Times & Galaxy has a fascinating premise, though I’m probably biased since it focuses on my own line of work. You are the galaxy’s first-ever robot journalist, and are learning the ropes by starting an internship at legacy newspaper Times & Galaxy. After creating your character (you can customise your build, colours, and pronouns), you take on a number of assignments and write news pieces incorporating evidence you find around the scene and interviews you conduct with relevant witnesses.
One third of developer Copychaser Games is former journalist Ben Gelinas, so you already know a lot of what you’ll experience as an intern is coming from real-life experience.
While on your ship, you can roam freely among the interconnected rooms and get to know your colleagues. When ready, your editor will assign you a story, or give you a number of options to choose between. You hop onto a shuttle to your destination, which is full of things to look at and people to talk to. The questions you ask and the answers you get define what you’re able to include in your final piece. Upon submission, you’ll be evaluated on how many readers you draw in, your reputation as a journalist, and whether your article leans towards informational, alien interest, or sensationalism. It’s a fantastic premise and one with so much potential, but sadly Times & Galaxy doesn’t always live up to that ambition.
First, I have to talk about the lack of polish. This game could be a real gem, but it clearly needed more time to cook. At first, small things jumped out at me as I played: question bubbles were misaligned, speech bubbles often appeared off-screen, characters weren’t reacting to my actions, and most annoyingly, there’s no way to check your current objective while playing.
As the game went on, more severe bugs appeared. I had to repeat conversations I’d already had. Some conversations became circular, leading me back to the same set of questions I’d already been choosing from. The map I used to fast travel around the ship stopped showing me which characters were in which rooms. In one mission, a conversation wouldn’t trigger when it was supposed to, and when I reloaded the game, a crucial item disappeared from the scene.
Other times, I wasn’t able to speak to characters I’d been told to. Several conversations are bugged so that if you chose a specific dialogue option, or triggered a conversation at all, the game froze completely. Dialogue lines referred to information I didn’t have yet. Some scenes would tell me that I had collected no evidence, or more than was possible.
It’s not just the bugs – the central mechanic of reporting needs work as well. I liked guiding my interviewees with pointed questions, or derailing the conversation by asking irrelevant questions, and that being too pushy would make your interviewees angry enough to walk away. I also enjoyed collecting evidence, and found great pleasure in finding something unexpected that shifted my whole perspective of the event I was reporting on. It’s cool that ethics came into play, as naming a source who requested anonymity or using anonymous sources could hurt the paper’s reputation.
The major flaw is in how you piece articles together. As a robot, you have build-a-story software installed, and you piece together your article by choosing a headline, lede, nutgraf, key quote, and adding some information for colour. These are the basics they teach you in Journalism 101.
As I said before, your options for each section are unlocked through investigation and interviewing, and you can’t unlock every option in a single playthrough. Each option is marked as being sensational, informative, or alien interest, and you’ll also see how each option will impact your readership and reputation. Choosing between these different approaches is interesting, but at every turn it feels like Times & Galaxy gets in its own way.
I found myself disagreeing with what the game considered ‘sensational’ – some objectively true statements were under this category – but that’s neither here nor there.
It’s these markers that make the mechanic less impactful. It’s too easy to game the system, putting disparate and unlinked pieces of information into play in order to get the most readership and reputation. Your headline might say one thing, while your nutgraf might go in a completely different direction. This is not, of course, how real writing works, but it’s how the game works, and you’re never punished for turning in an article that is completely incohesive.
Despite its mechanical flaws, Times & Galaxy is undeniably well-written. All of your colleagues have distinct character designs, personalities, and passions, as well as their own beats or roles on the ship. Martina the crime reporter is a bodybuilder, and she often does sets of bicep curls when you talk to her. Shuttlebot X, one of the mechanics, is earnest, loves to tinker even when they’re off the job, and enthusiastically gives your bot frame upgrades so you can be more effective. (I threw my hands up when they gave me the ability to run. You’re very slow.) Yar, the other intern, hates your guts and sees you as his competition. Gravity, the columnist, is a narcissistic jerk.
You can flirt with almost everybody on the ship, and even date multiple colleagues at the same time. At the same time, your colleagues might not be interested in you romantically, and may even openly express interest in others after you’ve had… romantic contact.
The worldbuilding – or galaxybuilding, as it were – is just as strong. You’ll visit multiple planets with different native species to talk to its inhabitants directly and observe how they live, and chatting with your colleagues may lead them to talk about their home planets or share their expertise about the cultures and sports of different species. These species can be vastly different, but you never see anybody express disgust at the practices of other cultures. A difference is simply a difference.
Interestingly, you’ll also see some characters showing up in multiple assignments and get to know them better.
Even the ship feels bustling. You’ll find characters in different rooms every day. The door of the pantry minifridge is constantly ajar. There’s a suggestion box you can illicitly rifle through, which paints pictures about how characters feel about each other and the workplace. You and your colleagues can get hate mail, which anybody who writes online is familiar with. There’s even a union, run by the passionate court reporter.
The missions are just as well-done. Each one is individually crafted by a specific writer on the dev team, and they effectively prompt you to think critically about what you report. You can comment on how people exploit disasters for financial gain, explore the consequences of revolutionary politics, and reject pressure from an editor to write an unethical puff piece.
What you experience as a robot intern touches on more themes than I ever expected a game of this size would be able to. I found myself thinking more than usual about the business of running a paper, and the importance of being able to balance drawing a readership with being ethical and informational. The game touches on managerial overreach, and how executives have the power to destroy the reputation of a paper by focusing on the wrong thing.
You’ll be able to visit intergalactic court on multiple occasions and watch how restorative, rehabilitative justice can be doled out to wrongdoers. One mission even explores how irresponsible reporting and right-wing publications can radicalise lonely people. The idea of defying your birthright, or your programming, arises on multiple occasions, with characters turning away from what they were ‘made’ or ‘meant’ to do and learning to reach beyond what they’ve been told to do.
Despite its mechanical flaws, Times & Galaxy is still a deeply resonant and incredibly thoughtful game about the world and the role of journalism in it, chock-full of characters to love and showcasing a galaxy ripe for exploration. I just wish that actually playing it wasn’t so frustrating.
Times & Galaxy
Reviewed on PC.
Pros
- Well-executed characters, worldbuilding and missions
- Thoughtful examination of the impacts and ethics of journalism
Cons
- Lacking polish and has several game-breaking bugs
- Central gameplay mechanic is flawed
