''The Westport Independent'' is a simulation video game developed by Double Zero One Zero and published by

Coffee Stain Studios Coffee Stain Studios AB is a Swedish video game developer based in Skövde. Founded in 2010 by nine University of Skövde students, the company is best known for ''Goat Simulator,'' which was released in April 2014, and ''Satisfactory'', relea ...

. The game was released digitally for

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, and

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

on 21 January 2016.

Gameplay

The Game is set in a

backsliding Backsliding, also known as falling away or described as "committing apostasy", is a term used within Evangelical Christianity to describe a process by which an individual who has converted to Christianity reverts to pre-conversion habits and/or l ...

city-state named Westport amid a crisis regarding Parliament's attempts to censor the media. The player (The Editor and Owner of the afformentioned "Westport Independent") will have to choose what the newspaper will publish and what it will not. All decisions will have a major impact throughout the course of the game. The player will also need to confront the writers working for the newspaper, who will want different content to be published. Articles will include subjects such as riots, healthcare, industrial accidents and rebellions.

Development

Originally, the game was developed over a period of 72 hours. This version was featured on several websites. Eventually, the developers decided to expand it into a full length game with many more features added. While it is essentially a more fully featured (though otherwise unrelated) version of

Lucas Pope Lucas Pope (born ) is an American video game designer. He is best known for experimental indie games, notably ''Papers, Please'' and ''Return of the Obra Dinn'', both of which won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize alongside other awards. Pope curren ...

's '' The Republia Times'' (the Ludum Dare precursor to ''

Papers, Please ''Papers, Please'' is a puzzle simulation video game created by indie game developer Lucas Pope, developed and published through his production company, 3909 LLC. The game was released on August 8, 2013 for Microsoft Windows and OS X, for Li ...

''), the developers have stated they were unaware of Pope's game until after they had finished the game-jam version of this one.

Reception

''The Westport Independent'' received mixed reviews. The game holds an aggregated

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

score of 63/100 for

, based on 15 critic reviews, and one of 75/100 for

, based on 6 critic reviews. ''

PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...

'' reviewer Matt Elliott gave the game a score of 65/100, stating that " cleanly executed idea falls short because of flat characterisation and a dissatisfying lack of consequence. If only real papers were this toothless." Nick Monroe from '' The Escapist'' awarded it 3.5 out of 5 stars, saying that "

he game He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

is a great choice for fans of ''

'', and anyone who wants a game that makes you critically think about real-life topics."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Westport Independent, The 2016 video games Android (operating system) games Indie games Coffee Stain Studios games IOS games Linux games MacOS games Simulation video games Video games developed in Sweden Windows games