Today, Offworld Trading Company launches on Steam Early Access! You can buy the game now at http://store.steampowered.com/app/271240.
If you want to take a look at the game, we posted a number of videos on our YouTube channel. If you have bought the game, be sure to take a look at the tutorial videos (I’ve embedded the first one below) if you have any trouble learning the game.
See you online!
We’ve had a lot of questions about the resource tree for Offworld, so our UI artist, Jim Alley, created a chart to help people understand what all the buildings do and how to produce all of the different resources. Hope you find it useful!
We had a big press day yesterday as we released our first video of Offworld and lifted the embargo on a bunch of interviews I did this month. I’ve collected some relevant bits from the articles below. Additionally, I was on The Game Design Round Table podcast this week talking Scott Hamden, one of our earliest and most active play-testers, about his experiences with the game since last summer. Finally, I am answering questions about Offworld on our subreddit right now! You can preorder here.
“I’d say the gameplay is 100 percent complete–only in the sense that there isn’t something that I have yet to implement; that I want to implement,” [Johnson] said. “It will become less than 100 percent complete once I see how people play the game. And what is wrong with it and what assumptions I made that didn’t work out. But it’s impossible to know that until you release a game, which is why Early Access is so cool.”
“Each game is different. The tricky part is getting an intuitive feel for how the prices change over the course of the game,” Johnson told Polygon. “In StarCraft you see set build patterns: these are the first ten things you should do, in this order and by this time, otherwise you’re not going to be competitive. Nothing like that can exist in Offworld because there can never be a best resource. It totally depends on how every specific game plays out.”
As you might expect. Soren has opinions on the state of real-time strategy genre. “As the games get more and more expensive, there is less and less room for risk taking,” he says. “The RTS is in danger of dying off. There are not that many RTS brands that are really healthy any more.
“They found a formula that works but it’s a narrow formula and there are a lot of people who are not interested because they are extremely demanding on players. It’s an experience a lot of people don’t think is fun but there is a good chance that they might enjoy a real time strategic experience that is not around finagling units.”
IGN:
“RTS games have hit a very set pattern. They may have a different setting, but in many ways, they’re kind of the same game,” Johnson said. “This is coming from a team that really likes RTS Games. We like Company of Heroes, StarCraft, Age of Empires. We love that format. We think that’s a great way to play games.
“So we wanted a game that fit that format but used an entirely different mechanic. And the one that we thought would be the most interesting to try is basically borrowing mechanics from like the Tycoon games. It’s about running a business, about using your claims to commit to certain types of resources, buying stuff on the free market and then eventually buying people out on the stock market.”
“There’s nothing really like it, so when you’re trying to convince publishers to make something like this, they don’t know what to do with it. They’re naturally conservative,” Johnson said.
“Even as I became more well-known in the industry, it becomes more and more difficult to get a game like this started up,” he said. “It’s too small for publishers. It’s harder to take risks. They’re really only interested in something blockbuster size.”
“There’s a lot of advantages to setting it on Mars, as you says there’s the blank slate, it’d not be quite as plausible on Earth. There’s the assumption that you’d have modern commodity markets, the stock market and all those kinds of things, we have a bunch of futuristic techs and patents in the game that could change things, things like teleportation for example changes the way the map works. But also one of the nice things about Mars is that there’s the assumption that you’re going to have to support your own people, you have to find a way to protect them, to feed them and keep them alive. There’s an element that you might be making some of the really expensive resources, your electronics, your chemicals or whatever but if you’ve fallen behind the life support curve you can end up going into so much debt that someone can buy you out. Events also tie into the Martian landscape that really shake up the market things like dust storms and solar flares. We’re trying to integrate as much Martian flavour as we can.”
Since capitalism is your warzone and the real-time markets are your battlefield, Offworld requires different strategies than most RTS games. It’s not about building the largest army or racing to the end of a tech tree. Offworld requires you to think about the resources you have and how you can use them to maximise your profits while keeping your opponents’ low.
“The game is different,” says Johnson. “It’s map-based, but it’s also market-based. A lot of the conflict happens inside of the market. You might have a very good supply of water. If the price is good, you can sell the water to make a lot of money, but you might be better off holding onto that water and making sure the price stays high to prevent your opponent from being able to buy water for cheap.
No fightin’, see? There’s not even any unit building – just bases, and market manipulation. What a great concept, in theory. Of course, the great test is to then making money-juggling and corporate espionage as exciting as blowing up tanks, but if this is quick and punchy enough about that stuff I daresay it can pull it off.
