Welcome to THE NEWSROOM UPDATE! The Office Tower gets a total overhaul alongside new Editorial Contracts, a fresh coat of paint on the Newsroom itself, and a massive update for our Pal friends who are going on bigger adventures. Read on for all the details.
The Office Tower
This is a major overhaul and creates new an exciting strategies to explore during your playthroughs.
Every tower now has its own floor plan!
Each side has its own trait that modifies the rooms put beside it.
Hallways now connect rooms together between their doorways. A room must connect to a Hallway to give you a bonus.
Adjacent rooms now provide bonuses to each other.
Rooms can like and dislike each other - The Conference Room hates the Jukebox.
Added the Coffee Station (+10% to every neighbour)
Added the Water Cooler (+5% to neighbours per room type around it)
Added the Corner Office which doubles the window traits of the two rooms beside it. Good and bad!
Structural Pillars are found on your floors that you must build around - can't put a room there!
If you connect the right three connected rooms side by side you've created a department which gives you a bonus.
Rooms within 3 hallway steps of the Entrance get busy. Some rooms love that.
Controllers now work inside of The Office.
Added new achievements.
Finishing a story in the Rolodex adds new client rooms you can add to your office.
Already built an office? Your first load shows how the new rule works. Lay hallways from the Entrance to your doors: MOVE and ROTATE are free and demolishing still refunds 100% during the rework window.
The Newsroom
New art! The scene of the city has been replaced.
There are props all over your desk... who is going to ring you on the phone?
Your first equipped Pal will hang out with you on your desk. Awwww.
Explore...
Editorial Contracts
Reworked entirely. The old Editorial Contracts are now called "Odd Jobs".
You will encounter various folks in your newsroom journey that will give you new contracts to complete.
These jobs are more varied and begin to form a part of side stories within the universe.
Get to know your clients and build loyalty with them.
Added the Rolodex. Keep track of your contracts and contacts.
Added new achievements.
Pals
Pals have received a ton of new content. There is a lot to explore, so have fun with it!
36 new Pal Gyms have appeared across New York, Florida, Alabama, and California. 8 per region.
Each Gym completed gives you a passive buff by obtaining its badge.
You can fight Gyms over and over again but they get more difficult each time.
Gyms can rreward you with Gym Tokens which will be usable in a future update.
Expeditions now also show up in the four different regions, each with 5 different Beats (Metro, Business, Politics, Sports, Lifestyle) and ome in three different lengths.
Every Pal now levels up in three different disciplines: Fieldwork, Brawling, and Beat Work.
Equipped Pals level up their Beatwork and Brawling skills when your Writer beasts a boss.
Merging Pals keeps the best training stat of the two Pals.
Loot from expeditions is themed per-beat. Business pays out Cash, Sports training XP, Metro hatches eggs of the Beat's favourite species, Politics builds up your paper trail on a Scoop, and Lifestyle fills the Slush Pile and recharges your newsroom buffs.
Completing Exclusive Expeditions gives you rare finds.
Pal Parties can be formed to make sending Pals out on expeditions easier.
Up to four named Pal Parties can be out at once on their own trip.
Pal Parties can have between 1 and 6 Pals at the same time.
Pals build up bonds while out on the road in Parties which give you better luck, speed, and hauling abilities when going on expeditions.
Swapping Pals out from a Party resets bonds. Evolving and Merging does not.
There's more to discover...
Evidence Board
Six new pins: Team Lunch (camaraderie), Two-A-Days (pal training), Sparring Gloves (Pal Gym power), Rolodex Card (client loyalty), and the notables Doggy Bag (expedition haul) and Open Floor Plan (office layout bonuses +25%). Four of them replace plain stat pins; if you owned one, it now does the new thing.
The Field Office research and the six new Evidence Board pins now have their own icons.
Achievements
Twelve new achievements: Ride or Die, Out of Office, Frequent Flyer, Master Class, Hometown Hero, Home Turf, Boss of Bosses, Undisputed, Coast to Coast, Sequel Fatigue, Wired Twins and Cross-Functional.
