In a world where there are a multiplicity of news sources, it would be absurd to store days-old news in a bank to be used whenever it was convenient. “Republia Times” uses a “bank” of stories. This presents something of an anachronistic feel to the game, because it’s hard to imagine a crummy contemporary newspaper without lots of pictures, graphs, and layout tricks but this simplicity suits the restricted nature of the game’s rapid development.

The hard cap on the size and number of stories that can fit on a page remind me of the 2D “Final Fantasy” games, where the randomized encounter system has to select carefully between enemies based on their strengths and the amount of tile space occupied by their pixel art. The layout of the page is rather strange, perhaps more reflective of the history of videogame design than it is of print. It’s not until the fourth day that the game cleverly tells us that bad weather will not affect the loyalty of citizens, because “the government cannot control the weather yet.” Little touches like this embellish its bare-bones concept (because, really, when was the last time you grinned after reading a tool tip?). And on days where the random draw of stories is unlucky, I giggled while printing a page bearing nothing more than the fact that it’s a warm and sunny day. While the sporting and celebrity news in Republia regularly have political content, like the defection of a sports team to a rival nation, the weather is where the selection of content hit hardest for me.Īt one point, I found myself asking whether or not it was a good idea to tell people that it was going to be rainy tomorrow. This is business-as-usual for any newspaper, even a serious and honest endeavor. We’re told, as if we already didn’t know, that a good way to grow readership is to include pieces about sports, entertainment and the weather. What’s most evocative about this game for me is how little many of the potential articles have to do with politics as we usually think of them.

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