Times and Galaxy

From the Devs

Congratulations, *NAME_REF!!ERROR*! You’ve landed an internship with the Times & Galaxy, the Dorp system's favorite regional holopaper and five-time winner of the Bort Jorbeller Award for Satisfactory Interplanetary Journalism!

There’s never been a robo reporter before so don’t waste this (unpaid) opportunity. All the greats started as interns and you’ve only got seventeen cycles to prove that you belong in the newsroom.

We’re assigning you stories that put the hyper in hyper-local news! On any given cycle choose to cover shuttle crashes, intersolar cat shows, even space ghost funerals. It’s up to you!

Once you’ve chosen your assignment, head to the shuttle bay and blast off for intern adventures!! That means interviewing sources, digging up clues and investigating the scene. We hope your conversational circuits are well oiled as you earn or betray the trust of more than 100 characters and ask a lot of questions.

There’s always more than meets the eye, and the more information you can gather, the more equipped you'll be.

At the end of each assignment, it’s time to file your story.

Use the Build-a-Story™ tool to construct your article using all that info you gathered. Depending on who you interviewed, the choices you made and how deep you dug, you’ll have different options to work with for your story—you were a diligent reporterbot and managed to get ALL the info, weren’t you?

Your choices impact the quality and tone of the story and how both your editors and readers will react to it. Over time, the choices in each story start to shape the reputation and popularity of a holopaper. So hey, no pressure!

Designed and written by former journalists, this is almost exactly how real journalism is done. Except with aliens.

The staff at Times & Galaxy all live and work together on the Scanner, a sprawling, spacebound newsroom.

Between assignments, you’ll have the chance to get to explore the Scanner and get to know a diverse and colorful crew of more than twenty crewmates including your fellow reporters, the editorial staff, pilots and ship’s crew.

The staff come from all over the system, where you’ll find Humans, Augers, Verge, Xeel and of course, Robos.

Everyone has their own thing going on and they’ve always got something to say. They’ll react to you in all sorts of expected, and unexpected, ways depending on your choices.

The Scanner is more than just a newsroom. It’s where you sleep, eat, work and relax.

After recharging your literal batteries in your bunk you might take a moment to recharge your emotional ones in the Garden, home to many species of plants from all over the system. Or at least it used to be. Find seeds to restore the green space to its former glory!

As well as selecting your chassis and paint job before you arrive at the Scanner, you’ll be able to requisition upgrades from the ship’s Shuttlebots. Just watch out for the mouth on some of them. “Beep” has never sounded so aggressive.

Writers at Copychaser spent years working as journalists before entering the games industry and have a deep love of local journalism and the connections it creates in communities around the world.

While working on the writing teams of games like Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, they saw how players loved the relationships between characters as much as, or even more than the combat and adventure.

And so Times & Galaxy was born. We’re excited to bring you this truly unique adventure game where you can step into the metal boots of the first-ever robo reporter. Chase down leads, break system-rocking news, get quotes, make friends (or enemies), eat a dirt pie! It’s your solar system to explore, your story to tell and your job on the line, intern.

ABOUT THE DEVELOPER

Alberta-based indie studio Copychaser Games Inc. was founded in 2017 by Ben Gelinas, a former newspaper reporter who has spent the past decade working in AAA and indie game development.

Copychaser’s specialty is unique, inclusive games with branching narratives and memorable characters. Every Copychaser game puts the player at the center of an eccentric and immersive story unlike any they’ve ever played.

In 2018, Copychaser released the death-positive, wholesome horror game Speed Dating for Ghosts (SDFG) to wide acclaim. Since then they’ve been working hard on Times & Galaxy, bringing together a bigger team of collaborators and gaining support from the Canadian Media Fund and indie label, Fellow Traveller.