I’m relieved to hear that the spread of resources will be random each game, so it won’t be a matter of rote-learning a precise strategy that you have to enact within the first minute of a match or it’s all over.
“We don’t want to develop this game in a vacuum. In fact, we believe that players understand games often much better than their designers do,” [Johnson] says in the video. “We’ve been playing Offworld for a long time, we’ve been having a lot of fun with it, but we feel like there’s no way we’ll be able to bring it to the next level until we’re able to see what happens once players out in the wild start playing it.”
Offworld Trading Company is the economic real-time strategy game from Civ IV designer Soren Johnson and his new company, Mohawk Games. It has been shrouded for a while now. Not that no one’s been able to play it or talk about it. On the contrary. Early builds have been circulating and the people who’ve played them have been very vocal describing the experience. But no one has posted videos or screenshots. Why? Because they were asked not to. It was easy to imagine some sort of hideous Frankenstein monster placeholder graphics that developer Mohawk Games didn’t want us to see.
But now the shroud has been lifted, with screenshots and even a video on the official site. And I’m delighted to say that — surprise! — it’s an absolutely lovely game, clean and simple, with a shiny but quaint hard sci-fi vibe. Well played, Mohawk Games.
In Offworld Trading Company, military action is a distant third priority behind the exploitation of Martian resources and the new markets based on them. The colonial setting, and the thoughtful way that Johnson approaches it, makes OTC into a study of capitalism unhinged from Earthly regulation. It’s as much thought experiment as game, and equally enticing as both.
The most efficient way to crush your enemies–excuse me, yourcompetition–is simply to outcompete them. Whereas most RTSs top out at just three gatherable resources, OTC offers 13, ranging from energy and oxygen, to raw metal ores, to food and refined chemicals. If you produce any of these in abundance, the market price will crash. If nobody acts to produce them, prices shoot up–and then think of poor Benny, won’t you, with his five kids to feed.
Today, we released the first public video of Offworld and also announced our release date for Early Access, February 12th, which is only two weeks away! We made the video to help explain why we are going to Early Access, and I also posted our reasoning here.
Now that our game is unveiled publicly, we can at last start streaming our internal sessions to anyone interested in seeing how the game plays. I’ve listed our Twitch accounts below; see you online!
Offworld is progressing nicely, which means that we are ready to move forward to the next phase of the game’s development. Thus, the Founder’s program is going to be closing soon, specifically on January 16th. After that, the game itself will not be available to new purchasers until it goes up on Steam. Right now is your last chance to buy and play the prototype and join the private forums.
Buy the game here at offworldgame.com.
The good folks at the Three Moves Ahead podcast recently tried out the Offworld prototype for the first time, which led to the game be mentioned and analyzed on three recent podcasts:
I should also use this opportunity to mention that I have actually launched my own podcast on the Idle Thumbs network to talk with noted game designers about why we make games. The show is called Designer Notes, and my first guest is Rob Pardo, formerly the Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard. You can subscribe in iTune here.
By complete coincidence, two interviews about Offworld were published this week. The first is with Christian Donlan of Eurogamer. Here’s an excerpt:
“When people start playing they’re used to thinking that they should be focusing on the map,” agrees Johnson. “If only because that’s where most RTS games are. But then they realise that the game is really in that market. You’re really playing this UI element and benefiting from what you see happening. Once people make that connection, that’s really when they understand what the game’s about.”
Perversely, it’s precisely when you start to understand how different Offworld is that it starts to seem more familiar. It certainly moves at a familiar pace. Playing against a handful of AI corporations, it’s as brisk and bloodthirsty as any Blizzard game, and the intricacies that the market allows for create some classic build-tree brinkmanship.
“It’s interesting to see the things that come out naturally from the system,” Johnson explains. “You’re always making a choice based off limitations. So when you start Offworld, you get four claims. The conservative strategy is: alright, I know I need water, I know I need food, I know I need steel to upgrade, I know I need energy, and I know I need iron. Even right there, that’s five things and I only have four claims, right? But these are your base resources and you’re probably not going to make a lot of money off of them.
“So sometimes what you might do is you’ll cheat,” he laughs, “Water’s a very common one to cheat on, meaning I’m going to just ignore water because I’ll just assume other people are going to sell it. Water is often very cheap because usually it’s a very common resource. People claim it right away, and then they get into a money crunch so they dump it. If you’re playing against veterans, it’s almost a given that you’re not going to go for the base set of resources at the start. But if you go too far, if everyone does that and everyone decides to cheat on water, then they’re all going to be in trouble. Except the person who saw it coming.”
