It might feel personal when you get into yet another map where the resources aren't showing you any love. There’s nothing personal here, though it may feel like it from time to time. But Offworld Trading Company is a numbers game, through and through. I see the ones and zeroes of The Matrix cascade in front of my eyes.
An auction pops up, and I’m weighing needs versus finances, calculating whether one more tile claim is worth that much more debt. I’m scanning my opponents’ colonial purchases on the right, and I’m buying a warehouse here, a habitat there. I’m scanning the market prices on the left, selling off 10 units of this, 100 units of that. The tiles animate with the same thoughtful exuberance usually reserved for smoke and explosions in typical RTS games.Īt some point, Offworld’s rhythm gets into me. In-game, watching the buildings practically 3D print themselves into existence is awesome. Great beginning, but Offworld doesn’t bog down the rest of the game with that level of exposition. But glass is heavily used in human architecture because humans love the look of glass in commercial structures, which also aids in “executive retention.” In other words, staring at walls all day sucks, and no CEO wants that: so you build a room with a view. Producing glass requires oxygen (for burning) and silicon. The tutorial also occasionally-and smartly-gets past the how of production and into the why of business. It's also cute that the entire purpose of the game is to usher in the era of “Human Retirement.” I'm happily imagining the lazy, nobody-works utopia we’re crafting in Offworld. I can’t think of a more perfect start to my relationship with Offworld Trading Company. If you’re missing the reference there, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” is an epic robo-wars ballad from rock band The Flaming Lips. The tutorials begin with quirky dialogue from a company called Yoshimi Robotics. Some games can be won or lost on the tutorial screen, and Offworld definitely wins. Then it ramps up one aspect, then another, until you get the hang of things. With baby steps, it takes you through a multistage tutorial that gives you some easy wins in small scenarios, building up your confidence. Good thing there’s one of the best tutorials I’ve ever seen in a game of this nature. The sheer number of systems at play, however, boggles the mind. You’ll set up shop on both frozen and fiery landscapes. You’ll dash across dried-up riverbeds and ancient lakebeds. But as you do the building-placement dance across various maps, you’ll see canyons and peaks, plateaus and striations, plains, volcanoes, and craters.
You start by scanning the randomized Martian surface. In Offworld Trading Company, you lead a corporation looking to turn underground resources into fistfuls of profits. Everybody in Offworld wants to be the Monopoly Guy, where passing Go has more to do with setting up sensible supply chains than just blatantly land grabbing every open property. While Offworld doesn’t have the seemingly laid-back pacing of a resource management game or a straightforward city builder, it does have you shuttling supplies around a map, business rivals cutting into your bottom line, and continuous infrastructure problems (and opportunities) to resolve. Johnson set out to make something like the next Railroad Tycoon or SimCity-but set on the Red Planet. You have to command and conquer market economies you have to Zerg rush supply lines and you have to starcraft your martian resources into finished goods for sale. Noncombatant does not mean noncompetitive. And so, with that pedigree on his resume, Johnson set out to recapture his love of the noncombatant RTS. The lead designer of Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, Soren Johnson, brought video games into this. We do need to bring video games into this. We don’t need to bring video games into this, do we?īut we do. An economic real-time strategy game, you say? Hey, I live paycheck to paycheck too, pal. I can see why you might be slowly backing away from your computer already.
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