Разработчик: Copychaser Games
Описание
Congratulations, *NAME_REF!!ERROR*! You’ve landed an internship with the Times & Galaxy, the Dorp system's favorite regional holopaper and five-time winner of the Bort Jorbeller Award for Satisfactory Interplanetary Journalism!
There’s never been a robo reporter before so don’t waste this (unpaid) opportunity. All the greats started as interns and you’ve only got seventeen cycles to prove that you belong in the newsroom.
We’re assigning you stories that put the hyper in hyper-local news! On any given cycle choose to cover shuttle crashes, intersolar cat shows, even space ghost funerals. It’s up to you!
Once you’ve chosen your assignment, head to the shuttle bay and blast off for intern adventures!! That means interviewing sources, digging up clues and investigating the scene. We hope your conversational circuits are well oiled as you earn or betray the trust of more than 100 characters and ask a lot of questions.
There’s always more than meets the eye, and the more information you can gather, the more equipped you'll be.
At the end of each assignment, it’s time to file your story.
Use the Build-a-Story™ tool to construct your article using all that info you gathered. Depending on who you interviewed, the choices you made and how deep you dug, you’ll have different options to work with for your story—you were a diligent reporterbot and managed to get ALL the info, weren’t you?
Your choices impact the quality and tone of the story and how both your editors and readers will react to it. Over time, the choices in each story start to shape the reputation and popularity of a holopaper. So hey, no pressure!
Designed and written by former journalists, this is almost exactly how real journalism is done. Except with aliens.
The staff at Times & Galaxy all live and work together on the Scanner, a sprawling, spacebound newsroom.
Between assignments, you’ll have the chance to get to explore the Scanner and get to know a diverse and colorful crew of more than twenty crewmates including your fellow reporters, the editorial staff, pilots and ship’s crew.
The staff come from all over the system, where you’ll find Humans, Augers, Verge, Xeel and of course, Robos.
Everyone has their own thing going on and they’ve always got something to say. They’ll react to you in all sorts of expected, and unexpected, ways depending on your choices.
The Scanner is more than just a newsroom. It’s where you sleep, eat, work and relax.
After recharging your literal batteries in your bunk you might take a moment to recharge your emotional ones in the Garden, home to many species of plants from all over the system. Or at least it used to be. Find seeds to restore the green space to its former glory!
As well as selecting your chassis and paint job before you arrive at the Scanner, you’ll be able to requisition upgrades from the ship’s Shuttlebots. Just watch out for the mouth on some of them. “Beep” has never sounded so aggressive.
Writers at Copychaser spent years working as journalists before entering the games industry and have a deep love of local journalism and the connections it creates in communities around the world.
While working on the writing teams of games like Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, they saw how players loved the relationships between characters as much as, or even more than the combat and adventure.
And so Times & Galaxy was born. We’re excited to bring you this truly unique adventure game where you can step into the metal boots of the first-ever robo reporter. Chase down leads, break system-rocking news, get quotes, make friends (or enemies), eat a dirt pie! It’s your solar system to explore, your story to tell and your job on the line, intern.
ABOUT THE DEVELOPER
Alberta-based indie studio Copychaser Games Inc. was founded in 2017 by Ben Gelinas, a former newspaper reporter who has spent the past decade working in AAA and indie game development.
Copychaser’s specialty is unique, inclusive games with branching narratives and memorable characters. Every Copychaser game puts the player at the center of an eccentric and immersive story unlike any they’ve ever played.
In 2018, Copychaser released the death-positive, wholesome horror game Speed Dating for Ghosts (SDFG) to wide acclaim. Since then they’ve been working hard on Times & Galaxy, bringing together a bigger team of collaborators and gaining support from the Canadian Media Fund and indie label, Fellow Traveller.
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7+
- Processor: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 11 compatible GPU
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 3 GB available space
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 or 11
- Processor: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 11 compatible GPU
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 3 GB available space
Mac
Linux
Отзывы пользователей
An underrated delight! There's still a couple bugs (as of time of writing), but I had such a blast with Times & Galaxy. This game should've gotten so much more love. If you like games with strong comedic writing and are looking for something grounded, but ultimately optimistic, check it out!
HEADLINE: Overlooked indie game turns out to be hidden gem
LEDE: 'Times and Galaxy' lets you explore silly happenings on weird planets, hunt for information, flirt with aliens and robots (or not), do side quests on your space ship if you feel like it, get a dubious "charisma cap", drink oil, and pet a goo dog.
NUT GRAF:
With only 40 reviews at the time of writing, Times and Galaxy has gone all but unnoticed. This must come as a surprise to the 95% of players who state - often very enthusiastically - that they would recommend the game.
