![]() It might take a little while to wrap your head around the core mechanics, but as soon as the transport ships start rolling in and the price of your favourite commodity goes up, it's immensely satisfying. Though Offworld Trading Company doesn't have the literally thousands of decisions that a game like Civilization does, playing it is pure joy. There's a slight sense of panic that sets in when someone buys half your stock and comes close to piling up enough money to do a hostile take-over. ![]() You'll easily cruise your way to wins on the lowest difficulties, but take it up a notch or two and you'll begin to feel the heat as opponents come dangerously close to being able to buy you out. The short game length is one of the main reasons for that, while the difficulty is another. We get the feeling that the game is especially aimed at those who enjoy online multiplayer, but Offworld Trading Company is still great for a quick fix of real-time strategy. There's also a daily challenge, updated with news maps and conditions daily (well, d'uh) where you compete asynchronously with other players about who can win the fastest. It doesn't just cover the basics, but explains more or less everything, from the intricacies of the economy to the difference between the different factions. Clearly, the focus is on the Skirmish mode, which is also how the game is played in multiplayer.īefore diving into anything else, there's a rather splendid tutorial that does an admirable job of introducing the game's many aspects bit by bit, and it's well worth playing. You can finish the whole thing in an afternoon. Overall it's a neat addition, though it feels both short and slightly superficial. ![]() In the campaign, your building options are limited by the staff and engineers you hire between missions, meaning your favourite strategy might not be viable, forcing you to change things up. For instance, you no longer win a mission by buying out your opponents, but rather by building the most expansion modules for the neutral colony that inhabits the center of every map. You'll need to finish a skirmish game - the "proper" way to play Offworld Trading Company - before the campaign becomes available, because it tweaks some of the mechanics a bit. There's a short, seven mission campaign available, and oddly enough it's sorta packed away in the back. Each game is a sprint, not a marathon, and you can usually finish a game in less than an hour's time. Offworld Trading Company is highly focused on replayability. Among the dirtier options is the ability to hack the market exchange and create artificial shortages of a given commodity - preferably the one you have a massive stockpile of. There's other ways to increase your revenue, like building a launchpad and sending resources into asteroid colonies. The latter ups the output of a given type of building, while the former grants you one-of-a-kind advantages over your opponents that remain exclusively yours for the rest of the game. Similarly, you can improve your own production by investing in science patents or optimisations. Burns-like glee when you do it to others. ![]() It's agonising when it happens to you, and fills you with a Mr. In other words, you can nuke the iron right out of your opponent's iron mine, either limiting their supply or forcing them to rebuild the mine elsewhere. The dirtiest of all options is perhaps the underground nuke, which permanently reduces the resource concentration on a given tile. You can wreck individual buildings with dynamite, make workers go on strike or even commit mutiny, or take out all the opposing transport ships in an area with a magnetic storm. There's a black market that regularly offers to sell you different types of sabotage. ![]() Earning enough money to buy out the competition is often a matter of becoming the leading supplier of something like food or glass and selling it at exorbitant prices.Īlthough Offworld Trading Company isn't about armed conflict and has no armies, you still have plenty of options for fighting dirty. There's a good reason for that, as the lefthand sidebar both works as your building interface, but also tells you your current production surplus or deficit of any given resource, your stockpile, and the current trading price. If you look at the screenshots, you'll notice the UI taking up a hefty chunk of the screen. ![]()
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