galaxy instead gives us a shockingly real exploration on what journalism actually is: being on the ground, taking stock of eye witness accounts, rummaging through the scene, and then, assembling a story and praying that it reaches eyeballs.
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Everything you do on location unlocks new “parts” of a story—Header, Lede, Key Quote, etc.—that you can then assemble however you choose. You gather these by interacting with different people on location, but how you choose to approach this might lock you out of other events taking place: missed opportunities, steering the conversation a wrong way, etc. It’s a clever way to add replay-ability to the game, as no two scenarios will ever play out quite the same way.
Times and Galaxy’s “Build-A-Story” screen allows you to assemble your article after you’ve investigated a story.
How you tell your story will not just impact whether or not your audience likes it, but the direction of the paper, and its reputation, as a whole. Want to run a popular but sleazy tabloid rife with speculation and light on facts? You can! And doing so will also impact the other big part of the game: the relationship with your co-workers.
A Newsroom Built With Heart
The big narrative thread of Times and Galaxy is not any singular story, but rather, its how your coworkers take to the work that you do. Some will love that your work is serious and dry, others will think it’s better that you tell colorful fluff pieces. Times and Galaxy is more Mary Tyler Moore than Blade Runner in this regard, and its a breath of fresh air in a sci-fi gaming genre mostly known for body and bullet count.
As expected from something we might cover here, it’s also very queer friendly. Your robot self can take on any pronoun, and flirt with anything that might flirt back. That may not always be appropriate in the work place, of course, but that’s also part of the human drama that is at the core of Times and Galaxy. No matter if its alien, human, or droid, Times and Galaxy has a beating heart at its core.
PROS
- Clever, fresh, and daring writing one comes to expect from Copychaser Games
- A cast of wildly diverse characters that react to the stories you create
- A great, highly re-playable game-play loop
- A unique genre blend that is not quite visual novel, not quite point and click, but the best qualities of both
- Beautiful, cartoony 2.5d that perfectly captures the pulpy sci-fi aesthetic
- Compelling, well paced “episodes” keeps play sessions just long enough to be fulfilling
- Some of the most horrifying sports coverage I’ve heard since Sudden Death
CONS
- On launch, a slightly buggy save UI during the first couple of chapters (That seemed to right itself over time?)
OVERALL: 90/100
Source: Copychaser Games, itch.io, Steam
