Have You Played… Offworld Trading Company?

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Have You Played… Offworld Trading Company?I… DRINK… YOUR… (space) MILKSHAKE!

I… DRINK… YOUR… (space) MILKSHAKE!

If everyone sells more of a thing, it gets cheaper. If everyone buys more, it gets more expensive. Simple concept - or so you’d think. But as I said in this article aboutPlanet Zoo’swarthog crisis, “economics is what happens when millions of individual, rational decisions act together to create utter madness on a grand scale”.

That’s OTC in a nutshell. Playing as one of a number of space-focused megacorps, all embellished with some wonderfully shrewd flashes of character, your job is to set up shop on a planet or planetoid - Mars, Ceres, Io andEuropaare all available - and make enough space money to buy out your competition.

There are thirteen resources in the game, some of which can be sold raw, and some of which can be made into other, more valuable things. Success depends on anticipating the market based on what your competitors are up to, manipulating it where possible, and - once opportunities are identified - pouncing on them like a pack of millionaires snatching boiled eggs off an orphanage breakfast table. It’s fast, it’s ruthless, and it makes you feel like an utter genius when you pull off a win.