Today, yet again, Itch's free browser games are sucking up my time in a way that, frankly, worries me. Last week it was "Social Democracy," which fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams of becoming an obscure Weimar-era economist. Today, with "New York Times Simulator," I fulfilled another lifelong dream of being fired repeatedly from my job at an American newspaper.

"NYT Simulator" is the work of Molleindustria, the developer/gothic company that brought us "Democratic Socialism Simulator," "Everyday Same Dream: a game about alienation and the refusal to work" and "Booflag: a game about booing the Confederate flag." Did you get this vibe?

The game continues Molleindustria's tradition of wrapping spiky satire in a frighteningly playable package. The game, a self-described "modern remake" of Lucas Pope's República Times, was about assembling a state-run newspaper to flatter the regime and minimize articles that made the regime look bad.

In NYT Sim, instead of pleasing one tyrannical regime, you serve three factions: the police, the rich, and the State of Israel. Here's how it works: The NYT home page has four article slots, and the candidates gradually fill the left side of the screen. You have to pick the one that will attract readers without offending your detractors. If you fail, you either lose readers or get fired.

A bit troubling, because all of your most interesting articles are about the accelerating climate collapse and big capital complicit in it, police violence against unarmed citizens, and Israeli brutality in Gaza. In other words, you turn an important article into either a banal, navel-gazing musing article or a truly impressive development in the passive voice.

Or, they run the kind of unremarkable articles that occasionally pop up on a non-news day (we've all been there, right?).

The game is, well, actually pretty simple. I didn't find it too difficult to keep all the partners happy while keeping the readers engaged. The game is more of a joke extension than a challenge, and the fun comes primarily from seeing the many different versions of each headline presented.

If you just want to set things ablaze, you can see how quickly you can embarrass the wealthiest Americans by taking control of the NYT and turning it into a sub-unit of the Worker Weekly. You won't make it through the week before the newspaper's rich owners pull their money and the police come in and tell the pro-Israel editorial board to clear off their desks.