Offworld Trading Company

Offworld Trading Company for PC is an extensive real-time strategy game in which the player’s weapon is not firepower but money. The title is the debut product of Mohawk Games, a studio established by Soren Johnson—one of the lead designers of Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. The production is loosely inspired by M.U.L.E., a strategy game that came out for 8-bit computers in 1983 and turned out to be one of the first commercial successes of Electronic Arts.

Mechanics

The action takes place on Mars, where we assume control over our own trading company and compete against others for the leading position on the planet. In a world where free market is our battlefield and money can buy anything, air we breathe included, we will focus on extraction and production of 13 different raw materials which provides us with a cash inflow and development opportunities. In the game, there are no military units whatsoever, so the base expansion involves building subsequent structures that obtain a given raw material or process one kind of good into another. Apart from that, we also have to provide our plants with an adequate supply of air, petrol, and food. Neglecting this responsibility will force them to buy the aforementioned goods on the free market which, in turn, negatively influences the production costs.