There are obvious sequences of construction to follow in the early minutes of each map, but to win you'll need to adapt to the situation as it changes.Įverytime you upgrade your HQ, which costs cash and specific resources you'll receive a new set of claims. Looking at a random map, you must decide where to place your headquarters and then secure the first pieces of land that you'll construct factories, solar panels and other facilities on. The most important decisions are related to the limited claims you're given at the beginning of each game. These disrupt and interfere, cutting off sources of revenue, stealing resources or manipulating the market to present false figures.
There are ways to interact with other players directly through purchases made on the black market. You're always making choices, every second that you play. Create a monopoly on one of the resources necessary for survival on the planet and you can hoard the fruits of your labour (or your labourers' labour, I guess), forcing everyone else to ship the stuff in from off-planet at great expense. Build a production chain to make glass or computer components and you can flood the market with the end-product, causing prices to plummet. Everything that you and your opponents do causes the figures to shift in a sensible fashion. The genius of the game is in making the manipulation of those markets comprehensible while never allowing them to become predictable.Īnd yet they're entirely predictable. Just as many RTS games are played on the minimap, Offworld is played in the numbers at the side of the screen. Mars may be the landscape on which you're constructing the tools of capitalism, but the entire corporate conflict plays out in the markets. Values change constantly in the dynamic market that is the game-space. Offworld Trading Company treats money as ephemeral. It's a phrase that I mean in a very literal sense and cuts to the heart of the brilliance of the game's design: it's a game about making money in which the actual amount of money you have doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the flow of cash and resources. That's the most important lesson I've taken from the hours I've spent running a corporation exploiting the raw materials of Mars. It's also one of the smartest strategy games I've ever played. Graphics: 256 MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 or equivalent
Processor: 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 2.0 GHz AMD Athlon X2 64
0 kommentar(er)
