The Westport Independent Critic Reviews

A deceptively simple game, The Westport Independent is enjoyable, interesting, unique, and utterly immersive. I was thoroughly captivated playing it and I look forward to playing it again.

The experience is a short one.

The game is worth playing and represents a new sign that video games have the ability to deal with serious matters, including censorship and the way even small tweaks can allow the news to shift our perception of reality and influence our actions.

The Westport Independent will leave you more aware of the media as a whole, and how editorial direction can have wide-ranging results. While the game is short, that playtime is justified since you can replay and explore different possible outcomes. The $9.99 initial price might be too high for some people's liking, but the story is certainly enjoyable for the hour or two needed to complete it.

Despite not fully realizing its great premise, The Westport Independent is a fun way to spend a few hours. It'll make you think about how influential media can be, but doesn't entirely explore its subject matter.

A cleanly executed idea falls short because of flat characterisation and a dissatisfying lack of consequence. If only real papers were this toothless.

It covers a fresh theme and delivers an interesting art design, but one run lasts merely 30 minutes. And the kind of similar “Papers, Please” shows more depth as well as emotional connection.

Journalism is far from a glamourous job, but stories that make a difference are the most gratifying part. Unfortunately, The Westport Independent never made me feel that was possible.

The game does deliver scenes between levels that color some of your writers’ inner lives, but they are too minor to establish much empathy for, say, a writer disappearing by the regime’s hand in the post-game wrap up.

Unless you’re interested in the subject matter — and, really, I was — you’d be better off spending your money elsewhere.

The Westport Independent has important lessons about ethics in journalism, but the game's tendency towards caricature leaves it feeling like it just barely grazed the truth of the matter.

Fun for what it is, it has an interesting premise and I really want to recommend it as there very few games like it, the only game akin to it would be Papers Please in my mind. But the length of the game and the lackluster plot as whole makes it difficult for me to recommend.

Because the media can (and they also do) manipulate the crowd, it is good to remember, that nothing is only black or white – and seemingly simple decisions can bring unexpected negative results. In the case of The Westport Independent the form however wins over the content, which is desperately short and shallow. It is an interesting experiment, but only an average game.

Very simple and repetitive, not much more than a game jam experiment.

Great idea wasted by a sterile execution, which removes the most important elements of the genre – fear, uncertainty and never-ending moral issues.

There are so many smart ideas in here, and the concept is neat, even if obviously derivative. But the execution doesn’t hold it together, with disappointing responses to extremes, and a strangely anticlimactic progression. I feel like if this were given another six months, the game could be as interesting to play as it is in ambition. But as it is, it’s not there.