The second interview is with Peter Sahui, who runs the blog Matchsticks For My Eyes. Here’s an excerpt that details the major influences behind Offworld:
We’ve changed some of our policies recently with the Offworld prototype (which can be purchased at offworldgame.com). First of all, we’ve automated the process so that Steam keys will now be sent as soon as the transaction is complete. (Previously, we sent them out manually as a batch, once per week.) More importantly, we are changed the terms of the NDA required for playing the prototype. The only thing we are restricting now is the sharing of videos and screenshots of the game. Thus, please feel free to share your impressions of the prototype online, with friends, or wherever else you would like. We are asking people to not share the graphics because they are not at all representative of the game’s final appearance; we focus on gameplay first. Therefore, if you are interested in buying the prototype, hopefully first-hand accounts will be appearing soon.
Also, I was on a couple podcasts recently discussing the current state of the game. Listen in for an update on our progress.
When we announced our pre-order program back in May, we promised that purchasers of our Elite Edition (and their friends) would be “the first to play our prototype this Fall.” We would like to announce that Fall has arrived early this year, apparently in mid-July! In fact, members of the Elite group have already been playing the game for a couple weeks and discussing it on our private forums. As everything seems to be working well (or rather, well enough for a playable prototype), we are announcing publicly that the Elite Edition now gives buyers immediate access to the prototype. (Some disclaimers: prototype access requires an electronic NDA, and the Steam keys are distributed manually once per week.)
We have been inspired and encouraged by all those who have pre-ordered Offworld without any screenshots, videos, or evidence of a working game. Now, at last, we can offer the game. Would love to hear your thoughts on our private forum!
Offworld is heavily inspired by board games (besides obvious influences like Settlers of Catan, Power Grid, and Agricola, there is an old GDW game called Belter that is almost a starting point for Offworld), so I’m writing the rules in the style of a traditional board game rulebook. (You can pre-order Offworld here.)
1.0 Introduction
Offworld Trading Company is a game about the colonization and exploitation of Mars by corporations who have taken to space for a profit. Each company will found a HQ on the map, claim territory, construct buildings, produce resources, and then make money by selling them on the open market. Players can harass each other with industrial sabotage, mercenary pirates, and market manipulation. The end goal is to buy out all the other corporations via the stock market, in which each company’s price goes up and down based on the value of their current assets.
2.0 Components
2.1 The Map
The map represent a section of Martian terrain that has been opened for commercial development. This map has been divided into hex-shaped tiles, each of which can be claimed by players. Some tiles, such as mountains, slopes, and canyons, are marked as unusable and will never contain any resources. Also, each usable tile has one of five height levels (Very Low, Low, Medium, High, and Very High) which means that the map is a collection of plateaus. These plateaus are useful for connecting buildings together into rail-based networks that allows the transportation of resources without using Blimps. Tiles also have a wind level (Very Weak, Weak, Moderate, Strong, Very Strong), and the height and wind levels determine how Solar Panels and Wind Turbines perform, respectively.
2.1 The Resource Deposits
Each tile can contain deposits of the primary resources (Water, Carbon, Silicon, Aluminum, and Iron). These deposits are classified into four different resource levels, which each have different yield rates:
Also, some tiles contain a Geothermal Source, which is required for the Geothermal Plant.
2.2 The Headquarters
Each player founds one HQ to start the game, which stretches across multiple tiles, all of which need to be usable and of the same height. The HQ will contain the player’s resource stockpile, which is where resources are taken from when sold on the open market and deposited into when bought. Each HQ also consumes life support (Water, Food, and Oxygen) which have to be bought on the open market if they are not in the stockpile.
2.3 The Buildings
Each claimed tile can contain one building, and the different types are listed here:
Each building (except the Solar Condenser) consumes Power when active.
2.4 Ships
Ships cannot be controlled directly by the players and are instead generated automatically based on player actions. Each ship consumes Fuel, and Blimps consume more Fuel depending of their cargo. The different unit types are listed here:
3.0 Turns
Offworld is a real-time game, but the game system itself is updated in turns. Every turn, buildings produce resources, the HQ consumes life support, and various other event might occur. The game has five different speeds which determine how fast the turns occur, but the default speed (Normal) is set at one turn per second. In single-player games, the player can change the game speed (and also pause the game) whenever desired.
