![]() I've been there a thousand times, looking at my little patch of land and knowing that my base will have to grow quickly so that I'll be the leader as everybody rushes up the tech tree toward victory. Shipping food, water, oxygen and food to them from Earth would be prohibitively expensive so Mars, which is relatively hospitable when placed alongside a string of tiny rocks floating in the void, has become the farming community that keeps deep space industry functioning.Īll of that is important to the flow of the game, which cleverly defies the 'race to the top' approach that typifies RTS games. There are people working there who have become reliant on Mars for their wellbeing. Although you'll never see it the belt is where the real value in this particular sphere of space lies. That's where the asteroid belt comes in to play. Why go to Mars at all then? Simply building a self-sufficient workplace is tricky and surely the folks back on Earth don't want you to ship steel and poo-tatoes in their direction? That's because running a business on Mars is like maintaining a million Matt Damons existing on the red planet can be expensive if you don't manufacture the stuff you need to live. There are chemicals and computers at the far end of the supply chain but oxygen, water, food and fuel can be just as valuable as those top tier resources. You're not trying to identify rare minerals, chemicals and ores, the likes of which can't be found on Earth – instead, you're mining for aluminium and creating steel from the iron you claw out of the ground. What's interesting, and not immediately apparent, is that Mars itself is not of great value. You play as the head of a corporation that has made planetfall and aims to exploit the planet's natural resources for all they're worth. The game, already available in Early Access and due for a full launch soon, takes place on Mars. I always wanted to make an economic strategy game, ever since playing it.”įittingly, Belter could happily fit into the world that Johnson and his team have created in Offworld Trading Company. “ Belter is a game about mining an asteroid belt that I used to play a lot when I was younger. When I ask him about influences he mentions the Market building in Age of Empires, which was home to a fluctuating exchange rate, but it's when he mentions an obscure 1979 boardgame that he seems most excited. Johnson has wanted to make Offworld Trading Company for a very long time. Offworld Trading Company is an economic strategy game and it's about as far from Civ as a strategy game could be. His latest project is a short-form sci-fi strategy game with no military component and, in fact, no combat whatsoever. His short but impressive CV has one standout entry - he was the lead designer of Civilization IV, a game which I hold in very high regard. ![]() Last week I visited Mohawk Studios to speak to Soren Johnson.
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