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Though Pravda is well-known as the Russian Communist Party's official newspaper, it's always worth remembering that it didn't start out like that. Pravda was initially a magazine that covered the arts, literature and society-at-large, before being taken over at editorial level by Bolsheviks and becoming the organ of record for tractor production. At some point there was a fork in the road. The Westport Independent gives you, as editor of the last free newspaper in a totalitarian state, the choice of which way to go. As a somewhat minimalist game about performing bureaucratic tasks under dictatorship, the seemingly-unavoidable comparison point for The Westport Independent is Lucas Pope's excellent Papers, Please. But appearances can be deceptive, and The Westport Independent is in form something more akin to a visual novel - the central interaction, as the editor of a weekly paper, is reading through prospective articles and either censoring or slanting them to support a particular side. Then you publish, and watch.
On one side there's the Loyalist government, who give the game its timescale with an act that will muzzle the press in 12 weeks, and on the other are the ragtag Rebels - unionists, Corbyn fans and all manner of other scum. But then there are your four staff, who each have their own leanings, and who will ultimately bear responsibility for any articles with their byline. Phil is a right-leaning toady, for example, and will happily see the government's side in everything. Frank's a rebel, a true journalist out to expose some crooks and right wrongs.
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