It certainly doesn't appear to lack in quality. Copychaser Games offers a well thought-out world with wacky characters to explore, accessible regardless of your interest in or talent for journalism. While not being challenging, it definitely seems to be entertaining to players with any interest in reading. It's conveniently divided into chapters, which should make it easy to play in shorter sessions. Its many details give it the appearance of a labour of love through and through.
KEY QUOTE: "I've got that song stuck in my head" - löyly's partner who proceeded to take off their headphones and come over every time the intro song played.
COLOR: Times and Galaxy might be the game that has made this reviewer laugh the most and loudest this year.
* * *
If you like chill and story-driven games, check out my curator Peaceful Adventures and Stories. You're also welcome to join the group.
Pretty good game. I like the way you build stories, but it's frustrating that you can be so limited in options for some of the stories. The personalities of the NPCs are not often easy to read, so it's quite likely you'll make a dialogue choice that doesn't work and then you effectively get locked out of interviewing them for useful info. I thought the charisma cap might help nail it down a little, but it really feels mostly useless.
Sometimes it feels sloooowwwwww. Like, antagonizingly slow. By the end, it all feels repetitive. There are multiple storylines to follow through dialogue with the characters, but the news game play doesn't have any. In fact, what you write doesn't feel like it affects the game at all which I think is a missed opportunity to really flesh this out.
Overall, not time waster but I'm not necessarily stoked on this. Fun enough, finished the game, but that's about it.
A truly fantastic little experience- more sandbox story than strategy game though.
It's a weird galaxy out there, and you get to explore/experience it first hand, through the fresh eyes of a "literally built yesterday" robot- and detailed stories from new friends you'll make aboard The Scanner.
I DO wish there was some kind of, harder mode to it. It lets you just, sort of choose the outcome of your stories- will they be good, bad? Odd? You literally decide that, and it's very laid out ahead of you what response your actions get. Maybe so clear in the conversations you have to build your database for your news-story, but there isn't any mystery to how your story will be recieved at the end of the day.
And I wish that was a bit different. I have no interest in making my report terrible on purpose- and it's VERY easy to make yourself liked, reputable and well read.
But that's what makes the difference between a casual sandbox story kind of game, and one that's more of a story based strategy one.
It's all in what you prefer- and while that one aspect might not be my personal favorite, there's more than enough heart, soul, and coffee dispenser oil in this to still make it beloved by me.
this game is effin cute. i love "speed dating for ghosts" too.
12/16/2024: Looking back, I approached this review with a bit of fanboy-ism. Updated today to better fit my overall experience (after a replay)
Times & Galaxy: An incredibly well-written, knee-slapping, and heart-eyed adventure. 8/10
Opening:
Times & Galaxy is the second game by Copychaser Games, the other being Speed Dating for Ghosts. While the latter has had a good amount of success, the former, T&G, has had a much smaller reception. I find this incredibly unjust, as I have just recently finished the former, and I can confidently say it's going on my favorites list. The unique dialogue options, the goofy dumb-fun comedy moments, and the lovey-dovey flirting mechanics are so creative it makes me giggle and kick my feet in the air like I'm talking to someone I have a crush on (which you can do in this game!!!)
Story
You are *NAME_REF!!ERROR*, the newest ReporterBot fresh off the production line, and you just got the best internship ever: 16 cycles at the universe-renowned Times & Galaxy! Venture to other planets and get the scoop on the latest, then compile it into your best possible writing. But remember, there's no such thing as a perfect paper. T&G's story is easily understandable from the get-go, but they make so many interesting choices with each passing cycle. From an interesting shuttle crash site, to a seemingly haunted farm, each story to report on is wonderfully unique. Each interaction is filled with natural dialogue, reasonable dialogue options, and goofy comedy.
Endings:
SPOILER WARNING!!! I will be covering the endings (of which there are a few)! Blacked out text directly spoils the endings.
Overall, I didn't like the endings. If I had to use one word, I'd say rushed. In the Sensational ending, Wyren is hired, and the ship's systems go down the same cycle. Everyone assumes they did it, but it was actually Puff Piece! Hahaha, everyone laughs, credits roll. After this one, I felt a bit odd. Obviously a happy ending, but everything just feels so tightly packed in, especially since it has to fit into one cycle.
In the Alien Interest ending, Arwin quits, and the higher-ups elect Richard Gravity to take their place. You race after Arwin, and, depending on how your dialogue goes, they either take their leave or stay for good. After this one, I felt okay. Despite the fact that it's not made very clear that you can make them stay, I thought the idea of the ending being dependent on correctly picking dialogue prompts was pretty cool.
In the Informational ending, almost half the ship is fired. You can't sell papers on just info, dummy! After this one, I didn't feel good. Obviously, it's a hard truth for a lot of real-life journalist companies. But previously, you made it possible to change sad endings to happy ones, as shown in the Alien ending. The build-up of other characters saying things along the lines of "Oh, maybe you can change their mind!", just like the Alien ending, just to not let the player do it really hurt my experience.
