New Soren Johnson Game -- Offworld Trading Company

Today, Stardock and Mohawk Games released Offworld Trading Company, the economic strategy game from Civilization IV lead designer Soren Johnson.

Set in the future, humanity has begun to colonize on Mars to try and seek new fortunes. Players take on the role of an investor trying to take control of the Martian market and take over their competition.

Offworld Trading Company is a new direction for real-time strategy where money is both your deadliest weapon and your toughest defense. With a campaign, skirmishes and daily challenges, players can enjoy a game by themselves at their leisure. If they want to connect with their friends online, the multiplayer mode can host up to 8 people for a knock-down, drag out economic brawl or they can join in ranked ladder games to see who the world’s best businessman really is.

“This game has been an idea I’ve had for a long time,” said Soren Johnson, lead designer for Offworld Trading Company and president of Mohawk Games. “I knew I wanted to create a unique real time strategy game, and when I started looking at all the possibilities, Mars just made sense for our setting.”

The real-time, player-driven market is the foundation of the game, allowing players to buy and sell resources and materials - even the food and water that the colonists need to survive. Players will need to build up enough capital to gain access to the lucrative offworld markets so that they can buy out their rivals and claim the Martian economy for themselves. But, the battle isn’t limited to the board room. Players also have access to a black market that allows them to employ some more underhanded methods for victory, such as hiring pirate raiders, or hackers to disrupt production, or sending a covert electromagnetic pulse to an opponent’s base.

“There are four major corporations in the game,” said Johnson, “and all of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. When you add this to other variables within the game - like a constantly fluctuating stock market - you’re looking at a new gameplay experience every time you play.”

Offworld Trading Company is now available on Steam or through Stardock. For more information about Offworld Trading Company, please visit www.offworldgame.com.

Worth noting that the Mohawk Games team also includes ex-Firaxians Dorian Newcomb and Scott Lewis, both of whom worked on Civilization titles including Civ5.

Only played Early Access version but I've really liked how many options you have. When you start a new game you have as many options as in typical Civilization game: very detailed difficulty and gameplay options. So it's actually interesting to play those relatively short (~30 minutes) matches against AI unlike most RTS. You also have a dynamic randomly generator campaign reminding of Rise of Nations. And multiplayer. Multiplayer is the focus and many game features (auction, black market) really play mindgames.

I'll be doing a live stream with Soren on May 4th at 1pm Edt (gmt -5) for OTC.

Also doing some live streams next week and giving away a few keys.

Mmh, hadn't heard about this one. Looks fun!

OTC is a fantastic strategy game. Very innovative and well balanced. I can’t recommend it enough.

When I have finished marking, I am pretty sure I'll be picking this up

Looks like Utopia HD!

I remembered hearing about this game a long time ago and being interested. I hadn't followed it since.

I'm not as dedicated a gamer as I used to be, but I feel I should check this out.

I am not really hyped up by this game except when I am sure this is really good. But Christopher Tin compose for this game...

Whoa, Musical masterpieces inbound.

Bought it strictly based on Christopher Tin and Soren Johnson. Enjoying so far.

I bought it. What wasn't apparent before was how important the "black market" is.

For those that don't have it, the "black market" is where you purchase sabotage effects, e.g. to force a tile/production facility owned by another player to suspend operations for a period. This is the main "offensive" tool. The problem is that there's very little you can do to defend against such operations: on some maps at least there you can buy a one-shot defensive reposte, but that's it. So your only defense is to set these off against your opponents first, to try to reduce their profitability and make it harder for them to afford to buy them. However, compared to other cash-sinks in the game, the black market items are quite cheap, and gated more by a cooldown than by money, so that's not really an option either.

So far, I'm not entirely convinced this works. A fun little game to pick up for a few days, but I can't see it lasting. Certainly not like Civ, GalCiv, SooSE or the Endless games, and not really like Civ:BE either.