4.0 Scans
Before founding an HQ, the player will spend some time exploring the map. Each tile will have one of three visibility states:
Most of the map will start the game as Fogged, but each player will begin with a small section of the map Scanned. The player can then perform scans on specific tiles to reveal more of the map – each scan will set all tiles within a certain radius as Visible and all other tiles within a larger radius as Revealed. Once the first HQ is founded, the map will slowly reveal itself automatically to all players.
5.0 Headquarters
5.1 Founding
Once the players have scanned enough tiles to discover a good place to found an HQ, they select an HQ type and then place it on the map. Once an HQ is founded, the player receives their initial claims, money, and resource stockpile. Players who found later will receive an extra claim. Resources underneath the HQ are removed from the game, and the player gets a one-time bonus relative to the resources’ levels.
The four different types (and their bonuses) are listed here:
5.2 Upgrading
Each HQ starts at population level one and can be upgraded four times. Each successive upgrade costs an increasing quantity of resources, and each upgrade increases the life support demands of the HQ. The benefit of each upgrade is that the player is granted new claims.
6.0 Claims
The players receive a set of claims upon founding and upgrading their HQs. Extra claims can also be gained from random events, bribed via the black market, and won in claim auctions.
7.0 Buildings
7.1 Construction
Buildings can only be constructed on claimed tiles. The player purchases buildings by spending resources, and then the HQ create an Engineer unit which travels to the tile and constructs the building.
7.2 Production
Every turn, buildings produce resources. Some buildings create resources directly from resource deposits (the Elemental Quarry creates Silicon and Carbon from the corresponding deposits). A few more create resources based on the tile’s ratings (the Wind Turbine creates Power modified by the tile’s wind level). Others convert input resources into output resources (the Glass Kiln consumes Silicon and Oxygen and produces Glass). Buildings can be turned off if the player determines they are not profitable.
Adjacent buildings of the same type have increased production rates – two adjacent building receive a +50% bonus while three get a +75% bonus. Higher numbers of adjacent buildings receive higher bonuses but with diminishing returns.
7.3 Shipping
After resources are produced, they are shipped either to other buildings or to the HQ. If one building produces a resource required by a second building and if these two building are connected by an unbroken string of claimed tiles, this resource is instantly transported to the second building via rail. If no such building exists and if the first building is instead connected to the HQ by an unbroken string of claimed tiles, the resource is similarly transported to the player’s resource stockpile.
If, instead, the building producing the resource is not connected to either a building that requires the resource or to the HQ, the resource is stored within the original building. Once the building accumulates enough units of the resource, a Frelighted is created which transports the resource directly to the HQ. Players can choose manually to ship resources earlier.
Finally, buildings which require resources can also be supplied from the HQ. For example, a Steel Mill that is not connected to a Metal Mine on an Iron deposit will receive shipments from the HQ. If the building is connected to the HQ via an unbroken string of claimed tiles, the resources will travel instantly via rail. Otherwise, a Frelighted will ship Iron from the HQ to the building.
7.4 Optimization Center
The Optimization Center allows players to research technologies that increase the production rate of specific resources in all corresponding buildings. For example, Improved Water Pumping increases Water production at Water Pumps by +25%. The bonus affects the building’s output but not the input, so Improved Food Production will mean that a Greenhouse Farm produces more Food but does not consume more Water. Each technology costs Chemicals to research. The four levels of research possible for each technology are listed here:
7.5 Patent Lab
The Patent Lab enables players to acquire patents that can change how their company operates in fundamental ways. Each patent costs Chemicals to discover and becomes unavailable to all other players after the initial discovery. The different patents are listed here:
7.6 Hacker Array
The Hacker Array allows players to trigger artificial shortages and surpluses which can alter the price of specific resources. For example, a Food Shortage would increase the cost of Food. The cost of shortages and surpluses go up each time they are used by the player. These artificial events are indistinguishable from the random events that occur naturally during the game although the impact of the former will lessen the more they are triggered.
8.0 Resource Markets
8.1 Local Market
Once the HQ is founded, players can buy and sell resources freely on the open market. If Food is $20, then a player can sell one unit of Food for $20 or buy one unit for the same price. However, each time a resource is bought or sold, the price goes up or down accordingly. Thus, if a player decides to purchase 100 units of Food for $20, the price will go up during the transaction so that the total cost will be more than $2000. Resources bought and sold are added to and take from the player’s stockpile at the HQ.
Energy is a special resource because it cannot be stockpiled. Instead, it is automatically sold to the local market at the current price. If a player is instead losing Energy, it is bought automatically from the market. Similarly, life support resources (Water, Food, Oxygen) are also purchased directly from the market if the stockpile is empty. If the player also has no money, the automatic purchase increases the company’s debt, which has a very negative effect on its stock price.
