Not For Broadcast DLC Timeloop is a Hilarious, Metaversal Adventure
No one said that presenting the news was an easy job, right? And definitely not when your hosts are a lemon and mango with googly eyes.
But that’s just the kind of thing you’ll have to deal with in Not For Broadcast’s new DLC, Timeloop. Not for Broadcast from Developer NotGames is a dark, comedic story-based game where you play as an employee of the news station National Nightly News. You’re in charge of running the back end of things i.e. switching between multiple camera feeds, censoring bad language and, generally, keeping the audience happy while the news happens live in front of you. Not for Broadcast released back in January of 2022, and has since released three DLCs along with the main game including its Timeloop DLC which has just been released.
Timeloop puts players back into the hot seat on the set of the ever-wacky National Nightly News. This time Jeremy Donalson and Megan Wolfe are set to speak with special guest Charles Magnus, a doctor who has created a machine that is said to boost people’s happiness. It soon becomes clear that something about Dr. Magnus’s machine is actually causing the studio to be stuck in a time loop and now you are being forced to watch the same fifteen minute segment over and over. Teamed up with Channel One and National Nightly News owner Robert Boseman, you’ll have to work out how to get yourselves out of the time loop and bring back normalcy. Or at least as normal as you can get at the National Nightly News.
Your main goal at the start of Timeloop is to put together the code, whose numbers correlate to very specific events and things in Dr. Magnus’s life, to unlock a device that Boseman believes could help to break the time loop. In order to do so you’ll have to bring in some special guests to try and squeeze the information from Dr. Magnus. Players will recognize some familiar faces, like Crazy Neil and Geoff Algebra as they make their own special cameos.
Later, as things get a bit more complicated, you’ll be diving head first into the National Nightly News metaverse, visiting uniquely…interesting worlds. Spoiling the surprise would be a crime but let’s just say, yes, there is a musical one. Thankfully, as you’ve got more important things to worry about then audience ratings, you’ll purely be focused on getting the correct information from each clip. Without the pressure of an audience, Timeloop is a much more laid back experience, and once or twice I may have found myself forgetting that I was even playing a game because I was just enjoying just watching the hilarity.
The Not for Broadcast team has really impressed me with their latest DLC. As always each scene is brilliantly acted, hilariously funny and absolutely ridiculous, just what players will have come to expect if they’ve played any of the main game or its previous DLC. And this time around, the gameplay is pretty simplistic, with a little bit of puzzling for players to do to change things up a bit, so it’s not as hectic as other segments of the National Nightly News have been in the past. Timeloop is available now and I can’t recommend it enough.
Article by Becca Smith