8/10
Gameplay/Controls
The gameplay loop is fairly simple: pick a story (or have one picked for you), venture off, gather intel, and form a story. Based of your story, you can gain or lose Reputation and Readership. The best articles rise both, and the worst lower them. But, between the simple loop is some of the most natural, goofy dialogue I've seen in a game like this. Want to talk to a floating ball of goop inside a jar with a robot body? Go ahead. Want to pet a gloopy space-dog? Be my guest. Want to form a loving relationship with CopyBot? They'd love that! The diversity of options you have while talking to these people is great, too. One downside, however, is the controls are unable to be remapped. If you are using a keyboard, you're out of luck (unless you want to use a 3rd-party app). Controller users can rebind buttons using Steam Input, however.
9/10
Replayability
I have replayed the game! The second time through was almost as good as the first, but some of the earlier sections did have a bit of that dragging feeling. The game does take at least 2 replays to get all the stories you can, and one playthrough took roughly 12 hours for all the dialogue for me. Also, I spread misinformation by saying sprinting takes a few cycles to unlock, when you actually receive it on your very first cycle aboard.
8/10
Diversity
Yeah, this game has it all. You have multiple options in terms of relationships, whether it be a male, female, or genderless (robots and the like), you can pick he/she/they when making your ReporterBot, and multiple characters are shown to be LGBTQ+. The game also contains a lot of metaphors for real life topics, like gender identity. One species has a large ceremony to give their young a title they bear for life, basically telling them the life they will live. One of the characters on your ship, however, didn't agree with their title, so they left home to pursue their own dreams. A pretty clear metaphor, but we like those here. If I must add one negative, it feels a bit like the stereotypical "grr change is bad!" character felt a bit dry and too close to reality. I understand that's the message they're going for, but it just seemed to take me out of the game a bit.
9/10
Music
There aren't really any stand-out tracks, other than the opening theme song (which is a banger).
7/10.
Bugs
I have encountered many more bugs. Here are a few:
- Upon talking to a character in the ship, I got stuck in an infinite loop of dialogue.
- Upon talking to a character during the first Orphan story, I was softlocked after completing my dialogue with them.
- Upon clicking a bit too fast while talking to ScannerBot, their face was stuck on my screen for a while.
- ReporterBot's overall movement speed is tied to the frame-rate. Seriously.
- Not 100% sure if this is a bug, but some of the dialogue options seemed wrong. Asking a character question A resulted sometimes in a response for question B.
[*]After a big plot-point during the naming ceremony, no characters had an exclamation point above their head, despite the fact they now had new interactions
That's just a few off the top of my head. Big yikes.
5/10
Conclusion
Overall, Times & Galaxy was an incredible experience. It felt nice rizzing up JanitorBot, and it'll feel nice again in my next playthrough. I very much recommend this game to any Visual Novel fans, as it's expansive dialogue and goofy interactions really brighten any mood. I give Times & Galaxy an 8/10. The two points are subtracted for it's many bugs, un-remappable controls, and a few somewhat anti-climatic "out-of-left-field" endings.
Oh my dear Yar, they could never make me hate you
No indication of what information is actually relevant to collect doesn't mesh with the constant autosaves. That combined with the fact that it's so slow to move the character around the relatively large environments that it took me almost 2 hours of playtime to get to the point where they start sneaking new punishment mechanics in with no warning or recourse. The gameplay was fun until they made it needlessly frustrating out of nowhere with no warning. I instantly lost all motivation to continue or even progress any further at all in a game that I had been actively enjoying up to that point.
I see this in A LOT of games published by Fellow Traveler as well, but INCLUDE A TUTORIAL WHEN YOU INTRODUCE A NEW MECHANIC! Or at the very least, include one for the basic mechanics of the game so they aren't an unpleasant surprise being sprung on your players.
Also, as in most modern, indie, narrative games, you can't rebind the controls and they aren't laid out properly for my Pro-Controller even through Steam Input.
Probably gonna refund and buy it again if it goes on sale for ~$5.
I love this game so far but the game freezes and hard locks you on cycle 10. No matter how many times I restart its missing objects i need or locking me in a convo that wont continue or end. I would give it a thumbs up but...i cant play any more cuz its locked.
Very lovely so far
Greta narrative game, the writing was pretty good and lots of surprising moments!
I am LOVING the *characters*, the *setting*, the *cozy and laid-back gameplay* so far. There is so much personality in everything and everyone you interact with. You play as a robot reporter (reporterbot) who is sent out to various newsworthy events, interview the bystanders, search through the scene of the disaster or whatnot, and then get to customize your newspaper article any way you want! You get certain points for readability and reputation based on how you decide to spin the story. I'm not sure how that factors into things for the long run yet.
