Offworld Trading Company

Gameplay

Offworld Trading Company is a science fiction themed real-time strategy video game. The game is set on Mars. Unlike many real-time strategy games, Offworld Trading Company features economic warfare ranging from hostile takeovers to sabotage. Offworld Trading Company puts the player in charge of one of four titular offworld trading companies. Unlike most RTS games, the players' choice of faction comes after they have their first look at the map, allowing them to tailor their choices to the situation. Regardless of their choice, players land their HQ and begin to construct resource extractors on the neighboring hexes.

There are fourteen resources in the game. Water, Aluminum, Iron, Silicon, and Carbon are extractable from hexes that contain those resources. Power can be generated by building a power plant, with different limitations depending on the type of power plant being built, and is usually used to power buildings. Steel mills generate steel from iron. Farms make food from water. Hydrolysis reactors break water apart into oxygen and fuel. Glass kilns produce glass from oxygen and silicon. Electronics factories produce electronics from silicon, carbon, and aluminum. Chemical refineries produce chemicals from carbon. Finally, money can be produced by selling stockpiles of resources.

Supply and demand fluctuates constantly. If a player is buying large sums of glass for an expansion, her rival could be gearing up glass kilns to make a handsome profit. The game also offers more direct ways of engaging a player. Through the black market, a player can purchase anything from underground nukes that wipe out resource pockets to mutinies that divert a rival's wealth into their pocket. When a player purchases something from the black market, however, its price rises, giving a wary opponent a chance to prepare a defense.

The end goal of the game is to buy a majority stake in every offworld trading company in the game. If a player loses majority stockholdership in his own company, he is eliminated from the game, but can elect to watch as an observer. Players are warned when an opposing player earns enough money to buy them out (but the opposing player is not alerted), which usually results in tense, desperate races to earn money.

Development and release

Offworld Trading Company was developed by Mohawk Games and published by Stardock. An in-development version of the game was released via early access. The full game was released for Windows and OS X on April 28, 2016.

Reception

Offworld Trading Company received "generally favorable" reviews from critics according to aggregate review website Metacritic.