Not for Broadcast Episode 2 Reportedly Coming Soon

If you find yourself in the market for a bit of positive and inspiring news about an indie game developer beating the odds of the dastardly COVID-19 pandemic, it seems I’ve suddenly found some for you. On their Steam Community page, U.K.-based development studio NotGames has just declared that the second full episode of its most recent title, Not for Broadcast, is slated to release near the end of this month.

Considering certain ongoing global circumstances and the fact that NotGames themselves parenthetically used the word “probably” when revealing that date, this announcement is presumably subject to change. As you might imagine given my support for this title within previous articles about Not for Broadcast, I sincerely hope nothing happens that would delay the release of its second full episode. I say “full” episode because, as you might recall, NotGames has released two bonus episodes in addition to the game’s main story content.

The first of these bonus episodes was aptly titled Not for Broadcast: Lockdown. This aspect of the game’s story saw the evening news crew based within an unnamed nation forced to deliver each day’s newest developments to their viewers from their homes due to unforeseen circumstances, although not for the reasons you might expect. On a strikingly different token, the most recent bonus content added was entitled Not for Broadcast: The Telethon. The Telethon takes players back to a charity fundraiser set sometime in the 1950s and tasks them with ensuring everything runs smoothly on the more technical side of things.

By contrast, the game’s second full episode will almost certainly focus on the main story told within the context of Not for Broadcast. For those unfamiliar with the game, its plot tells the tale of the aforementioned yet-to-be-named country as it adjusts to a new, much more radical government known simply as Advance. As a political party, Advance and its two co-leaders, Julia Salisbury and Peter Clement, were unexpectedly voted into power in a landslide despite being accused of purposefully obfuscating their policy agenda.

It’s your job to operate the technical side of the news, doing everything from making sure the camera stays focused on whomever is currently speaking to bleeping out profanity whenever necessary. However, the game subtly and expertly suggests that you don’t necessarily have to remain objective and do your job by the book. You can, if you’re so inclined, play a bit of politics both directly and indirectly by deciding who and what is heard and seen on the nation’s evening news broadcast. That’s virtually all I can say to entice you to give the game a try without spoiling anything.

I seem to have gone on a bit of a tangent. To get back to the announcement of Not for Broadcast’s second, non-bonus episode, NotGames has sought to assure players that they’ve taken every precaution they possibly could during the process of filming the game’s live-action events. “[T]he filming process was as safe as humanly possible,” the studio asserted in Episode 2’s announcement. They went on to explain that “[w]e shot for six grueling weeks, with seventy performers, supported by fifteen crew members in full [personal protective equipment] overseen by a designated Covid Officer.”

I have no reason to doubt that NotGames is true to their word. The COVID-19 pandemic has obviously upended millions of lives in various ways ranging from somewhat annoying to outright horrifying and tragic. I wanted to report on the continuing development of Not for Broadcast so that NotGames’ commitment to the game may serve as a sort of beacon of hope, as it were. Not for Broadcast’s second episode is currently slated to release on Thursday, January 28th, 2021. It will be available as a free, automatic update to all current owners of the game.