A wonderfully-charming game with a great world and characters.
Also it has Yar, and Yar is good.
The best way to interact with this game is to read everything! The world and characters were a joy to get to know, and the flavour text gives the occasional chuckle too. I would warn the prospective buyer though that the game is still a tad buggy. The most egregious bug being that a save file suddenly stopped working and I had to boot a different save file from a different slot.
Overall though, I don't regret buying this game at all! I'd advise players to save often and in different slots to avoid losing a playthrough.
This is the first time I felt inclined to leave a review. Sadly it seems like this gem of a narrative game is not getting as much coverage as it deserves. And it's a shame. The sheer number of lovable characters and an impressive amount of artwork that has been put into a game. So many diferent ways you can spin a story and the variety of the stories you cover. Definitely one of the best story driven games this year. As for the bugs in my approximately nine hour playtrough I've only encountered one instance when a dialog refused to start and it froze the game. Thankfully autosaves are frequent so it wasn't a hassle. Things weren't so smooth at launch though.
Very good storywise, but there were some technical issues. The UX took some getting used to. There was a weird resolution issue, but maybe that's just Proton.
I love this game, it's fun and puzzley and cute. PLEASE make it so that movement is faster.
Seriously. If you want me to look around and talk to people, and walk around loong rooms, PLEASE make it so that movement is more than an enthusiastically-animated crawl.
everything about this game is so cute and so charming! adorable and vivid art, fantastic worldbuilding and lore, fun and distinct characters, top-notch humor, and so much more. just an absolute joy to play.
(also i love copybot. i want to give them a little kiss on the head.)
Throughout Times and Galaxy (T&G), you (a newly assembled first-of-its-kind robo-reporter) will find numerous characters to interact with, including your colleagues, countless times as you complete your 17 cycles. T&G is at its best when speaking with these characters and experiencing its world full of details all around that complete the world. Characters have a bit of story to them and feel a part of a living world much went into creating the world with its 5 distinct species and each section of the newspaper, each mimicking real sections in a paper. As you go from story to story interviewing subjects and studying the environment more and more of this world comes to life in a way that’ll keep you gripped until it’s done and wanting more.
It’s clear there is a lot of passion here as the artwork is well crafted with unique and interesting character designs for what is likely dozens of characters, it makes them all the more memorable. It also helps the characters you talk to have several different little poses while conversing which adds emotion and color to the conversions in a simple yet effective way. The backgrounds are full of detail as well with much to look at without being too overwhelming.
For the most part, each cycle follows the same format, you wake up on the ship where you’ll then have time to interact with most of the crew of the ship and staff of the paper, here you’ll get dialogue choices of the kind of robot you want to be and even if you want to date your colleagues, all of this makes for a more engaging story and one where you end up caring about the ship and their stories, there is always one to tell and some of them are connected. You’ll then get an assignment, sometimes with an option to choose which one and head out. On assignment you’ll interview people and look at and scan objects to get the details of the story, you aren’t able to get everything in a story from one go-through as you can only ask so many questions, and if you ask wrong questions an interviewee may well get annoyed and leave. This creates a strategic element for how you want to approach a story as quotes and information fit into one of three categories, informational, alien interest, and sensational. Quotes and information that may not be reliable or come from an unwilling source can also affect the paper's readership and reputation, balancing these is a puzzle where you choose what to focus on. The story builder is how you put all of this together to create a story and is the weakest element of the game, some of the information is sorted into one of those three categories even if it doesn’t feel appropriate there, and often the stories you create lack consistency, either repeating information unnecessarily or pivoting to something only tangentially related. While you are unable to read the actual story you end up making it can make creating a story a bit jarring. The stories are the meat of the gameplay and by nature of being separate assignments with only a few that are connected, there isn’t an overarching story per-say but there are consistent themes and style throughout.
Touching on humor as well as serious themes gives a balance to the game that prevents stagnation. Much of the game's world details are absurd from the overly complex sports to the absurd government but there is deeper if you look. Corporations and labor are frequent topics of discussion with a union rep as one of the major characters you interact with frequently on the ship arguing for the necessity of unions even in a seemingly fair and caring workplace. Ethics are considered especially with the reputation and tone systems as you question whether it’s best to sensationalize for readership or stick to facts which may be more boring but boost reputation, will you spend your time writing fluff pieces for business or softballing government officials? Or will you dig deeper? Robots have a complexity to them, some are happy to do and are always doing the job they were programmed for but others seem less so and are even sad at their existence being programmed and usually for one task or job, is it right to be programmed for a specific job? Some of these you’d never find by simply going about the assignments, talking to everyone on the ship is where the real depth comes out and is what makes it have some deeper meaning beyond the cute and humorous seeming presentation.
★★★★☆
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Copychaser Games |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 20.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 95% положительных (41) |