Released in Steam Early Access back in 2020, Not for Broadcast was a fun FMV puzzle game that saw players helm the editing desk of the newsroom in an alternate reality of 1980s Europe – as you balanced switching camera angles, choosing advertisements to run, bleeping bad words and blocking out interference – to ultimately determining public perception to political parties on the brink of war. Entering Early Access at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a troublesome time for any FMV game requiring many people to be in a room, the studio actively created COVID-friendly side-content and ultimately filmed the remaining chapters, until two years later – perhaps outside of the expected development schedule – the three chapter, nine-episode launching in January 2022. For a game that some might have initially perceived as a game aimed at a Youtuber’s live-streaming audience, it proved to be a memorable experience from start to finish, one I praised highly in my final review.
After two and a half years focusing on updates, console ports, a virtual reality edition and new chapters – NotGames has ended development on Not for Broadcast with their final chapter – Not for Broadcast: The Timeloop, now available on all supported platforms. This chapter comes in at between four and five hours in length from my playtesting and presents everything that made the series good – the witty and creative humour, lovable characters from the cynical Jeremy Donaldson to the comical Patrick Bannon, the many, many memes and so much more. It’s supported by a format relatively similar to all that came before it, but true to its name, effectively explores the canon-breaking concept of the silent protagonist Alex Winston, and Channel One’s studio head Boseman, being trapped in a time loop, caused by an event seemingly impossible to avoid.
Set on Day 126, very early in Alex’s tenure at Channel One, the National Nightly News team is hosting a special event titled The Night of Smiles. The programme revolves around two scientists (Dr Magnus and his eccentric assistant Chester) broadcasting a live activation of their invention – the Euphoria Device – in-studio, set to inflict happiness on everyone in the country. However, it turns out to be a dud for its intended purpose. Instead, it causes a time-loop, sending everyone back in time to before the broadcast. With Alex and Boseman the only ones without their memories wiped of past loops, so begins their journey to stop anyone pressing the big red button that will activate the device, thereby influencing not the public, but those in the studio… hilarity ensues.
While most episodes of the in-game National Nightly News consisted of three segments each around 10 minutes in length, The Night of Smiles consists of one baseline segment. As someone who lived The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya’s Endless Eight anime adaptation, I’ll admit to being a little cautious of how this DLC will fare. Thankfully, NotGames delivered to their strengths in Not for Broadcast: The Timeloop, combining their creative talents and incredible lead cast with a highlight reel of returning guest characters for major and standalone appearances, and witty concepts that heavily lean more towards the colourful and hilarious than the darker and serious. How much the creative team get out of a few props, a single-stage set, and granted, what appears to be a pretty good costuming budget is incredible.
Not for Broadcast: The Timeloop is essentially broken up into five parts: an introduction and a finale chapter, sandwiching three sets of ideas and many time loops between them. Each loop is designed not to be just a simple reimagining but a creative menagerie of recreations – from attempting Boseman’s ideas to break the time loop, to introducing a range of returning guests, to the fourth part which, let’s say you will likely want to watch each loop from start to finish. The game draws from the strength of its main chapters, introduces a few running plots of its own, its diverse and lovable cast of characters, and serves as a well-deserved celebration of everything the game and its developers have accomplished over the last four and a half years. Plus, as someone who has had the song ‘The Unsuitable Adventures of Mr Bear and Chums’ stuck in their head for years now, their promise of “an epic musical journey with possibly the longest song in FMV history” ringing true – to my absolute delight.
To some extent, the game feels like an exploration of every idea the creative team had but couldn’t work into the main story without losing its grasp on reality. My only (slight) qualm is the ending. Is it a bad ending? By absolutely no means! Not for Broadcast: The Timeloop offers a very suitable and fitting conclusion. However, after the hours it took players to get to this moment, and the pieces required to arrive at the ending, having an actual normal ending instead of something a bit more intense or comical was arguably a little bit jarring – even a second section just for the ending would have been welcome.
In terms of gameplay, you have many of the same tools at your discretion: bleeping offensive language and switching between four cameras to get the highest audience reception. However, with the matter of the time loop and the absurdity that occurs during some of them, the gameplay shifts for most of the game, changing from audience ratings to searching for clues among the different loops – with two major instances of this throughout the event. The mechanics now involve you dinging a bell whenever the conversation relates to a clue, and due to some of these clues being during intermissions and sections broadcast into the studio, the audience rating gauge is disabled – giving you free reigns to ignore normal broadcast requirements. On one hand, it is a shame that the final DLC doesn’t showcase the core mechanic of all past chapters… but on the other hand, I was so relieved the expectation to control cameras was lifted at the point it does, given the need to focus heavily on the dialogue and narrative to mine nuggets of information among the occasional absurdist narrative to break the loop.
Stylistically, Not for Broadcast: The Timeloop continues to play to the series’ strengths – quirky and eccentric combined with design motifs and styles that are fitting to the 80s news network style – with a few changes here and there with some loops that genuinely got a chuckle out of me. There are other gems to be mined here and there, from amendments to the broadcast openings, the names used in the show credits before the broadcast, names on the (sadly) unplayable ads, and the enjoyable ongoing B-plot around the stagehand Collin.
Not for Broadcast: The Timeloop is the ideal love letter to everything NotGames has been developing all these years, and with regards to giving the primary and secondary cast their last chance to shine under the studio lights, it exceeded my expectations. If you have played Not for Broadcast before and enjoyed it, then I would wholeheartedly recommend The Timeloop myself. It is bittersweet to say goodbye to the National Nightly News team, but while they could have gone on for much longer, they have certainly ended things when they were ahead. I hope to see this FMV News Broadcast Propaganda Sim format brought back in the future by the studio, but I also cannot wait to see what they have in store for audiences next. Whatever it is has big shoes to follow.
Not for Broadcast: The Timeloop is now available on the PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S as downloadable content which requires a copy of the base game. It is also included as part of the newly released Not for Broadcast: Complete Edition on all supported platforms.
This review was conducted on a digital PC copy of the game, provided by publisher tinyBuild and developer NotGames to facilitate this review.