Controller
Full controller play: the d-pad now walks every button on every tab, panel and window (hold it to keep moving), A presses whatever is highlighted, B backs out of the panels so A clicks the article again, and RT always clicks the article. Highlighted buttons get a clear ring and show their tooltip.
Windows opened from the pause menu (LOAD GAME, REPORT A BUG) and every pop-up now take the controller's focus when they open and hand it back when they close. When the button you were on disappears (a renamed party, a claimed report, SKIP turning into DONE), the highlight moves to the nearest button instead of vanishing.
A client's call no longer waits for the mouse while its question is still typing: A finishes the line.
Text boxes (party names, your byline, plan names, board search) open Steam's on-screen keyboard when you press A on them in Big Picture or on Steam Deck.
The title screen's social links and each save slot's DELETE are reachable on the d-pad.
Office: the d-pad steps off the edge of the tower grid onto the build palette, UNDO, zoom and Floor Plans, and B with nothing picked backs out of the grid.
Evidence Board: the d-pad walks pin to pin across the whole board (the view glides along), A pins, and Y hops between the pins and the zoom / FIT / THE EMPIRE / search toolbar.
Pals, writer gear and mug seasoning work on the controller: A on a pal opens its menu (EQUIP, EVOLVE, MERGE...), A on a gear slot opens its picker, A picks a pal to season with, and the locked party slots jump to their board pin.
Boss fights in WEAK SPOT style: X hits the weak spot that is up and Y grabs the pen (TYPEWRITER and DDR already play on the pad).
Holding A on a hire in the shop, a website + or - when you sell out, or a stepper keeps pressing it.
Evidence Board on the controller: a pin's tooltip no longer covers the pin you are on. It opens beside or above the pin when there is no room below, and follows the pin as the board glides to it.
Fixes
On Steam Deck sized screens the Editor's tutorial bubble no longer pokes over the tab bar while another tab is open.
If something ever breaks outside a single panel, the game now shows a card with TRY AGAIN and RELOAD GAME instead of a blank page, and never saves over your progress while it is up.
A save that cannot be loaded no longer opens as a blank or broken game: the title screen tells you, the save is kept aside for support, and nothing is written over it.
Offices with damaged or unknown rooms load cleanly.
Big numbers roll over to the next unit when they round up: 999.99Tnowreads999.99Tnowreads1.00Qa instead of $1000T (same for every unit, and 99.97M reads 100M, not 100.0M).
WHILE YOU WERE AWAY now points to the Cloud Backups pins on the Evidence Board (it still said to upgrade them in EMPIRE), and stops asking once both are pinned.
Loading another slot from the pause menu, or going back to the title screen and loading again, could fail and then autosave a blank game over your save. Fixed: switching saves resulting in a failed load can never write over a slot.
A save with a damaged number in it (text where a number belongs) is now repaired when it loads instead of turning into $Infinity or garbled values.
The "Slot could not be loaded" card now has keyboard and controller focus: Enter or A dismisses it instead of opening the save picker hidden behind it, and Escape or B closes it too.
A save slot that cannot be read now shows as DAMAGED SAVE in the save picker instead of looking like an empty NEW GAME slot.
The tutorial's first Trending Topic no longer burns out behind the byline dialog and character creator: it waits until they close, and a new one appears if you miss it while the Editor is still pointing at it.
A brand-new player no longer sees "18 patches since you last played!" on the title screen; the patch notes count only shows once you have played.
Your first boss win is calmer: the Shady Character waits until you leave the SCOOP SECURED screen before handing over the Rolodex.
The Midnight Edition's welcome pop-up no longer opens under a client's call or a gym replay: it waits for a clear screen, and steps aside if something else opens over it.
Fight damage numbers use the same short format as the rest of the game: a late-game crit reads "CRIT -3.16B" instead of a ten-digit number that piled up over the fight.
The FIGHT READY pop-up now goes away as soon as you start the fight, and the CLIENT ON LINE 1 pop-up goes away once you pick up the call.
The Evidence Board can no longer get stuck showing only bare cork after pressing FIT: the camera always recovers.
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