NotGames Announce a Timely Bonus Not For Broadcast Episode

If the lockdown and self-quarantine requirements imposed by your local and/or national governments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have got you down, it seems that UK-based developer NotGames wants you to know you aren’t alone. NotGames, as a studio, is most recently responsible for the first episode of Not for Broadcast, a satirical-yet-political game wherein you’re directly responsible for controlling what an unnamed nation sees and hears during its daily evening news program.

You might recall that I’ve written a couple of articles on Not for Broadcast in the past. I first discussed my thoughts on its demo version back in December, and then subsequently covered its first episode in considerable detail at the end of this past March. NotGames has reported that as a result of the aforementioned lockdown requirements and other restrictions brought about by the pandemic, they’ve had to temporarily halt development of the game’s planned second episode.

However, to tide fans over until a full episode can be produced and released, the studio has just announced a particularly timely bonus episode entitled Not for Broadcast: Lockdown. This bonus chapter will be released on Thursday, June 25th, 2020, and will be provided in the form of a completely free update for all current owners of Not for Broadcast.

Judging by the title of this bonus chapter and the circumstances in which it was devised, I suspect that Not for Broadcast: Lockdown will center around the unnamed nation’s evening news team being forced to deliver news from their homes as they deal with the new normality amid this accursed pandemic. What really leads me to make that guess, though, is the rather revealing screenshot posted by NotGames on the Steam page where they officially announced this bonus episode. At the very least, I don’t remember there being that many houseplants in the main news studio during the game’s first chapter.

If you’re at all interested in the prospect of Not for Broadcast and everything its gameplay entails, I humbly suggest you read my articles on the game. I have linked both articles previously in this article. Considering how much I absolutely adore two of the games that are very similar to Not for Broadcast, namely Papers, Please and Orwell: Ignorance is Strength, I strongly believe you’ll enjoy Not For Broadcast if either of those titles are up your alley.

If nothing else, I can assure you that the game has a delightful (if sometimes slightly dark) sense of humor that greatly appeals to me. I hope to have illustrated that to some degree via the small handful of screenshots I’ve included throughout this article. I can say with certainty that I’m very much looking forward to the release of Not for Broadcast: Lockdown; you can rest assured that I’ll publish my detailed thoughts on the upcoming bonus episode right here on Phenixx Gaming as soon as I can. Until then, folks, have a peaceful night… or morning, or afternoon, or whatever time it is for you when this article is published.