Check Out Civilization 4 Designer's New Strategy Game Offworld Trading Company

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It's not hard to see that the future of space exploration and colonization belongs to the corporations. Even now, private companies are already setting their sights on the sky and beyond, looking toward the next lucrative industry. Suffice it to say, space is going to be big business.

It's this premise that drives Offworld Trading Company, the upcoming real-time strategy game from Mohawk Games and Stardock Entertainment, headed to Steam's Early Access program on February 12.

Offworld Trading Company places you in the role of one such upstart company, where the resource-rich surface of Mars is waiting to be harvested in a bid to become the biggest business on the red planet.

But Offworld Trading Company isn't your typical sci-fi strategy game. Lead by Civillization 4 designer Soren Johnson, Mohawk Games has ditched the traditional well-worn path of expansion and conquest through superior firepower in favor of victory through business savvy and cold, hard cash.

Of course, Offworld Trading Company will feature 8-player online competition, free-form skirmishes against the AI, and a dynamic single-player campaign thatstrings missions together with persistent upgrades between them. However, that's where the similarities to traditional military RTS games begin to fade. You'll never fire a shot in Offworld Trading Company. As the saying goes, it's just business.

If Offworld Trading Company is beginning to sound like something decidedly different in the strategy space, it's because that's the point. Speaking with IGN, Soren Johnson revealed that Mohawk's strategy was to take what they loved about real-time strategy games and flesh it out with new mechanics.

We wanted a game that fit [the RTS] format but used an entirely different mechanic.

"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.

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Check Out Civilization 4 Designer's New Strategy Game Offworld Trading Company