8.2 Offworld Market
Offworld prices are set randomly at the beginning of the game and rise slowly over time. With the Offworld Market, players can sell resources offworld, often for prices higher than on the local market. Each offworld sale requires 100 units of the resource, 20 units of Fuel, and 20 units of Aluminum. Thus, if the offworld price of Food is $500, the player would lose 100 Food, 20 Aluminum, and 20 Fuel and then earn $50,000.
9.0 Time of Day
Each turn, the game clock moves forward, which affects a number of buildings. Both of the buildings which require sunlight (Solar Condensor and Solar Panel) turn off between 21:00 and 05:00.
10.0 Auction
Every day at 12:00, an auction can be triggered. The auction is open to all players and is timed. Bids start in increments of $1000 and go up as the bidding increases. Further, the time limit is extended if a bid is made close to the end. Five types of auctions are possible: a new claim, a specific tile, an unclaimed patent, a sabotage item, and an advanced building.
11.0 Sabotage
The identify of the player triggering each sabotage event is hidden and not revealed until the game is over.
11.1 Auction Tile
Can start an auction for a tile on the map. If the tile is owned by the player, the player receives the money from auction.
11.2 Hologram
Hides the identity of a building from other players.
11.3 Spy
Reveals the identity of buildings hidden by a Hologram, the location of Goon Squads, and what advanced buildings (Patent Lab, Optimization Center, etc) are developing.
11.4 MULE
A unit which will mine 200 units of a resource from a tile without a building.
11.5 Pirates
Attacks Freighters and give the lost resources to the player who hired them. Pirates will stay on the map until they have captured at least 100 units of resources.
11.6 Magetic Strorms
Destroys all units (except Pirates and MULEs) within its radius.
11.7 EMP
An EMP freezes buildings within a radius from the targeted tile.
11.8 Power Surge
The Power Surge freezes a number of buildings, travelling along a random path.
11.9 Circuit Overload
Doubles the Power consumption of buildings and disables buildings which produce Power, travelling along a random path.
11.10 Adrenaline Boost
Doubles the speed of buildings within a radius from the targeted tile.
11.11 Slowdown Strike
Halves the speed of buildings within a radius from the targeted tile and is not blocked by Goon Squads.
11.12 Network Virus
Locks the player out of buildings, travelling along a random path. These buildings cannot be scrapped, cannot be turned on or off, and always have auto-supply turned on. The Network Virus also eliminates Holograms.
11.3 Core Sample
Discovers a new resource on a tile. The probability of the resource found depends on the terrain type.
11.14 Underground Nuke
The Underground Nuke lowers resource deposits by two levels. For example, a High Iron would be reduced to a Low Iron. (Resource deposits can never be lowered below Trace.)
11.15 Dynamite
Dynamite destroys a building; the owning player can repair it for half its normal construction cost.
11.16 Mutiny
A Mutiny allows a player to capture another player’s building for a period of time.
11.17 Goon Squad
The Goon Squad protects a building from sabotage. If that building is targeted, the sabotage fails, the identity of the saboteur is announced, and the targeted player steals the sabotage item.
12.0 Black Market
The Black Market is where all sabotage items are purchased. Also, the player can Bribe Claim (to receive a new claim) and Cook the Books (to improve the player’s Debt Rating). The Black Market is initially closed for a specific number of the turns after a player founds an HQ; the number of turns is lower for players who found their HQs later.
Each time items are purchased from the Black Market, the price is increased for all players in the game. Also, each player is locked out from the Black Market for 60 turns after a purchase.
13.0 Stock Market
Each player’s company begins the game with a stock price that goes up and down according to the value of its current assets (money, debt, resources, buildings, HQs, and stock shares). Shares can be purchased in increments of 1,000, and each company has 10,000 total shares. If no more shares are available for purchase on the open market, a rival player can buyout the player’s own shares by purchasing them for double value. However, once a player owns half of her total shares, they have to be bought all together.
If at any point the other players in the game own (in combination) over half a player’s stock, that player becomes a subsidiary. Subsidiaries are controlled by the AI but play a more conservative version of the game; they don’t bid on auctions, don’t use the black market, and don’t buy stock. Every turn, subsidiaries distribute 1% of their cash to their owners, relative to shares owned.
The game ends when all other players are subsidiaries of the winner.
14.0 Random Events
14.1 Dust Storm
14.2 Solar Flare